Celebrating the Fourth of July holiday is a tradition nearly as old as the United States itself, as early Americans understood that commemorating the Declaration of Independence was important to establishing a national identity. With every community celebration, Americans became more united arounds their shared identity, values and purpose, says Abram Van Engen, the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities and chair of Engish in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
The story of the freedom-loving colonists who fought against a tyrannical king and, against all odds, won their independence has become legend. Yet it’s easy to forget how uncertain and contested the birth of the United States really was. Moreover, history is messy. The stories told about our country’s origin often simplify, leaving out the people, events and contradictions that do not neatly fit.
To commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary, the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics offered the spring 2026 course, “1776, Then and Now. ” In it, students had the rare opportunity to discover the true but often untold stories behind the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States, and to think critically about the continuing relevance and consequences of those events today.
The course challenged students to look at history with eyes wide open and embrace an “and” rather than “or” way of thinking. For example, George Washington could be both a visionary hero of independence who set aside his own power as a precedent for others to follow and, at the same time, be one the largest enslavers in colonial Virginia. “We don’t need to sort him to an either/or category, but should instead accept the complications of a both/and history,” Van Engen says.
Over the course of the semester in 16 lectures, renowned professors in multiple disciplines from WashU and around the country broke down the political and religious influences that led to the revolution and the political beliefs that shaped the new country. They taught how these core values are passed down from generation to generation through civics lessons, commemoration and the stories we tell.
“It is important to commemorate the 250th anniversary because it has shaped so much of our current experience,” says Van Engen, who also serves as director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics. “We live in its light and shadow.
“The Declaration of Independence — and its immediate aftermath — created and codified rights we now take for granted and seek to defend,” he says. “At the same time, the Constitution also codified and cemented into place a system of slavery with legacies and consequences still present today.
“It is important to commemorate the 250th anniversary because it has shaped so much of our current experience. We live in its light and shadow.”
Abram Van Engen
“It shaped possibilities, it opened opportunities, it furthered experiments in liberty and tightened bonds of oppression, and it created the contours of a nation, leaving us with fundamental questions about what we need to claim and keep, what we need to acknowledge and redress, and what we have forgotten but must remember in order to orient ourselves in the present day.”
Although the course was a one-time offering, there is good news for those who were not “in the room where it happened.” All lectures are now available online, free of charge, through WashU and C-SPAN. Below are a few highlights.
Why revolution
Early lectures in the course centered around the events and political and philosophical thinking that led to the revolution. In his presentation, “Why did the colonies declare independence?” Peter Kastor, the Samuel K. Eddy Endowed Professor in Arts & Sciences, described the collision of ambitions, fears and ideals that led to the Declaration of Independence.
According to Kastor, the true drama behind that fateful declaration signed in July of 1776 is that it is not only a statement of universal rights, but also a political compromise among people who did not want the same things — or even agree about what independence, freedom and equality meant. They were often unaware of these disagreements until they actually met in Philadelphia in 1776. The genius of 1776, in his telling, lies in the fact that, despite those differences, the men who put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence found enough common cause to come together and declare themselves one people. Although their eventual triumph was as much a result of mistakes that the British government made, he says.
Religion and the secular
In his presentation, “Religion and the Revolution,” Mark Valeri, the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics, explained how Colonial-era religious leaders used their pulpits to persuade British loyalists to join the revolution.
“By framing independence as a necessary conversion from tyranny to liberty, religious thought made the treasonous act of rebellion feel like a righteous moral duty,” Valeri says.
Perhaps lesser known was the story behind Thomas Jefferson’s Quran. In her presentation, “Islam and the Founding Fathers,” Tazeen Ali, assistant professor of religion and politics, explained how Jefferson’s interest in Muslim teachings provided both a foundation for the new nation’s government and the strongest test case for the founders’ beliefs about religious liberty.
Ali pointed out the hypocrisy of the founders who argued that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, while also enslaving other human beings and waging war against Muslim powers in North Africa. According to Ali, that story could be viewed as one of hypocrisy. Or it could be an example of how the founders, in their better moments, laid down principles that were much broader than their own practices — ideals that we aspire to fulfill today.
Seeking freedom and independence
While many American Revolution stories simplify or even romanticize the founders and colonists, people of African descent living during this time are largely ignored. In her presentation, “African American Political Thought in the Age of Revolution,” Tamika Nunley, the William & Sue Gross Professor of History at Duke University, presented evidence that enslaved and free Black people were not passive bystanders, but rather active political thinkers who consistently centered toward liberty. Through petitions, military service, reconnaissance, litigation, print culture and their feet, African Americans set new ideas about liberty in motion, she says.
“To take seriously the political and intellectual work of African Americans allows us to understand the multiple registers of revolutionary thought, and the efforts of formerly enslaved people to expand its scope and build American futures even as they faced exclusion from broader American civic institutions,” Nunley says. “This synergy between the ideas and political work of people of African descent and specialists in African American history reveals a tradition that challenges our narrative instincts when we revisit the history of the American Revolution.”
While history books celebrate northern states’ gradual abolition, the truth is freedom came unevenly and often too late for many. In a separate presentation, Sowande Mustakeem, associate professor of history and of African and African-American studies, both in Arts & Sciences, explained that slavery was first and foremost a profitable business.
According to Mustakeem, as conflict intensified, competing interests used slavery as both an economic engine and a political weapon. In particular, a 1775 proclamation by England’s Lord Dunmore, which promised freedom to slaves who would leave patriotic owners and joined the British army, angered the colonists. It was one of the grievances explicitly mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, which famously declared that “all men were created equal,” Mustakeem points out. When the war was resolved, the new nation inherited the same wealth structures, labor systems and racial hierarchies that helped sustain an empire. The founders’ idealism was no match for the economic realities of slavery.
Establishing rights
Chancellor Andrew D. Martin’s presentation, “Free Speech and Judicial Independence in the Age of Revolution,” explored two foundational values — free speech and judicial independence — that were born during the American Revolution from the colonists’ grievances against the monarchy, and continue to influence life in the U.S. today.
“Both free speech and judicial independence rest on a common foundation of the distrust of unchecked power,” Martin says. “The colonists were upset that there was an enormous amount of power that wasn’t checked, and they began building institutions to check the power of government. An important part of that was being able to speak freely against those in power. It was also important to create a judiciary that was independent from political pressure.”
Memory and meaning 250 years later
In the final lecture of the semester, Van Engen reminded the class that 1776 is not simply an origin, but an origin story — a narrative used to explain who Americans are, what the nation stands for and where it should go next. Origin stories matter, he says, because they create identity, purpose and memory. Stories about the Pilgrims, the Declaration of Independence, and the “city on a hill” are stories passed down from generations to make claim to America’s authenticity and exceptionalism. But these stories also simplify, leaving out the people, events and contradictions that do not fit neatly into the story.
“We are a nation that should remember and commemorate our origins,” Van Engen says. “But we are also a nation that must struggle to hold together while acknowledging the many different origins that July 4 evokes. Can we live with multiple origins instead of a singular origin story?”
Van Engen challenged the class continue this work by asking harder questions, listening for silenced voices, and building a better understanding of our histories in all its complexity.
