TJ and the Liberties: I protest!

Arguments over the meaning of religious liberty have taken place since before the creation of the nation. We've all heard the tales about the Puritans and the Pilgrims coming to America to escape the religious persecutions in England -- and in truth many other European countries. 

England, of course, has an established church, the Church of England, more commonly referred to as the Anglican Church, though we may have forgotten that the reigning monarch is also the titular head of this communion. He or she technically can push the church in any direction he/she chooses and can appoint any number of officials. In practice these days, the Crown takes advice on the nomination of the Archbishop of Canterbury from the prime minister, who in turns takes advice from a nominating committee which consists, somewhat paradoxically, of members mostly not from the Anglican communion.

What we don't usually hear much about is that once the Puritans, and Pilgrims to a much lesser extent, arrived on these shores religious liberty meant freedom to worship for them but no so much for others. The religious leaders essentially set up the governments of the colonies and their settlements and set rules requiring elected officials to be members of the church -- in most of New England the Congregational Church and in the Southern colonies the Anglican (later Episcopal) Church. 

You also had to belong to the church and be certified as a member in good standing by the pastor in order to vote. Elected leaders and church leaders often conferred on what laws should be passed, leading to mandatory church attendance and various laws about acceptable behavior that were enforced by the civil authorities. 

Groups such as the Baptists and Quakers, with significant theological distinctives, found themselves outlawed and seriously persecuted. By the Revolution some non official churches began to be tolerated, although official laws still discriminated against them.

In the late 1700s in Virginia, which was officially Anglican, people began to push back against being required to pay taxes that were then used to pay Anglican ministers and support Anglican parishes. Two views took prominence in the debate -- accommodationism, which allowed government support of religious institutions as long as no one group was preferred, and separationism, which said government should stay out of the churches' business altogether. Those two views still clash today.

In 1784 Patrick Henry proposed a "Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion," an accommodationist bill that would have levied a tax on Virginia taxpayers to pay ministers in the state. Voters could choose which church they wished their taxes to go to, and in a nod to those who didn't attend church for whatever reason, their taxes would be designated for use by public education. 

Opponents managed to delay consideration until Henry became governor and was thus excluded from participating in the debates. In the meantime, James Madison was approached to write a petition outlining the reasons why the bill should not be passed.

He did, but anonymously so as to keep personalities out of the discussion, and called it a Memorial and Remonstrance -- fancy terminology that roughly means, "We protest against this bill, and here are the reasons why."

In it, he listed 15 reasons the bill should not pass, only some of which I'll list here.  

He states that "Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator ... can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence," which means that it is not subject to the authority of any civil institution and certainly not to legislative authority.

Any attempts to make religion subject to those authorities constitutes an attack on all other natural rights, which cannot be allowed. In addition, because religious liberty is a natural right then "we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us." 

In fact, he continues, Christianity needs no civil support because Christianity "disavows a dependence of the powers of this world ..." and has gotten along nicely throughout history even in the face of governmental opposition.

He also insists that government involvement in religious affairs has weakened the church, producing "pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity [and] in both superstition, bigotry and persecution." Ouch.

In one of his most famous and most quoted arguments, he says, "Who does no 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?" This is exactly what had been happening in American history. 

In a similar vein, he argues that America offers "... an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion ..." and that passage of the bill would mean that "Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative Authority." 

Next time we'll look at one of the most famous and controversial documents in the religious liberty debate, Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists.

Read the full remonstrance here: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163