... If this [extending religion's influence on the basis of "reason alone"] is the path chosen by Omnipotence and Infallibility, what sense can there possibly be
in "fallible and uninspired men ... setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible"? No sense at all, argued Jefferson, who
found compulsion in religion to be irrational, impious, and tyrannical. If such compulsion is bad for the vulnerable citizen, its consequences are no more
wholesome for the church: "It tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly
honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it." (E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A
Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 280.)
A final example of Jefferson's separationism may be drawn from his founding of the University of Virginia in the last years of his life. Prepared to transform
the College of William and Mary into the principal university of the state, Jefferson would do so only if the college divested itself of all ties with sectarian
religion--that is, with its old Anglicanism now represented by the Protestant Episcopal Church. The college declined to make that break with its past, and
Jefferson proceeded with plans for his own university well to the west of Anglican-dominated tidewater Virginia. In Charlottesville this new school ("broad
& liberal & modern," as Jefferson envisioned it in a letter to [Joseph] Priestly of 18 January 1800) opened in 1825 with professorships in languages and
law, natural and moral philosophy, history and mathematics, but not in divinity. In Jefferson's view, as reported in Robert Healey's Jefferson on Religion in
Public Education, not only did Virginia's laws prohibit such favoritism (for divinity or theology was inevitably sectarian), but high-quality education was not
well served by those who preferred mystery to morals and divisive dogma to the unities of science. Too great a devotion to doctrine can drive men mad; if
it does not have that tragic effect, it at least guarantees that a man's education will be mediocre. What is really significant in religion, its moral content,
would be taught at the University of Virginia, but in philosophy, not divinity. If Almighty God has made the mind free, one of the ways to keep it free is to
protect young minds from the clouded convolutions of theologians. Jefferson wanted education separated from religion because of his own conclusions
concerning the nature of religion, its strengths and its weaknesses, its dark past and its possibly brighter future. (E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D.
Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, pp. 282-283.)
Moving well beyond the traditional deistic triad of God, freedom, and immortality, Jefferson revealed his strongest feelings and convictions with regard to
the ecclesiastics. On two counts he found them critically deficient. In the realm of politics and power, they were tyrannical; in the realm of theology and
truth, they were perverse. Jefferson's strongest language is reserved for those clergy who, as he said in a letter to Moses Robinson of 23 March 1801,
"had got a smell of union between church and state" and would impede the advance of liberty and science. Such clergy, whether in America or abroad,
have so adulterated religion that it has become "a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves" and a means of grasping "impious heresies, in
order to force them down [men's] throats" (letter to Samuel Kercheval, 19 January 1810). In his old age, Jefferson softened his invective not one whit:
"The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest, the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and ambitious, ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a
word could be obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor
Servetus, because he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and one is three." And if they cannot revive
the holy inquisition of the Middle Ages, they will seek to mobilize the inquisition of public opinion, "that lord of the Universe" (letter to William Short, 13
April 1820). Jefferson, the enemy of all arbitrary and capricious power, found that which was clothed in the ceremonial garb of religion to be particularly
despicable. Even more disturbing to Jefferson was the priestly perversion of simple truths. If "in this virgin hemisphere" it was no longer possible to burn
men's bodies, it was still possible to stunt their minds. In the "revolution of 1800" that saw Jefferson's election to the presidency, the candidate wrote to his
good friend Rush that while his views would please deists and rational Christians, they would never please that "irritable tribe of priests" who still hoped for
government sanction and support. Nor would his election please them, "especially the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists." They fear that I will
oppose their schemes of establishment. "And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny
over the mind of man" (23 September 1800). It was this aspect of establishment that Jefferson most dreaded and most relentlessly opposed--not just the
power, profit, and corruption that invariably accompanied state-sanctioned ecclesiasticism but the theological distortion and intellectual absurdity that
passed for reason and good sense. We must not be held captive to "the Platonic mysticisms" or to the "gossamer fabrics of factitious religion." Nor must
we ever again be required to confess that which mankind did not and could not comprehend, "for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an
intelligible proposition" (letter to John Adams, 22 August 1813). (E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 291.)
I take to heart Jefferson's aspiration that the idea of church-state separation "germinate and take root among [the American people's] political tenets."
(Kenneth S. Saladin, "Municipal Church-State Litigation and the Issue of Standing," in the "Church and State" issue of National Forum: The Phi Kappa
Phi Journal, Winter, 1988, p. 23.)
