Religious Freedom in the United States

Thomas Jefferson drafted for Virginia a bill for establishing religious freedom, which stands as no. 82 among the bills that the committee revising the state’s laws reported in June 1779 (Virginia, Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, Jefferson’s draft, Bill no. 82 (1779)). In 1785 James Madison wrote a Memorial and Remonstrance for citizens to sign against another bill, printed by order of the last session of the General Assembly, “establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion” (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance opening address). Religion, it argues, “can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence”; it is a duty owed to the Creator before any claim of civil society, and so is “wholly exempt” from society’s authority (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance 1). A power that can establish Christianity to the exclusion of other religions can as easily establish one sect of Christians over the rest (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance 3). Christianity, Madison adds, flourished without the support of human laws, and fifteen centuries of legal establishment had produced pride and indolence in the clergy and “ignorance and servility in the laity” (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance 6–7).

Madison reported the outcome to Jefferson on 22 January 1786: the assembly’s table had been loaded with petitions against any interference of the legislature in religion, and a convention of the Presbyterian church had asked expressly that the bill for religious freedom be made law (Madison to Jefferson, 22 January 1786, para. beginning ‘Our Assembly last night’). The Senate altered some words of the preamble; the enacting clauses passed unchanged (Madison to Jefferson, 22 January 1786, para. beginning ‘Our Assembly last night’). The assembly sat at Richmond (Virginia, Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, heading of the enrolled acts).

The act’s preamble declares that Almighty God created the mind free and that the “holy author of our religion” chose not to spread it by coercion (Virginia, Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, preamble). It enacts “that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever”, nor suffer in body or goods for his religious opinions, and that all shall be free to profess and argue for their opinions in religion without any effect on their civil capacities (Virginia, Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, enacting clause).

The Constitution of the United States, signed on 17 September 1787, provides that “no religious Test shall ever be required” for any federal office (U.S. Constitution, Article VI). The first Congress, meeting at New York, proposed amendments on 25 September 1789, and those ratified by 15 December 1791 became the Bill of Rights (U.S. Bill of Rights, heading and introductory note). The first begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment I). Jefferson sent the ratified articles to the governors of the states from Philadelphia on 1 March 1792 (Jefferson, Circular to the Governors, 1 March 1792).

The amendment speaks of Congress (U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment I). The Baptists of the Danbury association in Connecticut, assembled in October 1801, wrote to Jefferson, now president, that in their state religion was still treated as an object of legislation, so that what they enjoyed they held “as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights”; they acknowledged that the national government could not undo the laws of a state (Danbury Baptist Association, Address to Jefferson (October 1801), paras. 2–3). Jefferson replied on 1 January 1802 that the American people, by the First Amendment, had built “a wall of separation between Church & State” (Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptists, 1 January 1802, para. 2).