First Sunday

Sunday, March 1st

Depravity, Sin, and the Religious History of the American Founding.

This month’s talk focuses on the career and thought of John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. It questions common ideas about the “Enlightenment” origins of American constitutional theory, including in the interventions of Founders such as James Madison.

Our speaker Gideon Mailer came to the University of Minnesota system from the University of Cambridge, UK. From 2008-2012 he was an elected Title A Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, where he lectured and supervised in American and Atlantic history and in the history of intellectual thought. Before his Junior Research Fellowship at St. John’s, Cambridge, he took his PhD (2008), MA, and BA (hons) from Cambridge. His research focuses on the social, intellectual, constitutional, ecological, and religious history of North America and the wider Atlantic World from 1600-1865.

He has written books and articles about the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment and Protestant Evangelicalism on the American Founding and later American history. His published a book in 2017, paperback second edition in 2019, on the history of religion and the American Revolution, focusing on the only clergyman to sign the American Declaration of Independence and his influence on constitutional founders such as James Madison: John Witherspoon’s American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2017).

  9:00  Coffee and Conversation
  9:30  Breakfast Buffet Available
10:00  Formal Program Begins

Duluth Radisson Harborview
505 West Superior Street
Duluth, MN 55802
(218) 727-8981