From the campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

Here's your host, Scott Bertram.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome in to another edition of The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.

On this episode, we'll talk with Paul Ray, Professor of History at Hillsdale, about religious

liberty under assault. Tim Carney will join us to discuss his new book, Alienated America.

Chris Hamilton, chemistry professor at Hillsdale, will fill us in on all we need to know about

gluten. And Thomas Takama from Hillsdale's Van Andal Graduate School of Statesmanship will join us to

discuss his dissertation on the political thought of Calvin Coolidge. And we're joined now by Dr. Paul Ray,

Professor of History and Charles O. Lee and Louise Kaylee, chair in the Western Heritage

here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Ray, thanks for joining us again.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

I wanted to bring you back in to talk about a topic that I know you have considered

quite seriously, and that's this discussion about religious liberty. We hear it far more

often these days in many different ways,

and we'll talk about that a little deeper in the conversation. But when we talk about religious

freedom and religious liberty, Dr. Ray, where do our protections come from? Ultimately, they don't

come from law. Ultimately, they don't come from the Constitution.

James Madison in the 1780s was from time to time a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.

And he tried to usher through the revisal of the laws of the state of Virginia

that Thomas Jefferson had been commissioned to produce,

among them the Virginia statute of religious freedom.

And he wrote a document called the Memorial and Remonstrance, defending religious freedom

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