The story of America’s struggle to freely practice religion is one as old as the country itself.

A new documentary, Free Exercise: America’s Story of Religious Liberty, explores the history of religious freedom within the United States by sharing the story of six religious groups and how each fought for their right to exercise their faith. The film, with a run time of just under two hours, is available to stream via PBS.org and the PBS app, in addition to local stations, as well as on smartphones and other services, such as Apple TV, Amazon Prime and Roku.

The documentary recounts how the Founding Fathers enshrined the free exercise of religion into the American experiment, the ongoing religious landscape and current challenges related to faithful observance. Catholics, of course, are one of the featured groups (the others are Quakers, Baptists, Black churches, Mormons and Jews); interviews with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Patrick Kelly, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, are included in the film. Other Catholics who are featured: John Garvey, past president of The Catholic University of America, and priests. Additional insights come from Douglas Laycock, a leading expert on religious-freedom issues at the University of Virginia School of Law, Richard Garnett of the University of Notre Dame School of Law, Princeton professor Robert George and former senator Mitt Romney, among others.

The Register spoke with Thomas Lehrman, the film’s executive producer. Lehrman, a Catholic convert, is a lawyer, former State Department official, and a venture capitalist. Since law school, studying the First Amendment has always been a passion of his. Now, he is sharing that passion with the masses through his new film showcasing the complex history of America’s first right.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you want to undertake this project?

A lot of these projects just grow out of your lived human experience. When I was in law school, I became very interested in the topic of religious freedom in America. Around then, I began interacting with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty [now Becket]. I ended up meeting Kevin “Seamus” Hasson, the founder, and I was just impressed by his vision to promote the idea that religious liberties are for all. It’s not just for Christians; it’s not just for Jews — it’s for Muslims; it’s for Sikhs; it’s for Hindus; it’s for new immigrants coming into the United States. It’s a part of the fabric of the United States.

As a personal note, I am a Catholic convert. I was baptized an Episcopalian; my dad’s family was Jewish, so I have religious liberty embedded in my own family. Seeing how different religious traditions can live in peace in the United States and come together sometimes in interesting ways and in family life helped to drive that passion.

Most people have heard the terms “religious freedom” and “religious liberty,” but many do not fully understand what the Constitution says. Could you explain the First Amendment?

There are a couple of different ways to think about religious liberty. From a philosophical, theological perspective, religious liberty is just part of the dignity of the human person. No human conscience should be coerced to believe in something that they cannot assent to.

From a legal or constitutional perspective, religious freedom in America grows out of these interesting strands of religious pluralism in the Colonies and the experience of religious freedom in the colonial period. One way to think about religious freedom is that it’s really a limitation on the power of Congress and the government to infringe upon both the rights of individuals and families, but also the rights and powers of states when dealing with religion.

How does the film tell the story of religious freedom in a very appealing and approachable way?

Part of the goal of telling the story of different faith communities is to give people a sense that religion is practiced in community; religion is not something that you just exercise as an individual right in the privacy of your own home where you're reading a Bible or some other religious text.

Religion gathers people together in religious communities, whether that’s in a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or some other institutional setting. Because the film focuses on different groups, you get that appreciation that it’s not just an individual right, but it’s something that encompasses a broader community.

The other way that I think highlighting different religious communities benefits the viewers is that they gain an appreciation for how important the right of religious freedom is by hearing the stories of other groups and understanding that this is something that has been unfolding since the colonial period.

One of the things that I found most moving about the film was the “chapter” highlighting persecution that Catholics experienced in their struggle for religious liberty. How did this persecution form and shape the American Catholic Church into what we know today?

The film tells the story of Bishop [and later Archbishop] John Hughes in New York, who sees this challenge of public schools using non-Catholic Bibles and these schools not respecting the religious freedom of Catholics. He sees this as a very serious threat to Catholic education and formation and an encumbrance upon the conscience of Catholic parents.

As Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan makes clear in the film, one of the key outgrowths of this issue is the desire to actually form Catholic schools, which began the parochial-school movement. The development of Catholic schools really is energized in some ways by this sense of a threat to the formation of young people that they’re seeing through these laws.

The second-to-last chapter discusses religious liberty in the 20th and 21st centuries and the continual fight for religious freedom, showing that this story is not over yet. How is that story still being played out today in 21st-century America?

I think the film tries to make clear that freedom of religion is still with us today with the very same religious communities that we treat in the film. Catholics are still trying to vindicate their right to educate children, according to the conscience of the parents; a Sikh might have a beard that they would prefer to keep, even though they are serving in the U.S. military, etc.

So there are some of these interesting questions of accommodation — do these non-traditional religious practices that were not present at the founding have the same rights? How does the principle of free exercise of the law relate to the constitutional commitment to follow it? How does it play out with respect to some of these practices, especially as it might concern something as important as the defense of the country and military readiness and Defense Department regulations or rules?

Religious freedom is also very much on the minds of folks that are working in different parts of the United States government with respect to diplomacy. You know, different countries around the world have stronger or weaker commitments to religious freedom. There’s a whole structure within the U.S. State Department that looks at the level of religious freedom in different countries around the world. We are very concerned about how other countries around the world engage in religious-freedom issues.

What do you hope that the Catholics in the pews understand about religious liberty, and why is this an important issue that they should care about?

Perhaps the most important aspect of this film is reminding people that religious liberty is not just an individual right. It’s something that manifests in the context of the community, whether that be in the family, in the local communities; whether that’s in a school, in a hospital or some other voluntary association. It’s not sufficient to think about this as an individual right.

The other thing I would say is that religious freedom takes continual effort on the part of the American people to renew and to strengthen. For example, towards the end of the film, we talked about the remarkable bipartisan consensus that came together in 1993 to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. There was a signing ceremony on the White House lawn, with Bill Clinton signing it into law. You have people like Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Ted Kennedy who are on different parts of the political spectrum coming together for the event and saying, “Look, this is our first freedom. This is so important.”

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