Religious freedom has been at the center of American history since the founding. (And by the founding, I mean of the United States of America, not including the roughly century-and-a-half of colonial era.) There’s a story of religious freedom in the U.S. that isn’t widely or well understood—and is fiercely contested by the Christian Right.
Religious freedom was and is a revolutionary and liberatory concept that can disrupt entangled religious and political establishments and corrupt alliances of convenience. On Religious Freedom Day (January 16th) some will praise faith, and maybe the Founding Fathers, and some will call for interfaith understanding. Nothing wrong with all that. But if they fail to discuss the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which the day is intended to commemorate, they will have muffed the meaning and power of the moment.
There are many roots of religious freedom, but the story of religious freedom as a constitutional right in the US begins with the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which was originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and shepherded through the Virginia legislature by James Madison in 1786. The following year, Madison served as the lead author of the Constitution, and in 1789, as the lead author of the First Amendment. Thus, the Virginia Statute is rightly understood to be the clearest statement of the intentions of the Framers in matters of the right relationship between the individual, religion, and government.
In plain contemporary English, the statute states that one’s religious identity is to be neither an advantage or a disadvantage regarding one’s status as a citizen.
Historian John Ragosta’s thumbnail history of the bill at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello recognizes this. He quotes Madison saying that the Virginia Statute “is a true standard of Religious liberty: its principle the great barrier agst. usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected… these will be safe.”
But so much of this has been lost in the mists of time and the robust efforts of the historical revisionists of the Christian Right, who falsely claim that the founders intended the country to be a “Christian nation.” In an effort to rescue the story of the origins of religious freedom, Congress sought in 1992 to commemorate the enactment of the Virginia Statute, designating January 16th as Religious Freedom Day, stipulating only that it be commemorated by a presidential proclamation.
Unfortunately, the public discussion of the Virginia Statute has been dominated by the Christian Right. Even the website ReligiousFreedomDay.com is owned by Gateways to Better Education, a Christian Right outfit that seeks to turn the Day to its own purposes. There’s no democratically inclined organization or any agency of government charged with education about the Virginia Statute.
Still, the 221 original co-sponsors in the House of Representatives were an ideologically diverse group, from Christian Right Republicans like Henry Hyde (R-IL) and Newt Gingrich (R-GA) to progressive African-American Democrats, like Ronald Dellums (D-CA) and John Conyers, (D-MI); the first openly gay member of Congress, Gerry Studds (D-MA), and feminist pioneer, Louise Slaughter (D-NY).
Jefferson would be pleased, since he wanted to be remembered for authoring the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute, and for founding the University of Virginia. Ragosta says this was because Jefferson saw political freedom, religious freedom, and educational freedom as the great accomplishments of his life. Of the three, Jefferson “thought religious freedom was the foundation because without freedom to think and believe, you could not have the other two.”
The promise of religious freedom for all served as a rallying point among religious factions and made the Revolution, and the Constitution and its ratification, politically possible. Once instituted, the principle has helped every advance in human and civil rights ever since.
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that this revolutionary and liberatory principle and legislation were born in the context of the oppressive institution of slavery and the conquest of Indigenous peoples. Indeed, Jefferson, Madison and most of the framers of the Constitution owned slaves. What’s more, religious freedom has also been used as a justification for these and other oppressions to this day.
Religious Freedom Day then, is an opportunity to reflect on the whole of this history; how far we’ve come, where we have fallen short, (sometimes way short) how far we have to go, and to highlight the struggles of the day.
These things are not, as some seem to suggest, something to be avoided. They are necessary to understand the paradoxes of our history, and to effectively defend and advance religious freedom and social justice in our time. That Religious Freedom Day annually falls on or near the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gives us all the more reason and opportunity to reflect on this history.
In any case, religious freedom is central to our story as a nation. It was critical to the success of the Revolution, the ratification of the Constitution, and in recognizing the need for the First Amendment to unambigulously nail it down for the ages. There were those who didn’t like these developments at the time, and their ideological ancesters are politically ascendant today. But they didn’t win in the 18th century, and its our job to carry it forward here in the 21st century.
The spirit of the revolution continues. The necessity of extending and cementing the promise of the Constitution and the First Amendment to all, continues as well.
