An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom
The Virginia law of January 1786 providing that no one shall be compelled to attend or support any religious worship or suffer for religious opinions. Thomas Jefferson’s draft was reported to the assembly in 1779.
Read the text at encyclopediavirginia.org ↗Jefferson’s draft, Bill no. 82 of the Revisal, 1779 (Founders Online) ↗
The act has three parts: a long preamble of reasons, a single enacting sentence, and a closing declaration that the rights it asserts are natural rights of mankind, so that any later act repealing it would infringe natural right. The manuscript cited here is the enrolled bill, that is, the text as the assembly passed it, entered with the other acts of the session that began at Richmond on 17 October 1785.
Jefferson’s draft, reported to the assembly in June 1779, can be compared with it at Founders Online; the editors of his papers note that he said he had drawn it in 1777. The assembly shortened his preamble; the enacting clause, Madison reported, passed without alteration. See Religious Freedom in the United States and Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 22 January 1786.
Cited in
- 1786 to 1791, firm date