Community Breakfast Spring 2012

April 24, 2012

Vanderbilt Divinity School Reading Room
7:30 - 8:30 a.m.

Kathleen Flake 
Associate Professor of American Religious History

Can a Mormon be President?: Test Oaths and the 2012 Presidential Election

Even before the Constitution guaranteed religious liberty, it forbade the administration of religious tests for federal public office.  Eventually the states followed suit and all official religious impediments to political office were removed.  Of course, citizens have always been free to test candidates by whatever standards they wished, including religious ones.  Such unofficial testing has usually remained a private expression of individual conscience, however.  Recent presidential politics show a more public, even organized expression of resistance to granting public office to one who cannot attest to trinitarian belief.  How should one understand this concern?  Is it new? Is it legitimate? What is the constructive role of private religious tests for public office?

Please RSVP to 615-936-8453
Cost: General Registration $10, Student Registration $5

 Registration Form

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