Matthew Harris, Ph.D., is a specialist in U.S. history with a particular focus in religion and the law, church and state, American religious history, civil rights, and Mormon studies at Colorado State University. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from Brigham Young University and an M.Phil. and Ph.D., also in history, from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Harris is the author of numerous books and articles, including “The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History” (2015), “Thunder on the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics” (2019), “Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right” (2019) and (with Newell G. Bringhurst) “The Mormon Church and its Gospel Topics Essays: The Scholarly Community Responds” (2019). He is working on three book-length manuscripts: “The Long Awaited Day: Blacks, Mormons, and the Lifting of the Priesthood and Temple Ban, 1945-2018,” “J. Reuben Clark and the Making of Modern Mormonism” and “Hugh B. Brown: Mormonism’s Progressive Apostle.” His article “Mormonism’s Problematic Racial Past and the Evolution of the Divine-Curse Doctrine,” published in The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, won the Vera Jean and J. Talmage Jones Award from the Mormon History Association in 2014. His work has been featured on CSPAN and various media outlets.
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Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
The 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was the driving force behind the religious clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791.