"Endowed by Our Creator" highlights the C-SPAN Student CAM competition's 4,000 student entries celebrating the Declaration of Independence's 250th anniversary. Winner Benjamin Lovelady's film explores religious liberty, tracing history from Puritan settlements to Thomas Jefferson's Statute and the First Amendment. While other winners addressed free speech, health care, and fair pay, the episode underscores that religious freedom remains a contested issue involving state funding and secular law exemptions, ultimately framing these debates as central to America's ongoing constitutional identity. [Automatically generated summary]
The answer is not passionate love, but what we call in my business companionate love.
Companionate love, which is best friendship.
You know, I told my kids that, who are now, you know, two of my kids are young married, and my son Carlos said, companionate love, that's not hot.
And I said, well, trust me, it's got some hotness to it.
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This year, as we mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, C-SPAN's Student CAM documentary competition invited students to create short films exploring themes from American history, the rights and freedoms rooted in this founding document, and pressing issues of today, from the economy and immigration to criminal justice, education, and health care.
Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. took part in this year's competition.
Throughout this month, we're proud to showcase our top 21 winners.
This year's second prize High School East winner is Benjamin Lovelady, a ninth grader from Carborough High School in Carborough, North Carolina, where C SPAN is available through Spectrum.
His winning documentary is titled Endowed by Our Creator Religious Liberty and the Founding of America.
Our government does not sponsor a religion, nor does it pressure anyone to practice a particular faith or any faith at all.
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We have to bring back.
Religion in America brings it back stronger than ever.
Religious liberty is a fundamental.
We are a religious people.
We have the free exercise of religion.
What is the relationship between church and state?
What is the true meaning of religious liberty?
These questions have been contested issues since before the founding of our nation.
Indeed, they contributed to the American Revolution and the ideals set forth in both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
Today, We continue to debate these issues and to seek the unalienable rights endowed by our Creator.
We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Many people will know the kind of some of the beginning lines of the Declaration of Independence.
You know, we hold these truths to be self evident.
A couple things to notice in that sentence, right?
One is that this reference to the Creator, Who bestows these rights?
As I mentioned, government is created in part because we, the people, give some of our rights to the government in exchange for protection.
But that there were certain things that we couldn't give away, that we never could give away.
Things that, you know, rights that had been given by God and that were ours and couldn't be alienated to the government.
As the Declaration of Independence said, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
And what the Bill of Rights does is take those rights.
Codifies them and says to the American people there are certain things that are so precious to you that no majority should be able to strip you of those rights.
Of the unalienable rights set forth in the Bill of Rights, the very first one listed is that of religious liberty.
The First Amendment states Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
To fully understand these provisions, we must first understand the context of colonial America.
So, thinking about kind of the story of the development of religious liberty in early America, I think requires starting first in England.
Remember, in England, there was an official established church.
The Church of England, where the king was the head of the established church, where Parliament enacted laws, say, requiring people to attend worship in the established church, establishing official articles of faith that basically anybody in positions of authority had to believe, and, you know, imposing taxes on people to support the established church.
So that's kind of the world in England.
Especially when it comes to the settlements of the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay in the early 1600s, they We were seeking to create a city on a hill in which they could really live out their vision of what Christianity ought to be.
And they had spent a couple of generations chafing against the authority, you know, the limits on the crown's tolerance for their vision.
It was as if they were dissenting from the law of the land, the law of the Church of England, in trying to worship as they choose.
So Jefferson is growing up contemporaneous to watching people push against toleration and watching a state sanctioned church push back against it.
That kind of turmoil directly influences the American Revolution.
Thomas Jefferson, famous for his statute of religious freedom, which he's very proud of, which is basically the forerunner of the modern Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause in the U.S. Constitution.
The founders had also, they had in mind the lessons of European history and the way in which religion had fomented so much war.
And suffering, especially in the aftermath of the Reformation, the dangers of too close an alliance between established religion and political power and what that could mean.
And Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom was really the culmination of that debate.
Its purpose was simple and powerful to declare that a person could freely choose whether and how to worship and would neither be preferred nor punished for that choice.
So it's really the urtext for what we think of as separation of church and state in the United States.
And Jefferson was rightly proud of it.
Throughout the history of our nation, religious liberty has been a driving force in the American story.
Dissenters sought it against the crown and the established church.
Our founders protected it in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
And today, contemporary issues still fill our courtrooms, debating the true meaning of this unalienable right.
When it comes to religious freedom in the 19th and the 20th, and I would even argue the 21st century, it is a fairly contested battleground.
Should the state tax people to fund religious practice or to fund religious schools or to fund churches or to fund clergy?
Should individuals get exemptions from secular laws when they have religious objections to those secular laws?
So are we still discussing this?
Are we still putting it to test?
Yeah, as we should be.
I mean, we should be still talking about this and realizing this extraordinary founding principle of our nation.
It's the first of its kind in human history protecting an individual's right to hold their opinion upon religion as they choose.
Student Cam Democracy in Action00:03:20
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Be sure to watch all of the winning entries on our website at studentcam.org.
C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered.
Lights, cameras, impact.
To celebrate the 250th anniversary since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, thousands of students across America started writing and filming for this year's C SPAN Student CAM documentary competition.
Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. created documentaries examining themes from American history, exploring rights and freedoms rooted in the foundational document, or tackling modern day issues from the economy to immigration, criminal justice, education, and health care.
They researched.
They interviewed experts.
And they told powerful stories, exploring the enduring impact of the Declaration of Independence.
And now it's time to announce the top winners of Student Camp 2026.
The middle school first prize goes to Harper Hayden and Helena de la Juse of Correa Middle School in San Diego, California.
Their documentary, This Is What Democracy Looks Like, about free speech and the No Kings Movement.
The high school Eastern Division first prize goes to Kessler Dickerson and Charlotte Ligon from Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina.
for Roots of Freedom, the Struggles and Tensions of Rural American Agriculture, about farmers and government policies that impact food production.
In the High School Central Division, Benjamin Curian of Olintangi Liberty High School in Powell, Ohio, won first prize for A Right to Health about health care policy.
And in the High School Western Division, first prize goes to Danaya Safi and Juhi Fareed from Indercum High School in Sacramento, California, for Dreamers Deferred, the American Dream on Hold about immigration policy.
And deferred action for childhood arrivals, and we're happy to announce the Student Cam 2026 grand prize winner, earning five thousand dollars, is Irena Holbrook from TROY Athens HIGH School in Troy Michigan, for her documentary the pursuit of fair pay about the impact of name, image and likeness it's known as Nil on college sports and out of almost 4 000 students who participated this year, you've won five thousand dollars and this year's grand prize.
Congratulations, thank you.
Want to see their amazing films.
Watch all 150.
Award winning documentaries at studentcam.org and catch the top 21 winners airing this April on C SPAN.
C SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt and Turning Point USA CEO Erica Kirk speak now about free speech at a Turning Point USA spring tour stop at George Washington University.
Hello, GW.
So we were talking backstage for a little bit.
You don't look pregnant.
I feel it, girl.
Nine months pregnant today.
Nine months.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yes.
Let's hope that I don't have to go to GW Hospital tonight.