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Vol. 30:1 ISSN 0160-8460 March 2002
Religion and the Founding Fathers
by John P. Kaminski
Religion has always been important in America. During the colonial and Revolutionary eras, religion permeated the lives of Americans. Blue laws kept the Sabbath holy and consumption laws limited the actions of everyone. Christianity was one of the few links that bound American society together from Maine to Georgia. The Bible, in addition to being the divine word of God that would guide people through life's journey to the next world, served as a textbook for history, a source book for morals, a primer for mothers to teach their children how to read, and a window through which to view and understand human nature. With the high death rate, especially among infants, childbearing women, and seafarers, Americans stoically resigned themselves to the will of God. Because religion and morality were seen as necessary components of stable society, colonial and Revolutionary government supported religion. Clergymen were among the most influential members of the community and many of them actively participated in government.
James Madison. Portrait by Gilbert Stuart, 1821. (National Gallery of Art)
Although colonists often emigrated to the New World to escape religious persecution or intolerance, many new Americans readily discriminated against others on the basis of religion. Ironically, the liberal religious traditions embodied in the charters and fundamental laws of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and the Carolinas read very much like the declarations of indulgences promulgated by Charles II and James II that were so bitterly denounced by the Anglican clergy and members of Parliament. Like a magnet, however, these liberal policies attracted dissenters to these religiously benevolent colonies.
The first 12 American colonies were founded during the 17th century. Much of the fear and hatred of Catholics in England during this time found its way across the Atlantic. The four imperial wars between Protestant Great Britain and Catholic France and Spain intensified American animosity toward Catholics. Only in Maryland did Catholics find a welcome haven in Britain's New World.
Jews, although discriminated against in every colony, were tolerated and prospered in Newport, Philadelphia, and Charleston. After the Revolution, even the most tolerant states continued to deny citizenship and voting rights to Jews, although they were allowed to practice their religion, but usually not publicly. Not until the 19th century did states extend full citizenship to Jews.
Quakers --banished, whipped, fined, imprisoned, and occasionally executed in early New England-- found a refuge in William Penn's experiment. Discrimination against Quakers, even in Pennsylvania, intensified during and after the Revolution, especially against those who steadfastly practiced pacifism. The combatants --both British and American-- felt that if Quakers were not on their side, they must be enemies. During the war, Quakers were disenfranchised, and Americans rounded up wealthy Quakers thought to be dangerous and transported them to safe areas away from the fighting and their homes. Only slowly after the war were Quaker voting rights restored.
Religion played a significant role in the coming of the American Revolution. In New York, the demand by some for an American Anglican bishopric raised fears of heightened ecclesiastical controls similar to the civil controls being mandated by Parliament. American animosity and fear of Catholics increased, especially when Parliament passed the Quebec Act in 1774. The act extended southward the borders of the captured Catholic French territory to the Ohio River and guaranteed "the free Exercise of the Religion of the Church of Rome." The Declaration of Independence listed the Quebec Act as one of the charges against the king and Parliament. Ironically, because of America's desperate need for support in its struggle for independence, Congress allied itself with Catholic France, and His Christian Majesty Louis XVI was regularly toasted in America as a true friend of the new republic.
The American Revolution led to a significant separation between church and state. Increasingly, religion was thought to be a matter of personal opinion that should not be dictated by government. Of the nine states that had established religions during the colonial period, three separated church and state in their new constitutions-New York, North Carolina, and Virginia. In the remaining six states, concessions were made allowing public support of more than one church. Often in New England, this concession was nominal because public funds would be given to only one church in a town, and that always happened to be the Congregational church because of its dominance in every New England town. However, as the 18th century ended, most states in which tax revenues supported churches passed legislation increasing the flexibility individuals had of earmarking their taxes for the support of their own minister.
Virginia disestablished the Anglican church merely by not specifically retaining the church-state relationship. The last provision of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (adopted in June 1776) provided "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our CREATOR, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity, towards each other." But when Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton, and Richard Henry Lee joined with Anglican ministers in an effort to provide public financial support for all Christian denominations (in essence creating a multiple establishment), James Madison revived Thomas Jefferson's bill for religious freedom, which provided for the complete separation of church and state. A convention of Presbyterian ministers advocated the bill "as the best safeguard short of a constitutional one, for their religious rights."1 Jefferson's bill, adopted in January 1786, stated that "the opinions of men are not the subject of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction." Madison happily reported to Jefferson that the act "extinguished for ever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind."2
John Jay. Portrait by Cornelius Tiebout after Gilbert Stuart. (New York Public Library)
In other state constitutions, like New York's, explicit provision was made that "the free exercise and employment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall for ever hereafter be allowed within this State to all mankind." Complete religious liberty was limited, however. According to the New York constitution, "the liberty of conscience hereby granted, shall not be so construed, as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this State." Such a libertarian position alienated Congregationalists in Vermont, who felt unsafe under New York's rule because their "religious rights and privilidges would be in danger from a Union with a Government" whose constitution tolerated all religions and excluded the establishment of any.3 In 1777 the Vermonters declared their independence not only from Great Britain, but also from New York.
