Faith and the US Constitution: Religious Liberty in the United States from Jefferson to Trump's Executive Orders

This thesis traces the evolution of religious liberty in the United States, from its colonial roots — the Maryland Toleration Act, Roger Williams's experiment in Rhode Island, and George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights — to its codification as an inalienable right in the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first chapter examines the "wall of separation" invoked by Jefferson, the constitutional foundation of the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the ruling in City of Boerne v. Flores, and the International Religious Freedom Act in the context of the Cold War. The second chapter analyses Supreme Court jurisprudence — the Lemon test, Antonin Scalia's originalism, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, and Wheaton College v. Burwell — showing how the boundary between free exercise and non-establishment has been progressively redrawn through judicial interpretation. The third chapter investigates the legal nature of the executive order and its constitutional limits, focusing on Executive Order 13798, the Religious Liberty Commission, and the ambivalent relationship between Trump and the Catholic world. The fourth chapter addresses the conflict between the protection of religious liberty and the alleged "anti-Christian bias".