To conclude this discussion of the religious clauses of the First Amendment, let's talk some more about Thomas Jefferson and his "wall." Some TV
preachers, as well as writers, politicians, and, worst of all, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, have sought to pull down the wall by disparaging
Jefferson's influence on the First Amendment. A popular bit of historical revisionism that floats around these days goes something like this: Jefferson served
as ambassador to France during the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He had no hand in their preparation and passage because he was out
of the country. Therefore, his metaphor about the "wall of separation" is misplaced and ill-informed because he was living in France and was out of touch.
Tommyrot! Thomas Jefferson was James Madison's mentor. Madison as the chief architect of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights drew heavily
from Jefferson's ideas and kept in regular contact with his fellow Virginian even though the latter lived in France. Volumes of correspondence exist
between the two men as they discussed the day's crucial events. Jefferson understood that the First Amendment created a separation between church and
state because he, more than most of the Founders, gave form and substance to the nation's understanding of how the two institutions should best relate in
the new nation. Some politicians, lawyers, and preachers subject us to mental cruelty when they disparage Jefferson's interpretation simply because he
lived in France during the years of the Constitution's framing. (Robert L. Maddox, Baptist minister and speech writer and religious liaison for President
Jimmy Carter, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1987, pp. 67-68.)
James Madison
(1751-1836; principal author, U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights; 4th U.S. President, 1809-1817)
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect. (James Madison, in a letter to
William Bradford, April 1, 1774, as quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987, p. 37.)
Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any
particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute threepence only of his property
for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? (James Madison, "A Memorial and
Remonstrance," addressed to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus,
New Jersey: The Citadel Press, pp. 459-460. According to Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 39 ff., Madison's "Remonstrance" was instrumental in blocking the multiple establishment of all denominations of Christianity in
Virginia.)
... Congress, in voting a plan for the government of the Western territories, retained a clause setting aside one section in each township for the support of
public schools, while striking out the provision reserving a section for the support of religion. Commented Madison: "How a regulation so unjust in itself, so
foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the
countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment." (Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as
Revolutionaries, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 206. The Congress here referred to was the Continental Congress; the Madison quote is from his letter to
James Monroe, May 29, 1785, according to Morris.)
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the
Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but
from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. (James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, October 17,
1788; from Michael Kammen, The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History, 1986, pp. 369-370. )
"In a free government," Madison declared, "the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the
multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects." (James A. Henretta, The Evolution of American Society, 1700-1815: An
Interdisciplinary Analysis, Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1973, p. 136. According to Henretta, the quote is from Number 51 of the
Federalist Papers.)
Here [in the Virginia statute for religious liberty] the separation between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of Man excepted from the grant
on which all authority is founded, is traced as distinctly as words can admit, and the limits to this authority established with as much solemnity as the forms
of legislation can express. The law has the further advantage of having been the result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a deliberate
sanction of a vast majority, comprizing [sic] every sect of Christians in the State. This act is a true standard of Religious liberty; its principle the great
barrier agst [against] usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected & no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them short of
this principle, will be found to leave crevices, at least thro' which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster, that feeding & thriving on its own venom,
gradually swells to a size and strength overwhelming all laws divine & human. (James Madison, "Monopolies. Perpetuities. Corporations. Ecclesiastical
Endowments," as reprinted in Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October,
1946], pp. 554-555. The "Detatched Memoranda" is a manuscript, written sometime after Madison left office in 1817, in Madison's own hand, with notes
he made in preparation for the arrangement and publication of his public papers, a task he did not complete before his death in 1836.)
Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical
Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history. (See the cases in which negatives were put by J. M. on two bills passd by
Congs and his signature withheld from another. See also attempt in Kentucky for example, where it was proposed to exempt Houses of Worship from
taxes. (James Madison, "Monopolies. Perpetuities. Corporations. Ecclesiastical Endowments," as reprinted in Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detatched
Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], p. 555. The parenthetical note at the end, which lacks a closed
parenthesis in Fleet, was apparently a note Madison made to himself regarding examples of improper encroachment to use when the "Detatched
Memoranda" were edited and published, and seems to imply clearly that Madison supported taxing churches. )
On Feb. 21, 1811, Madison vetoed a bill for incorporating the Episcopal Church in Alexandria and on Feb. 28, 1811, one reserving land in Mississippi
territory for a Baptist Church. (James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents [Washington, 1896-1899], I, 489-490, as cited in a
footnote, Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], p. 555.)
