Passing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

[Hawk1981]

Thomas Jefferson asked that his tombstone record only two documents that he authored, the Declaration of American Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. In 1776, delegates in Virginia decided to write a document stating the moral basis for their decision to declare independence from England. Giving support to the state's religious dissenters, they produced the Virginia Declaration of Rights which included Article 16 drafted by George Mason and James Madison, that stated “all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”

The disestablishment of Anglicanism in Virginia came about as the result of an unlikely alliance between a handful of Virginian gentlemen who were strongly influenced by Enlightenment ideas about individualism and toleration, and evangelical religious dissenters tired of unequal treatment at the hands of local and state authorities. Non-Anglican dissenters had been petitioning in Virginia since 1772 to change the laws that gave special privileges to the Anglican Church. They wanted an end to the taxes that supported the established church. They wanted their clergy to be allowed to perform marriages. And they wanted to abolish the law that required non-Anglican clergy to apply for a license and to get authorization for holding a religious service.

Having completed his work in the Continental Congress, including the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson returned to Virginia from Philadelphia in October 1776, and began work on a complete revision of the state’s laws. After two years of work, Jefferson and his Committee of Revisors presented a list of 126 proposed laws to the Virginia Assembly in June 1779. Many of the new laws were minor changes. But Bill Number 82 was a major change. Drafted by Jefferson, the bill removed all links between religion and government. In a lengthy preamble, the bill laid powerful reasons for de-establishing religion. It is, Jefferson wrote, “sinful and tyrannical” to compel a man to furnish contributions of money “for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors. . . . Our civil rights,” he wrote, “have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions on physics and geometry.”

The Bill stated: "that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever . . . nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion."

Bill Number 82 was not the only bill before the Assembly concerning religion. Churchmen, worried about losing public support for their ministries, introduced a compromise General Assessment bill. Under the General Assessment bill, any church subscribed to by five males over the age of 21 would become a Church of the Established Religion of the Commonwealth and receive state support.

The fight over whether to have an established church continued for almost six years. Patrick Henry introduced a modified version of the General Assessment bill in 1784. His bill was also a “multiple establishment” bill. It provided for an annual tax to support the Christian religion or “some Christian church, denomination or worship.” Henry's bill was supported by Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists; while Jefferson's bill was supported by Baptists and evangelicals, who generally believed in the principle of voluntary support.

By 1784, Jefferson had moved on from the Virginia House to serve in Congress and as Minister to France. The job of passing Bill Number 82 fell to James Madison, a close ally of Jefferson. He urged the Legislature not to pass the General Assessment bill, arguing that religion should be exempt from the authority of any legislative body and left “to the conviction and conscience of every man.”

The “free exercise of religion”, he wrote, is a right like other rights and liberties, and if we do not want to allow the Legislature to “sweep away all our fundamental rights,” then we must say that they must leave “this particular right untouched and sacred.”

Madison noted that "Either we must say, that they may control the freedom of the press, may abolish the Trial by Jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary Assembly or, we must say, that they have no authority to enact into the law the Bill under consideration."

As a result of Madison's efforts, when the Legislature reconvened in January 1786, it passed Jefferson’s bill by a margin of 60 to 27. Pleased that his bill had finally passed, Jefferson wrote from Paris that "The ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked of me copies of it to send to their sovereigns...I think it will produce considerable good even in these countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settle on the mass of the people."

 

[Hawk1981]

Nine of the original thirteen colonies had established churches in 1775:

 

[Hawk1981]

A decisive force in the move to disestablish the Anglican Church in Virginia was the evangelical minister, John Leland. He was a notable supporter of Jefferson and Madison, writing in his 1776 pamphlet titled A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia, "the notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever . . . all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians."

John Leland

John Leland threw his support behind James Madison in the closely fought election of 1788, impressed by Madison's support for a Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. Leland's 1791 sermon Rights of Conscience Inalienable was distributed in pamphlet form and aided the crucial effort to ratify the US Constitution in Virginia.

Later Leland moved to New England where he formed a network of local Baptist associations leading a staunch opposition to slavery. He and many other evangelicals supported Thomas Jefferson in the contentious presidential election of 1800, giving context to Jefferson's guarantee to the Danbury Baptist association that he would build a "wall of separation" between church and state.

 

[Moonglow]

Thomas Jefferson asked that his tombstone record only two documents that he authored, the Declaration of American Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. In 1776, delegates in Virginia decided to write a document stating the moral basis for their decision to declare independence from England. Giving support to the state's religious dissenters, they produced the Virginia Declaration of Rights which included Article 16 drafted by George Mason and James Madison, that stated “all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”

The disestablishment of Anglicanism in Virginia came about as the result of an unlikely alliance between a handful of Virginian gentlemen who were strongly influenced by Enlightenment ideas about individualism and toleration, and evangelical religious dissenters tired of unequal treatment at the hands of local and state authorities. Non-Anglican dissenters had been petitioning in Virginia since 1772 to change the laws that gave special privileges to the Anglican Church. They wanted an end to the taxes that supported the established church. They wanted their clergy to be allowed to perform marriages. And they wanted to abolish the law that required non-Anglican clergy to apply for a license and to get authorization for holding a religious service.

