{"id":116144,"date":"2016-08-31T10:39:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T14:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=116144"},"modified":"2016-08-31T10:39:36","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T14:39:36","slug":"uconn-reads-religion-promise-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/08\/uconn-reads-religion-promise-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Reads: Religion and the Promise of the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UConn Reads theme for 2016-17 is \u201cReligion in America,\u201d with Eboo Patel\u2019s <\/em>Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America<\/strong><\/em><\/a> as the book.<\/em><\/p>\n

On July 28, at the Democratic National Convention, Khzir and Ghazala Khan delivered a speech about their middle son, Humayan, who was killed in the line of duty in 2004. As his father eloquently recounted, Capt. Khan was stationed at a guard post in Baqubah, Iraq; spotting a suspicious vehicle, he ordered his subordinates to stay back as he moved to investigate. His suspicions were tragically confirmed: the truck contained 200 pounds of explosives; when it detonated, he along with its two drivers were killed immediately.<\/p>\n

Mr. Khan \u2013 in recollecting his son\u2019s passing \u2013 was quite pointed in his critique of Donald Trump, who just a week earlier had accepted the Republic nomination for president. Immediately following the retelling of his son\u2019s sacrifice, Mr. Khan noted that heroes like his son would never have had the opportunity to serve their country had the presumptive candidate\u2019s policies concerning the wholesale banning of Muslim immigration to the United States already been in place.<\/p>\n

The bereaved father then delivered the following admonition: \u201cDonald Trump, you\u2019re asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words \u2018liberty\u2019 and \u2018equal protection of the law\u2019 \u2026. Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.\u201d<\/p>\n

While much attention has been paid to the Khan family\u2019s critique of Donald Trump, and much of the discussion has rightly involved the politics of xenophobia alongside the polemics of Islamophobia, it is Khan\u2019s engagement with religious freedom that has the most relevance to this year\u2019s UConn Reads theme \u2013 \u201cReligion in America\u201d \u2013 and the committee\u2019s selection, Eboo Patel\u2019s Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Khan\u2019s invocation of \u201cliberty\u201d in conjunction with \u201call faiths, genders, and ethnicities\u201d potently and provocatively attests to both the nation\u2019s past and present.<\/p>\n

Although it is widely known that Puritans came to the colonies seeking freedom from religious persecution, and despite the oft-accessed First Amendment clause that stresses \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,\u201d what is less apparent is how religious freedom played a key role in the administration of the nation\u2019s first president.<\/p>\n

In 1790, President George Washington visited Newport, R.I., and met with representatives from many religious denominations. Among those was Moses Seixas, who led one of the first Jewish congregations in Newport. At issue was the question of religious freedom at the federal level. At the time, requirements for citizenship varied greatly. In Rhode Island, Jewish subjects were protected from discrimination, yet were unable to vote or become naturalized citizens.<\/p>\n

Soon after that fateful meeting, the first president composed a \u201cLetter to the Hebrew Congregations of Newport<\/a>.\u201d In it, Washington stressed, \u201cThe citizens of the United States of America … All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship \u2026. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as it were the indulgence of one class of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s insistence on spiritual freedom as the basis of American selfhood would take legislative form in the passage of the first federal naturalization law that year, which \u2013 despite carrying the problematic proviso of \u201cfree white persons\u201d \u2013 established access to U.S. citizenship regardless of religion or creed. This particular account figures keenly in Patel\u2019s Sacred Ground<\/em>, which contemplates through religious freedom, interfaith coalition, and pluralistic affiliation the broad-minded promise of the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The subject of religion is as relevant today as it was in the time of the nation’s first president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":116335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,92,174,2225,90,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-116144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-avery-point","category-uconn-hartford","category-uconn-stamford","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-waterbury","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 05:38:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116144"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116151,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116144\/revisions\/116151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/116335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116144"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=116144"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=116144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}