A Five-Part Series
Before the Nation
Drew Its First Breath
On a small island in the Potomac, a Jesuit missionary lifted the Eucharist for the first time in the English colonies. Nearly four centuries later, I crossed the same water to understand what began there.
The Hidden Origins of Religious Liberty in America
Enter the storyIn 1634, nearly a century and a half before the Declaration of Independence, two ships crossed the Atlantic carrying more than settlers. They carried an idea.
Not fully formed. Not yet protected. But alive.
Before the Nation Drew Its First Breath is a five-part narrative series that traces the overlooked spiritual and historical roots of religious liberty in America, beginning with the landing at St. Clement's Island and the first Mass in the English colonies.
Blending firsthand travel, cinematic storytelling, and historical research, the series explores how a fragile experiment in tolerance, born of persecution, ambition, and faith, would echo forward into the founding principles of the United States.
Released in honor of the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding, this project invites readers into the wind, the uncertainty, and the hope of those first moments, and asks them to reconsider what religious liberty really means today.
This is not just history.
It's an origin story.
The complete series