The Civitas Collection 250

Twenty-five leading scholars examine the Declaration of Independence on its 250th anniversary.On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved a document that would change the world. Drawing on natural rights, moral philosophy, natural and biblical theology, and classical virtue, the Declaration of Independence did not merely announce a political separation—it established the principles upon which a new republic would stand or fall. As America marks the 250th anniversary of that founding act, The Civitas Collection 250 brings together 25 of the nation's leading scholars to examine the Declaration in depth. These essays resist the temptation to flatten the founding into a simple story. They probe what the Declaration meant in 1776, what it meant to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., and what it demands of us now—on questions of liberty and equality, self-government, executive power, religion, race, and the persistent effort to diminish what the founders established.To read the Declaration as a whole is to discover not a relic but a living challenge. The Civitas Collection 250, featuring essays by scholars from leading universities and research institutions across the country, including from the newly established schools of civic thought, is essential reading for citizens, students, and scholars who take the American founding seriously. Read more