What did Jefferson and 18th century evangelicals have in common? If you guessed separation of church and state, you can go to the head of the class. Historian John Ragosta's class anyway.
Ragosta, an expert on Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, is also an advocate for wider celebration of Religious Freedom Day -- the national day designated by Congress in 1991 to commemorate the enactment of one of the most important advances in human and civil rights in the history of Western civilization. Given its significance, it is strange that about all that happens is that president issues an annual Proclamation. But this year, we will join the president (and many others soon to be announced) in celebrating Religious Freedom Day right here at Daily Kos.
Anyway, Ragosta recently took to the op-ed page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch to advocate for Religious Freedom Day -- and to make an important point about evangelical Christians in the revolutionary era.
Religious Freedom Day is Jan. 16. For several years I have been urging people to celebrate America’s religious freedom: We can worship (or not) where and when we choose, we don’t pay taxes to support religion, and there is no (official) religious test for office in America.
This separation of church and state was essential for Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and for 18th century evangelicals. Those evangelicals, mostly Baptists and Presbyterians, believed that separation guaranteed better government and purer religion — mixing them corrupts both. This principle, stated so elegantly by Jefferson in the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom adopted in Richmond on Jan. 16, 1786, and incorporated in the First Amendment of the Constitution, is, in theory, embraced overwhelmingly by Americans.
I think Ragosta is right on both counts: That evangelicals of the 18th century were all about religious freedom and disestablishing the official state churches; and that most Americans of today, given a chance to know what is at stake, would or already do share the values embraced by atheists like Thomas Paine, deists like Jefferson, and Baptist evangelicals like
Isaac Backus and
John Leland, and so many more.
History is powerful. And we really must not cede our story to the dominionist ambitions of the Christian Right.
Adapted from Talk to Action