From the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis website:

"This institute will support the studies of twenty-five talented teachers from across the nation as they join with nationally renowned scholars to explore how religion has shaped, and been shaped by, the American experience. The Institute directors, Philip Goff, Arthur Farnsley, and Rachel Wheeler, are all noted scholars in their field, whose work encompasses a wide range of subject matter and methodologies.

The Institute will enable participants from many different fields to develop new materials on American religion that can be incorporated into their current curricula. An English teacher introducing Uncle Tom's Cabin, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for instance, will be better prepared to discuss the nexus of religion and race in the context of nineteenth-century America. A civics teacher focusing on the origins of the American government will be able to incorporate discussion about the religion of the founders and the ways in which the First Amendment has shaped American society."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"Abraham Lincoln will stand at the center of the seminar, though less as a biographical subject than as a prism for exploring key aspects of his age. The themes and topics to be addressed include slavery and the Old South; the abolitionist impulse and the broadening antislavery movement; party political realignment and the sectional crisis of the 1850s; evangelicalism and politics; the election of 1860, the secession of the Lower South, and the coming of war; wartime leadership, political and military; the Civil War home front; emancipation; the elements of Confederate defeat and Union victory; and the meaning of the war for American nationalism."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"When Americans are asked to rank their presidents, Abraham Lincoln almost always comes out at the top. But why? Sometimes, the reason is that he freed the slaves . . . or that he saved the Union . . . or that he was a great war president . . . or that he was a master of words. All of these are true, but these truths don't get at the man behind these truths. Although Lincoln had next-to-nothing in the way of formal education, he possessed a natural intellectual curiosity, a voracious appetite for reading, and a passion for ideas. He was a lawyer, a politician, a fixer. But he was more than just a lawyer, a politician, or a fixer. Lincoln's curiosity . . . his reading . . . his ideas . . . led him into the vortex of the great clashes of ideas in the nineteenth century about religion, politics, Romanticism, race, and slavery. In this seminar, we will see how Lincoln was shaped by three important issues in his day:

• The clash of religion and the Enlightenment
• The offense of slavery
• The fight for the survival of democracy

This seminar will be an exploration of Lincoln's mind—of the great intellectual problems he faced, of the books he read, of the ideas he defended, and of the kind of democracy he thought was worth saving. And at the end, we will come to know Lincoln, not just as the greatest of presidents, but as a man of great ideas as well."

From the National Humanities Center website:

"During the 17th and 18th centuries, many 'freethinking' Europeans embraced Deism, a theology that subjected religious truth to the authority of human reason. In colonial America, Deism found few adherents, but those who were attracted to it tended to be wealthy and educated, leaders in colonial society and politics. Today, debate swirls around the role deism played in the founding of the nation. What was this 'religion of nature?' How can we explain it to students? Who among the Founders were Deists? What influence did Deism have on the culture of the new nation?"

From the time that the first Europeans arrived in America, religion has been an important part of American life. This course examines the various ways in which religion has played a role in American history, with particular emphasis on the role of religion in American politics.