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Freedom of Religion
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Because religious belief, or
non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects
every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of
themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all
our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the
clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself.
Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is
absolutely essential in a free society.
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"We have solved, by fair
experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible
with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as
well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly
those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious
convictions of his own inquiries." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Virginia Baptists,
1808. ME 16:320
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"The constitutional freedom
of religion [is] the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights." --Thomas
Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1819. ME 19:416
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"Among the most inestimable
of our blessings, also, is that... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think
most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good
government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support." --Thomas
Jefferson: Reply to John Thomas et al., 1807. ME 16:291
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"In our early struggles for
liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object." --Thomas
Jefferson to Baltimore Baptists, 1808. ME 16:317
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"Religion, as well as
reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our government has been
founded and its rights asserted." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME
14:283
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"One of the amendments to
the Constitution... expressly declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the
same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever
violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others." --Thomas
Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:382
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"The rights [to religious
freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind, and... if any act shall be... passed to
repeal [an act granting those rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an
infringement of natural right." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom,
1779. (*) ME 2:303, Papers 2:546
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The Private Nature of Religion |
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"I have ever thought
religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were
accountable to Him, and not to the priests." --Thomas Jefferson to Mrs. M. Harrison
Smith, 1816. ME 15:60
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"From the dissensions among
Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to
which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose
also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty." --Thomas Jefferson:
Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:545
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"Religion is a subject on
which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter
between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to
intermeddle." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813.
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"I never will, by any word
or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious
opinions of others." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
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"Our particular principles
of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone. I inquire after no man's, and
trouble none with mine." --Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814. ME 14:198
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Government Intermeddling in
Religion
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"I consider the government
of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious
institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the
provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of
religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the
United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume
authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must
then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority." --Thomas
Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:428
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"In matters of religion, I
have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the
powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe
the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found them,
under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the
several religious societies." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural Address, 1805. ME
3:378
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"Our Constitution... has not
left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it
possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the consciences of men either
attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to New
London Methodists, 1809. ME 16:332
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"I do not believe it is for
the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its
discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government
should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among
them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them, an act of
discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for
these exercises and the objects proper for them according to their own particular tenets;
and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has
deposited it... Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine
tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States,
and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents." --Thomas
Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:429
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"To suffer the civil
magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession
or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy
which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that
tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments
of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own." --Thomas Jefferson:
Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2: 546
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"It is... proposed that I
should recommend, not prescribe, a day of fasting and prayer. That is, that I
should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises
which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant, too, that this
recommendation is to carry some authority and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those
who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription,
perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the
recommendation less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed?... Civil
powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to
direct the religious exercises of his constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel
Miller, 1808. ME 11:428
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Religion Intermeddling in
Government
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"Whenever... preachers,
instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the
Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the
characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving
their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them,
instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better
sources in that particular art of science." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover,
1815. ME 14:281
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"Ministers of the Gospel are
excluded [from serving as Visitors of the county Elementary Schools] to avoid jealousy
from the other sects, were the public education committed to the ministers of a particular
one; and with more reason than in the case of their exclusion from the legislative and
executive functions." --Thomas Jefferson: Note to Elementary School Act, 1817. ME
17:419
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"No religious reading,
instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools]
inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination." --Thomas
Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:425
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"I do not know that it is a
duty to disturb by missionaries the religion and peace of other countries, who may think
themselves bound to extinguish by fire and fagot the heresies to which we give the name of
conversions, and quote our own example for it. Were the Pope, or his holy allies, to send
in mission to us some thousands of Jesuit priests to convert us to their orthodoxy, I
suspect that we should deem and treat it as a national aggression on our peace and
faith." --Thomas Jefferson to Michael Megear, 1823. ME 15:434
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Establishments of Religion
Undermine Rights
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"The clergy, by getting
themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a
very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." --Thomas
Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.
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"The Christian religion,
when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the
original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others
most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."
