In this essay I argue that religion, understood as harmony with the transcendent source of existence and meaning, is a good that practical reason grasps as an objective, distinct, and important aspect of human well-being, one that reasonably takes pride of place among the various aspects of a good human life due to its architectonic role in structuring and adding a transcendent meaning to all of the other goods that we pursue. On the basis of this view of religion, I suggest that religious belief and practice deserve special protection in law, above and beyond mere preferences and even other conscientious commitments. I develop this view through a dialectical engagement with Ronald Dworkin, Brian Barry, and Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager.

In the mid-1700s, the town of Mompox flourished in the Spanish viceroyalty of the New Kingdom of Granada, today part of the Republic of Colombia. Built on the banks of the northern Magdalena River, an important waterway connecting the Andean interior with the Caribbean Sea, Mompox constantly buzzed with travelers and trade alike. Mompox was home to a community of merchants who profited handsomely from both legal trade and smuggling, their networks reaching places as far away as Lima in Peru and Cádiz in Spain. These merchants were frequently also slaveholders and landowners. On haciendas outside of town, slaves cultivated the land and tended large herds of cattle. They gathered wood and resins and hunted for game and jaguars (panthera onca) that preyed on livestock. Along with free people of color, slaves also worked as artisans, journeymen, and oarsmen on boats transporting goods and people up and down the river (see Figure 1).

James Eadie Todd was appointed to the chair of modern history in Queen’s University, Belfast in 1919, aged thirty-four, having previously held academic posts in Edinburgh, Montreal and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Todd published almost nothing but spent his career as a teacher, and his carefully prepared formal lectures guided generations of Queen’s students to a pass degree. But he also had the ability to inspire a minority of students to the further study of history and several of his pupils went on to occupy chairs of history in Ireland and Great Britain. During the 1930s, with his former pupil T. W. Moody, he created an honours and graduate school with a strong emphasis on Irish history. Todd stressed the importance of the objective study of the sources. Behind the scenes he was instrumental, with others, in founding the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies and establishing Irish Historical Studies. His later years were plagued by ill health and personal bereavement. He retired in 1945 and died four years later. The article concludes with an assessment of Todd’s importance to the professionalisation of Irish historical scholarship.