A Catholic priest in 1813, an atheist in 1959, a Klamath Indian man in 1989, a Jehovah's Witness in 2010, and a Christian baker in 2017.

What do all these people share in common? In his new book Deep Conviction, Stephen Collis explains,

what binds the stories together from a dusty prison in 1813 Manhattan to a cake shop in Lakewood, Colorado,

is one unbreakable thread that stretches and twines across the United States.

The principle that religious liberty is liberty for all of us, one that births other liberties, one that allowed the formation of the most religiously diverse country on earth,

one that protects us regardless of our beliefs, and one we must not take for granted.

Stephen Collis is an equity partner for the law firm Holland and Hart, and shares the firm's nationwide religious institutions and First Amendment practice group.

He received an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University before graduating with a master's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University,

an Endurist Doctorate from the University of Michigan Law School.

This summer, he will join Stanford Law School where he will be a research fellow and executive director of Stanford's Constitutional Law Center.

He and his wife are the parents of four children.

This is All-In, an LDS living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be All-In, the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

I'm Morgan Jones and I'm thrilled to have Stephen Collis here with me today. Stephen, welcome.

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

I love what you've done with this book. You've essentially taken four cases that deal with religious liberty and made them into novel-like reading.

Why was that important in what you were doing with writing deep conviction?

Well, I am a storyteller at Hart. My background is in creative writing and writing fiction.

It's funny when I first pitched a book about religious freedom to various publishers, I had pitched it as kind of a, just a straight religious freedom explained for non-loiders.

All of the publishers came back and said that would be the most boring thing on earth.

They're not interested.

My current publisher, Shadow Mountain, reached out maybe three months later and said, well, would you be interested in telling stories?

I was both pleased and ashamed that I had not come up with that idea on my own because I love telling stories and writing fiction.

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