--Thomas Jefferson to Moses Robinson, 1801. ME 10:237
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"But a short time elapsed
after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were
departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an
engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1810. ME 12:345
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"[If] the nature of...
government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would]
consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the
advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And
there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of
liberty only by the help of a tow-rope." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierrepont Edwards,
July 1801. (*)
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"This doctrine ['that the
condition of man cannot be ameliorated, that what has been must ever be, and that to
secure ourselves where we are we must tread with awful reverence in the footsteps of our
fathers'] is the genuine fruit of the alliance between Church and State, the tenants of
which finding themselves but too well in their present condition, oppose all advances
which might unmask their usurpations and monopolies of honors, wealth and power, and fear
every change as endangering the comforts they now hold." --Thomas Jefferson: Report
for University of Virginia, 1818.
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"I am for freedom of
religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over
another." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78
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"The advocate of religious
freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy]." --Thomas
Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1802. ME 10:305
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"The clergy...believe that
any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their
schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to
fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin
Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
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"Believing... 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 legitimate 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." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists,
1802. ME 16:281
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"I am really mortified to be
told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of
an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of
criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a
book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and
are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may
buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be
the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our
inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what
we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question
whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it
cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove
them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both
sides, if we choose." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127
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"History, I believe,
furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This
marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will
always avail themselves for their own purposes." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von
Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21
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"In every country and in
every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the
despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." --Thomas Jefferson
to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119
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"I have been just reading
the new constitution of Spain. One of its fundamental bases is expressed in these words:
'The Roman Catholic religion, the only true one, is, and always shall be, that of
the Spanish nation. The government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the
exercise of any other whatever.' Now I wish this presented to those who question what [a
bookseller] may sell or we may buy, with a request to strike out the words, 'Roman
Catholic,' and to insert the denomination of their own religion. This would ascertain the
code of dogmas which each wishes should domineer over the opinions of all others, and be
taken, like the Spanish religion, under the 'protection of wise and just laws.' It would
show to what they wish to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life
and happiness. It would present our boasted freedom of religion as a thing of theory only,
and not of practice, as what would be a poor exchange for the theoretic thraldom, but
practical freedom of Europe." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:128
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"To compel a man to furnish
contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is
sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson: Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers
2:545
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The Benefits of Religious
Freedom
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"The law for religious
freedom... [has] put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the
freedom of the mind." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:400
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"[When] the [Virginia] bill
for establishing religious freedom... was finally passed,... a singular proposition proved
that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that
coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was
proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a
departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The
insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within
the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the
Hindoo and infidel of every denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.
ME 1:67
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"No man shall be compelled
to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be
enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor... otherwise suffer
on account of his religious opinions or belief... All men shall be free to profess and by
argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and... the same shall in no
wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." --Thomas Jefferson:
Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2:546
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"Our civil rights have no
dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or
geometry." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:301, Papers
2:545
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"We have no right to
prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church."
--Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:546
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"The proscribing any citizen
as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to
offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious
opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in
common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute
for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:301, Papers 2:546
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"A recollection of our
former vassalage in religion and civil government will unite the zeal of every heart, and
the energy of every hand, to preserve that independence in both which, under the favor of
Heaven, a disinterested devotion to the public cause first achieved, and a disinterested
sacrifice of private interests will now maintain." --Thomas Jefferson to Baltimore
Baptists, 1808. ME 16:318
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"The declaration that
religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by
religious error." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
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"If a sect arises whose
tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of
doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes
on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:224
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"If anything pass in a
religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the
same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market."
--Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:548
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"It is time enough for the
rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere [in the propagation
of religious teachings] when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good
order." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers
2:546
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"Whatsoever is lawful in the
Commonwealth or permitted to the subject in the ordinary way cannot be forbidden to him
for religious uses; and whatsoever is prejudicial to the Commonwealth in their ordinary
uses and, therefore, prohibited by the laws, ought not to be permitted to churches in
their sacred rites. For instance, it is unlawful in the ordinary course of things or in a
private house to murder a child; it should not be permitted any sect then to sacrifice
children. It is ordinarily lawful (or temporarily lawful) to kill calves or lambs; they
may, therefore, be religiously sacrificed. But if the good of the State required a
temporary suspension of killing lambs, as during a siege, sacrifices of them may then be
rightfully suspended also. This is the true extent of toleration." --Thomas
Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:547
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