Can religious freedom ever exist within a liberal democratic state? This seminar explores answers to this question by examining historical and contemporary examples of the regulation of religion and, in doing so, thinks critically about promises of equality and operations of power in the United States. In the first unit, we will bring a range of theoretical texts on religion to bear on lived religious experience in order to understand not only how the government distinguishes between public and private religious practices, but also how such distinguishing creates the conditions of "proper" political life. This unit thus also attends to how such creation troubles the idea that "secularism" can ever be understood as neutral in its affect. The second unit explores more fully how the First Amendment took on greater meaning alongside the identification of "novel" religious practices and new geographies in need of governance; this exploration will have us engage with how the ideal of secularism was tied to the regulation of sex, gender, race, and national origin. And finally, in the third unit, we will apply our knowledge to contemporary religious freedom challenges on matters such as the consumption of hallucinogens, the right to queer public accommodation, the desire to align one's body with one's beliefs, and more challenges that will also have us considering the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States.