Freedom FROM Religion: The Right Not to Believe in a Nation of Faith
Summary
Under the backdrop of our nation’s 250th anniversary, Our Seven Neighbors, season 5, explores the long, contested history of religious diversity in the United States—not as a feel-good celebration of pluralism, but as a hard-won achievement forged through conflict, exclusion, resistance, and moral struggle. Episode 8 features host Reza Aslan in conversation with Dr. Leigh Eric Schmidt.
Meet The Guest
Leigh Eric Schmidt
Leigh Eric Schmidt is the Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. The author of several books on American religion and culture, he has concentrated in recent years on the history of humanism, secularism, and American unbelief: Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation (2016) examines how atheists and freethinkers have fared in American public life and The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism (2021) explores the ritualistic, community-building, and saint-making dimensions of American secularist bodies. He edged his way into this domain through his work on the American dissident and free-speech martyr Ida Craddock in Heaven’s Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman (2010).
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