On July 9, 2026, I sent the following comments to the US Department of Justice, in response to the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission Draft Report of June 26, 2026
Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission Draft Report of June 26, 2026. I write in my capacity as a historian and the author of The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation (2021).
I particularly wish to comment on the draft report’s Chapter 2: Religious Liberty and the American Story, which presents an incomplete and distorted account of debates over religious freedom. A fuller history of this topic would remind Americans of the dangers of the kind of state promotion of religion that the report appears to contemplate.
Most notably, between pages 40 and 41, the draft report skips from the founding period to “the early twentieth century,” suggesting that in the intervening century, nothing of note happened concerning religious liberty. In fact, for much of the nineteenth century, some American Protestants used their majority status and state power to persecute minority faiths in the name of religious liberty. As one boasted, “We have a mill, of which the common school is the nether, and the Bible and its institutions the upper stone; into this mill let us cast the people of all countries and forms of religion that come here, and they will come out in the grist Americans and Protestants.” [Nicholas Murray, *Romanism at Home: Letters to the Hon. Roger B. Taney* (New York: Harper, 1852), 249.] In its extreme form, this sentiment led to the abuse of Catholic schoolchildren and the burning of Catholic churches, as well as the oppression of other religious minorities.
Without understanding—or even acknowledging—this history, one cannot understand the subsequent efforts by the Supreme Court and other institutions to strike a better balance between allowing individuals to practice their religion and avoiding state-imposed conformity. Nor can one understand the dangers of some of the report’s recommendations, such as the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
By ignoring the history of nineteenth-century religious conflicts, the Religious Liberty Commission has failed to produce the comprehensive report demanded by its charter. I suggest that the Commission recruit a panel of experts in the history of religion in the United States who can better document the ongoing centuries-old challenge of securing liberty of conscience to all Americans.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Zachary M. Schrag, PhD
zacharyschrag.com
