Last year around this time, something remarkable happened at Daily Kos, and across the country. Whatever our differences about religion -- just about everyone to the left of the Religious Right supports the right of all of us to believe as we will, change our minds, or not believe anything at all. That is was what the leaders of the founding era called religious freedom. It is one of the defining features of our country. But strangely, as much as we mostly take this for granted, it is something we have largely forgotten how to talk about. It is a set of principles that we think we share, but to listen to the Religious Right, it is clear that we do not all have the same, or even similar understandings of what it means. And then there are conversations with one another...
That’s why when some of here at Daily Kos, and the organizational members of the Coalition for Liberty and Justice decided to commemorate an obscure national Day called Religious Freedom Day -- it resonated and became kind of a big deal.
The week before Religious Freedom Day, January 16, 2015, revealed that a lot of us had a lot to say. There were numerous diaries. There were op-eds and media coverage. There was a national Tweet storm organized by the Coalition.
It was a first outing for all of us in commemorating this day. It went well, and it felt right.
And it was also interesting learning about the Day and why we remember it.
Every year since 1992, Religious Freedom Day has been recognized on January 16th with a presidential proclamation. It commemorates the enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786. This law is so integral to our history that Thomas Jefferson viewed his role in creating it as one of the three signature accomplishments of his life – along with writing the Declaration of Independence and founding the University of Virginia.
Here is why Jefferson thought it was that important.
Jefferson drafted the bill in 1777 but it took a decade to be shepherded into law by James Madison, then a member of the House of Delegates. The law not only disestablished the Anglican Church as the state church of Virginia, but declared that citizens are free to believe as they will and that this "shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." Historians widely regard it as the root of how the framers of the Constitution approached matters of religion and government. It was as revolutionary as the era in which it was written.
Following the statute’s dramatic passage in 1786, Madison traveled to Philadelphia where he served as a principal author of the Constitution in 1787. As a member of Congress in 1789, he was also a lead author of the First Amendment, which passed in 1791. But the new nation was hardly unified on the matter of religious freedom. Some did not like the Virginia Statute any more than they liked the Constitution and its First Amendment. So before his death, Jefferson sought to get the last word on what it meant.
The Statute, he wrote, contained “within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.” These words ring down through time in the face of contemporary demagogues calling for religious tests for refugees, immigrants and international travelers. Jefferson and the leaders of the founding era not only knew Muslims but that religious freedom only meant something if Muslims, and everyone else, had equal protection under the law.
So with this clear and powerful statement, Jefferson, almost 200 years ago, refutes contemporary claims that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Jefferson further explained that the legislature had rejected proposed language that would have described “Jesus Christ” as “the holy author of our religion.” This was rejected, he reported, “by the great majority.”
Here is the legislative history of the Statute according to the entry by historian John Ragosta, in Encyclopedia Virginia. Note especially how in the last item in the list below, the Supreme Court recognized how central the Virginia Statute is to our understanding of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.
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June 12, 1776 - The Virginia Convention adopts the Declaration of Rights, including the sixteenth article, which guarantees citizens the "free exercise of religion."
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October 1776–December 1776 - Thomas Jefferson and James Madison successfully advocate for "An act for exempting the different societies of Dissenters from contributing to the support and maintenance of the church as by law established, and its ministers, and for other purposes therein mentioned."
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1777 - Thomas Jefferson drafts a bill "for establishing religious freedom" as part of an effort to revise Virginia's colonial laws in order to remove vestiges of monarchy and align them more closely with the state's republican principles and its new, independent status.
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June 12, 1779 - Because Thomas Jefferson had since been elected governor, John Harvie introduces Jefferson's bill "for establishing religious freedom" to the House of Delegates. It is eventually tabled.
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November 11, 1784 - The House of Delegates adopts a resolution supporting "a moderate tax or contribution, annually," to benefit all Christian sects. The resolution eventually fails.
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June 20, 1785 - James Madison anonymously authors his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, a broadside in opposition to a resolution by the House of Delegates to levy a General Assessment to benefit all Christian sects.
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October 31, 1785 - James Madison reintroduces to the House of Burgesses 117 bills from an earlier effort to revise Virginia's laws. Among these is Thomas Jefferson's bill "for establishing religious freedom."
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January 16, 1786 - The General Assembly passes the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. Written by Thomas Jefferson and championed in the House of Delegates by James Madison, the bill effectively severs the connection between church and state.
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January 19, 1786 - "An Act for establishing religious Freedom" is signed into law in Virginia.
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May 5, 1879 - The U.S. Supreme Court invokes the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in its unanimous decision in Reynolds v. United States.
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February 10, 1947 - In Everson v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the religion clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution "had the same objective and were intended to provide the same protection against governmental intrusion on religious liberty as the Virginia statute."
One of the reasons Virginia Statute is so significant in our time, is that it does not fit the Christian Right’s narrative of history or justify its shining vision of a theocratic future. They seem to be aware of this, and actively seek to minimize the problem. For example, topping the list from a Google search for Religious Freedom Day – is ReligiousFreedomDay.com – run by a small outfit called Gateways to Better Education. It treats the Day as an opportunity to evangelize in the public schools. “Religious Freedom Day is not ‘celebrate-our-diversity day,’” they insist. (This is detailed in Katherine Stewart’s excellent book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.)
By way of contrast, in his 2015 Religious Freedom Day proclamation, President Obama declared that religious freedom “protects the right of every person to practice their faith how they choose, to change their faith, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free from persecution and fear.”
That’s why it was so significant that last year, the Washington DC-based Coalition for Liberty and Justice, comprising 60 organizations opposed to the imposition of “one religious viewpoint on all” – decided to seize the day. The Coalition, whose members include Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Catholics for Choice, National Council of Jewish Women, National LGBTQ Taskforce, Secular Coalition for America, and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, launched a conversation that is likely to continue as long as we continue to make our own history and not just wait for it to happen to us.
Next Saturday, is January 16th, Religious Freedom Day, and like last year, we can expect that many of us will have much to say all across the week to celebrate the right to believe differently than the rich and the powerful. This year, we have also created a Religious Freedom Day group to help to organize and support all this.
This post is adapted in part, from When Exemption is the Rule: The Religious Freedom Strategy of the Christian Right, forthcoming from Political Research Associates.