The University of Mary Washington will commemorate the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom on Thursday, Jan. 29, with a lecture, according to a university release.
The lecture, titled “Religious Freedom and the Culture Wars,” will be given by Douglas Laycock, a Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia.
The presentation will take place at 7:30 p.m. in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium and is free and open to the public.
Jefferson’s statute was enacted by the Virginia General Assembly on Jan. 16, 1786, and established the legal right to freedom of worship in the commonwealth of Virginia. The statute also was a significant step toward the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Laycock is the author of multiple books on religious liberty and recently published the first half of a four-volume collection of his many writings on the subject.
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The UMW Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion has sponsored the annual lecture since 2002.