Chaplainships of both Congress and the armed services were established sixteen years before the First Amendment was adopted. It would have been
fatuous folly for anybody to stir a major controversy over a minor matter before the meaning of the amendment had been threshed out in weightier matters.
But Madison did foresee the danger that minor deviations from the constitutional path would deepen into dangerous precedents. He took care of one of
them by his veto [in 1811] of the appropriation for a Baptist church. Others he dealt with in his "Essay on Monopolies," unpublished until 1946. Here is
what he wrote: "Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious
freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a
national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion,
elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment ... ?" The
appointments, he said, were also a palpable violation of equal rights. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? "To say that his
religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the veil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be
tested by numbers, or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor." The problem, said the author of the First Amendment, was how to prevent
"this step beyond the landmarks of power [from having] the effect of a legitimate precedent." Rather than let that happen, it would "be better to apply to it
the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex [the law takes no account of trifles]." Or, he said (likewise in Latin), class it with faults that result from
carelessness or that human nature could scarcely avoid." "Better also," he went on, "to disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for the
army and navy, than erect them into a political authority in matters of religion." ... The deviations from constitutional principles went further: "Religious
proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts are shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed. Altho'
recommendations only, they imply a religious agency, making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers." (Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights: Its Origin
and Meaning, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965, pp. 423-424. Brant gives the source of "Essay on Monopolies" as Elizabeth Fleet,
"Madison's Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], pp. 554-562.)
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the
less they are mixed together. (James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822; published in The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed.
by Saul K. Padover, New York: Harper & Bros., 1953.)
The only ultimate protection for religious liberty in a country like ours, Madison pointed out--echoing Jefferson;--is public opinion: a firm and pervading
opinion that the First Amendment works. "Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of
importance." (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 56. Madison's words,
according to Gaustad, are from his letter of 10 July 1822 to Edward Livingston.)
Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny equal
freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not
against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. (James Madison, according to Leonard W. Levy, Treason Against God: A
History of the Offense of Blasphemy, New York: Schocken Books, 1981, p. xii.)
This assertion [that Madison was committed to total and complete separation of church and state] would be challenged by the nonpreferentialists, who
agree with Justice Rehnquist's dissent in the Jaffree case. Contrasted with the analysis set forth above, Rehnquist insisted that Madison's "original language
Ônor shall any national religion be established' obviously does not conform to the Ôwall of separation' between church and state which latter day
commentators have ascribed to him." Rehnquist believes Madison was seeking merely to restrict Congress from establishing a particular national church.
There are three problems with this contention. First, nothing in Madison's acts or words support such a proposition. Indeed, his opposition to the General
Assessment Bill in Virginia, detailed in the "Memorial and Remonstrance," contradicts Rehnquist directly. Secondly, all of Madison's writings after 1789
support the Court's twentieth-century understanding of the term "wall of separation." Third, the reference to Madison's use of "national" simply misses his
definition of the word. Madison had an expansive intention when he used the term national. He believed that "religious proclamations by the Executive
recommending thanksgiving and fasts ... imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion." He commented in a similar way about
chaplains for the House and Senate. Historical evidence lends no support to the Rehnquist thesis. And clearly Jefferson, even though absent from the First
Congress, seems a far more secure source of "original intent" than Justice Rehnquist. (Robert S. Alley, ed., The Supreme Court on Church and State,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 13.)
Late in his life [therefore in the 1830s?] he [Madison] wrote to his friend Robert Walsh with whom Madison conducted a steady correspondence: "It was
the Universal opinion of the Century preceding the last, that Civil Government could not stand without the prop of a Religious establishment, and that the
Christian religion itself, would perish if not supported by a legal provision for its Clergy. The experience of Virginia conspicuously corroborates the
disproof of both opinions. The Civil Government, tho' bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability and performs its
functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly
increased by the total separation of the Church from the State." (Robert L. Maddox, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom,
New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1987, p. 39.)
At age eighty-one [therefore, in 1832?], both looking back at the American experience and looking forward with vision sharpened by practical
experience, Madison summed up his views of church and state relations in a letter to a "Reverend Adams": "I must admit moreover that it may not be easy,
in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and
doubts on unessential points. The tendency of a usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best
guarded by an entire abstinence of the Government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting
each sect against trespass on its legal rights by others." (Robert L. Maddox, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New
York: Crossroad, 1987, p. 39.)
