Thomas E. Buckley

Fr. Buckley's research interests are in American religious history with an emphasis on church-state relations and the interaction of religion with social policy. He is the author of Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776-1787 (Virginia, 1977) and The Great Catastrophe: Divorce in the Old Dominion (North Carolina, 2002), and editor of "If You Love That Lady Don't Marry Her": The Courtship Letters of Sally McDowell and John Miller, 1854-1856 (Missouri, 2000). He is currently working on a study of the implementation of Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia between 1787 and 1940.

Patrick Henry's role in the development of religious freedom is seriously underestimated, according to Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley scholar Tom Buckley. In contrast to the views of Jefferson and Madison, Henry's views come much closer to what actually transpired in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries. Henry, Buckley notes, favored religious freedom because he wanted it to flourish, not because he wanted it to be privatized.