The First Amendment to the United States Constitution begins with these words, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” To many within the United States today, this protection of religious freedom is a foregone conclusion — this is the United States of America, of course, we have the freedom to worship as we choose. Yet in its original context, this national commitment to religious freedom as a core civil liberty of citizens of the United States was a radical declaration and fundamental departure from the practices not only of many countries of the world, but even many of the original thirteen colonies.
When the first English colonizers arrived in North America, they established colonies (that would eventually become states), and as part of that, they established official religious groups within them. This meant that public tax dollars were used to pay ministerial salaries and church attendance was mandatory for citizens, while those who chose to attend other denominations could face persecution or even assault. Yet as the ideas of liberty, equality, and freedom began to swirl in the political conversations of the 1770s, key figures like Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and James Madison (among others) began to apply this same rhetoric of liberty to the practice of religion. In his famous pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine argued that the government’s only business with regard to religion should be “to protect all conscientious professors thereof.” While only a small part of Paine’s revolutionary text, the idea that the government should protect the right of people to practice their religion as they saw fit and nothing else was critical to the protection of liberty.
The most famous architect of religious freedom was not Thomas Paine, but rather, Thomas Jefferson. In 1777, just months after the United States declared its independence from Great Britain, the author of the Declaration of Independence penned a “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,” which in 1779 he introduced for consideration in the Virginia House of Delegates. In the bill, Jefferson argued that “our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,” and claimed that to restrict someone from holding public office on the basis of where and how he worshiped deprived a man of privileges to which he had “a natural right.” Instead, Jefferson asserted that “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” For Mr. Jefferson, the message was clear — Virginia was to be a place where men, regardless of where they worshiped, could experience the benefits of this democratic society. Yet despite Jefferson’s insistence, the House of Delegates refused to pass the bill because of the strong opposition from the Anglican church, who was poised to lose its favorable status and tax benefits if the bill passed. Eventually, though, on January 16, 1786, with the help of James Madison, the bill was passed, making it the first piece of religious freedom legislation in the United States and the inspiration for the First Amendment, which was ratified five years later in 1791.
Even after the passage of the First Amendment, however, some states — like Connecticut — continued to have laws privileging a state religion. This prompted one group of Baptist ministers in 1802 to write to the now-President Jefferson for assistance. They desired changes in Connecticut’s law, noting that the “religious privileges” they did have were merely theirs as “favors granted, and not as inalienable rights.” Mr. Jefferson, unable to change the law of Connecticut, sympathized with their plight, writing that like them, he believed that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God.” In the earliest days of the republic, it was already understood and acknowledged that if religious freedom was not granted for all men, then one group could discriminate against others, forcing beliefs, practices, and allegiances upon them that would be contrary to their own convictions. Such restrictive practices, Mr. Jefferson and many others acknowledged, had no place in a free society. In the years that have followed, the United States has continued to affirm what in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt would call one of “four essential human freedoms” — "the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world.” This foundational civil liberty of an individual to choose how he or she worships or professes their faith continues to give all men and women the right to hold to different beliefs than one another — just like it did in the days of the Founding Fathers. The United States has always aimed to be a country where strength and greatness were found in the midst of difference — even if it has not always lived up to that ideal.
Today, we celebrate January 16 as National Religious Freedom Day — commemorating that very first law passed in Virginia 240 years ago — and as we do so, we are living out this vision of America put forth by the Founders. Here at York University, we are committed to Christ-centered education designed to transform the lives of our students as they seek to make a positive difference for God, family, and society. This country’s commitment to religious freedom allows us to follow the teachings of scripture, share them in our classrooms, and gather to worship each school day at our daily chapel. We of all people should be filled with gratitude for the religious freedom we possess and committed to ensuring its continued support for generations to come.
— Dr. Jared Pack, Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History