George Washington
(1732-1799; "Father of His Country"; 1st U.S. President, 1789-1797)
The following year [1784], when asking Tench Tilghman to secure a carpenter and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate, he [Washington] remarked:
"If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists."
As he told a Mennonite minister who sought refuge in the United States after the Revolution: "I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and
agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong...." He was, as John Bell pointed out in 1779, "a
total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another." (Paul F. Boller,
George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 118. According to Boller, Washington wrote his remarks to
Tilghman in a letter dated March 24, 1784; his remarks to the Mennonite--Francis Adrian Van der Kemp--were in a letter dated May 28, 1788.)
Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it is certainly the duty of Rulers, not only to
abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others. (George Washington, letter to the Religious Society called the Quakers,
September 28, 1789. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p.
500.)
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was by the indulgence of one class of the people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent
natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that those
who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it, on all occasions, their effectual support. (George Washington, letter to
the congregation of Touro Synagogue Jews, Newport, Rhode Island, August, 1790. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of
American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 500.)
Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate
and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least
have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the
peace of society. (George Washington, letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus,
New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 726.)
In the Enlightened Age and in this Land of equal Liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive
him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States. (George Washington, letter to the members of the New
Church in Baltimore, January 27, 1793. Quoted in Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, Harper
& Row, 1973, p. 269.)
... Bird Wilson, Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, was one of the first openly to challenge in public the pietistic picture of Washington that was
being built up by [Mason Locke] Weems and his followers. In a sermon delivered in October, 1831, which attracted wide attention when it was reported
in the Albany Daily Advertiser, Wilson stated flatly that "among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at
least not of more than unitarianism." Washington, he went on to say, was a great and good man, but he was not a professor of religion; he was really a
typical eighteenth-century Deist, not a Christian, in his religious outlook. (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern Methodist
University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15.)
... Like his father before him, he [George Washington] served actively for many years as one of the twelve vestrymen for Truro parish, Virginia, in which
Mount Vernon was located. According to Charles H. Callahan, "The regularity of his attendance at the meetings of the vestry and the progress of church
work throughout the parish during his incumbency is a striking testimonial of the religious zeal and activity of him and his associates." Actually, under the
Anglican establishment in Virginia before the Revolution, the duties of a parish vestry were as much civil as religious in nature and it is not possible to
deduce any exceptional religious zeal from the mere fact of membership. Even Thomas Jefferson was a vestryman for a while.* [Boller's footnote is shown
at the end of this selection.] Consisting of the leading gentlemen of the parish in position and influence (many of whom, like Washington, were also at one
time or other members of the County Court and of the House of Burgesses), the parish vestry, among other things, levied the parish taxes, handled poor
relief, fixed land boundaries in the parish, supervised the construction, furnishing, and repairs of churches, and hired ministers and paid their salaries. *As
Bishop William Meade put it, somewhat nastily, in 1857: "Even Mr. Jefferson, and [George] Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in Christianity,
took their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at Williamsburg, the other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of influence." (William Meade, Old
Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, 2 vols.; Philadelphia, 1857, I, 191). (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern
Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 26.)
Unlike Thomas Jefferson--and Thomas Paine, for that matter--Washington never even got around to recording his belief that Christ was a great ethical
teacher. His reticence on the subject was truly remarkable. Washington frequently alluded to Providence in his private correspondence. But the name of
Christ, in any correspondence whatsoever, does not appear anywhere in his many letters to friends and associates throughout his life. (Paul F. Boller,
George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 74-75.)
... if to believe in the divinity and resurrection of Christ and his atonement for the sins of man and to participate in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper are
requisites for the Christian faith, then Washington, on the evidence which we have examined, can hardly be considered a Christian, except in the most
nominal sense. (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 90.)
[on Washington's first inaugural speech in April 1789] . .. That he was not just striking a popular attitude as a politician is revealed by the absence of of the
usual Christian terms: he did not mention Christ or even use the word "God." Following the phraseology of the philosophical Deism he professed, he
referred to "the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men," to "the benign parent of the human race." (James Thomas Flexner, George Washington
and the New Nation [1783-1793], Boston: Little, B |