Having completed his work in the Continental Congress, including the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson returned to Virginia from Philadelphia in October 1776, and began work on a complete revision of the state’s laws. After two years of work, Jefferson and his Committee of Revisors presented a list of 126 proposed laws to the Virginia Assembly in June 1779. Many of the new laws were minor changes. But Bill Number 82 was a major change. Drafted by Jefferson, the bill removed all links between religion and government. In a lengthy preamble, the bill laid powerful reasons for de-establishing religion. It is, Jefferson wrote, “sinful and tyrannical” to compel a man to furnish contributions of money “for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors. . . . Our civil rights,” he wrote, “have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions on physics and geometry.”

The Bill stated: "that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever . . . nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion."

Bill Number 82 was not the only bill before the Assembly concerning religion. Churchmen, worried about losing public support for their ministries, introduced a compromise General Assessment bill. Under the General Assessment bill, any church subscribed to by five males over the age of 21 would become a Church of the Established Religion of the Commonwealth and receive state support.

View attachment 350148

The fight over whether to have an established church continued for almost six years. Patrick Henry introduced a modified version of the General Assessment bill in 1784. His bill was also a “multiple establishment” bill. It provided for an annual tax to support the Christian religion or “some Christian church, denomination or worship.” Henry's bill was supported by Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists; while Jefferson's bill was supported by Baptists and evangelicals, who generally believed in the principle of voluntary support.

By 1784, Jefferson had moved on from the Virginia House to serve in Congress and as Minister to France. The job of passing Bill Number 82 fell to James Madison, a close ally of Jefferson. He urged the Legislature not to pass the General Assessment bill, arguing that religion should be exempt from the authority of any legislative body and left “to the conviction and conscience of every man.”

The “free exercise of religion”, he wrote, is a right like other rights and liberties, and if we do not want to allow the Legislature to “sweep away all our fundamental rights,” then we must say that they must leave “this particular right untouched and sacred.”

Madison noted that "Either we must say, that they may control the freedom of the press, may abolish the Trial by Jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary Assembly or, we must say, that they have no authority to enact into the law the Bill under consideration."

As a result of Madison's efforts, when the Legislature reconvened in January 1786, it passed Jefferson’s bill by a margin of 60 to 27. Pleased that his bill had finally passed, Jefferson wrote from Paris that "The ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked of me copies of it to send to their sovereigns...I think it will produce considerable good even in these countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settle on the mass of the people."

If these people were so moral then why did they not only own slaves but commit acts of debauchery upon them also?

 

[harmonica]

..I thought it was ''Statue of Limitations'''

 

[whitehall]

Whatever the historic preamble to the Bill of Rights. the only thing that matters is the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. The concept of "separation of church and state" was invented by the Supreme Court around 1948. Former KKK member appointed to the Court by FDR, Justice Black wrote the majority opinion which had no basis in Constitutional law..

 

[Hawk1981]

Whatever the historic preamble to the Bill of Rights. the only thing that matters is the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. The concept of "separation of church and state" was invented by the Supreme Court around 1948. Former KKK member appointed to the Court by FDR, Justice Black wrote the majority opinion which had no basis in Constitutional law..

Jefferson's concept of "separation of church and state" first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v United States. A US Supreme Court case in 1878 that held that religious duty was not a defense to a criminal indictment.

The Court recognized that under the First Amendment, Congress could pass a law that prohibited the free exercise of religion. However it held that the law prohibiting bigamy did not meet that standard.

Citing the letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists in which he wrote that there was a distinction between religious belief and action that flowed from religious belief. The Court believed the First Amendment forbade Congress from legislating against opinion, but allowed it to legislate against the action of polygamy because "to permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land."

In the facts of the case, George Reynolds, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was charged with bigamy under the federal Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act after marrying a woman while still married to his previous wife. Reynolds argued that the law was unconstitutional. He reasoned that his religion required him to marry multiple women and the law therefore violated his First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

In a unanimous decision, with the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite, the Court upheld Reynolds's conviction and Congress’s power to prohibit polygamy. The Court held that while Congress could not outlaw a belief in the correctness of polygamy, it could outlaw the practice thereof. The majority reasoned that while marriage is a “sacred obligation,” it is nevertheless “usually regulated by law” in “most civilized nations.” Finally, the Court held that people cannot avoid a law due to their religion.