Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786
"II. Be it enacted by the General Assembly that no man shall
be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place,
or ministry
whatsoever, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious
opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess,
and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion,
and
that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their
civil capacities."
Until the beginning of the Revolutionary War, nine of the thirteen
colonies still officially supported one particular religion,
called an established church. But the practice had been weakened
by the "Great
Awakening," and by 1787 only Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
and Connecticut maintained established religions. In the other
states, the support of religious institutions depended on the voluntary
contributions of their members.
Thomas Jefferson led the fight for religious freedom and separation
of church and state in his native Virginia. This brought him into
conflict with the Anglican Church, the established church in Virginia.
After a long and bitter debate, Jefferson's statute for religious
freedom passed the state legislature. In Jefferson's words, there
was now "freedom for the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian
and the Mohammedan, the Hindu and infidel of every denomination." When
the First Amendment to the Constitution went into effect in 1791,
Jefferson's principle of separation of church and state became
part of the supreme law of the land.
Virginia Statute for Religious
Freedom (1786)
I. Well aware that Almighty God has created the mind free; that
all attempts to influence it by temporal [civil] punishments
or burdens
or by civil incapacitations [lack of fitness for office], tend
only to ... [produce] habits of hypocrisy and meanness and
are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion,
who, being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate
[spread]
it by coercions [force] on either, as was in his Almighty power
to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers,
civil as well as ecclesiastical [religious], who, being themselves
but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion [rule]
over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and
modes
of
thinking as the only true and infallible [ones], and, such,
endeavoring to impose them on others, have established and maintained
false
religions over the greatest part of the world and through all
time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money
for the
propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and
tyrannical; that even ... forcing him to support this or that teacher
of
his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable
liberty
of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose
morals he would make his pattern and whose powers he feels most persuasive
to righteousness ... ; that our civil rights have no dependence
on our religious opinions any more than [on] our opinions in
physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing [of] any
citizen as
unworthy [of] 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; . . . that 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 [the magistrate],
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; that it
is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government
for its officers to interfere when principles break out into
overt
[open, or public] acts against peace and good order; and, finally,
that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that
she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error and has
nothing
to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed
of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, [for] errors
[cease] to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict
them.
II. Be it enacted by the General Assembly that
no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship,
place, or ministry
whatsoever, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious
opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess,
and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion,
and
that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their
civil capacities.
III. And though we well know that this assembly,
elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation
only, [has] no power
to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with
powers equal to her own, and that therefore to declare this act to
be irrevocable
would be of no effect in law; yet, as we are free to declare, and
do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural
rights of mankind, and that if any act shall hereafter be passed
to repeal
the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement
[violation] of natural rights.
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