Five state constitutions prohibited ministers from holding civil or military positions. The clergy, it was argued, should attend to the important job of tending to their flocks. Eleven states retained a religious test for officeholding, usually requiring belief in God, the Protestant religion, the divine inspiration of the Bible, and in life in the hereafter. Only the constitutions of New York and Virginia omitted a religious test for officeholding. In New York, Huguenot-descended John Jay argued unsuccessfully in the provincial convention for a prohibition against Catholic officeholding. In February 1788, however, the New York legislature approved an act requiring officeholders to renounce all foreign authorities, "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil," an obvious exclusion of Catholics from holding office.
During and after the war, the states ceded their western lands to Congress. On July 13, 1787 --when the Constitutional Convention was meeting in Philadelphia-- Congress, meeting in New York City, adopted the Northwest Ordinance, which provided for the territorial government of the national domain north and west of the Ohio River and for its transition to statehood on an equal basis with the original states. The Ordinance included an abbreviated bill of rights guaranteeing religious freedom in the first article. "No person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments in the said territory." The third article acknowledged the necessity of "Religion, morality and knowledge" in promoting "good government and the happiness of mankind" and provided that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Two years later, the first Federal Congress reenacted the Ordinance.
Increasingly the Founding Fathers abandoned traditional Christian religion and became what could be called deists. Many of these converts publicly maintained their original religious affiliations, choosing to avoid the censures that prominent deists like Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine regularly received. Deists abandoned the belief in the divinity of Jesus, the trinity, any notion of predestination, the Bible as the divinely inspired word of God, and state-sponsored religion. Rather, deists believed in one God, a benevolent initiator of all events. The word of God was not to be found in the Bible, but in nature and the Creation.
When the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787 drafted a new Constitution for the United States, they omitted any specific references to God or religion. Federalists, however, often asserted that the Constitution was divinely inspired. Dr. Benjamin Rush in the Pennsylvania ratifying Convention in December 1787 suggested that "the hand of God" was as assuredly employed in drafting the Constitution as it was in dividing the Red Sea or in fulminating the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai. Rush urged Antifederalists to differentiate between the inclinations of their constituents and the dictates of their consciences. Listen, Rush admonished, to the latter. "It is the voice of God speaking" to their hearts. Antifederalists condemned "this new species of DIVINE RIGHT." They "regretted that so imperfect a work should have been ascribed to God."4
Many Americans agreed with the freemen of Paxton, Massachusetts, that the Constitution, by its failure to explicitly guarantee the freedom of religion, was "Subversive of Liberty and Extreamly dangerous to the Civil and Religious rights of the People."5 Speaking for Antifederalists, Patrick Henry argued in the Virginia ratifying Convention that the "sacred and lovely thing Religion, ought not to rest on the ingenuity of logical deduction." Without an explicit protection, religion "will be prostituted to the lowest purposes of human policy."6 Federalists, however, argued that the Constitution would create a Federal government of strictly enumerated powers that would never be capable of violating religious liberty. According to James Madison in the Virginia Convention, there was "not a shadow of right in the General Government to intermeddle with religion-- Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation." Furthermore, with the "multiplicity of sects" throughout America, Madison asserted that no one sect "could oppress and persecute the rest."7
Throughout the ratification debate, Antifederalists demanded that freedom of religion be protected. A majority of ratifying conventions recommended that an amendment guaranteeing religious freedom be added to the Constitution. In recommending a bill of rights in the first Federal Congress on June 8, 1789, Madison proposed that "the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed." He also proposed that "no state shall violate the equal rights of conscience."8
The prohibition on states was removed by the Senate, while the restrictions on the Federal Government were combined and recast into what came to be the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The exact meaning of this prohibition has not been easy to ascertain. Perhaps President Thomas Jefferson interpreted it best in his response to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, on January 1, 1802. "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."9
John P. Kaminski is co-editor, with Gaspare J. Saladino, of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.
Notes:
- Madison to Jefferson, Richmond, January 22, 1786, Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (Chicago, 1973), VIII:473.
- Ibid., 474.
- Egbert Benson to John Jay, Poughkeepsie, July 6, 1779, Henry P. Johnston, ed., The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay (4 vols., New York, 1890-1893) I:211-12.
- Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, and Gaspare J. Saladino, eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (16 vols. to date, Madison, WI: 1976- ), II: 593, 595. Hereafter cited as DHRC.
- DHRC, V: 1003.
- DHRC, X:1213.
- DHRC, X: 1223-24.
- Helen E. Veit, Kenneth R. Bowling, and Charlene Bangs Bickford, eds., Creating the Bill of Rights: The Documentary Record from the First Federal Congress (Baltimore, 1991), 12-13.
- Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York, 1984), 510.
