Though Jefferson’s 1779 Statute
represents a defining moment in the history of American civil rights, its
passage was not the first occasion when Americans or their colonial forbearers
attempted to make freedom of conscience a part of their laws. That being said,
few of these other attempts went as far as Jefferson was willing to go to
guarantee absolute freedom from religious persecution. Taken together, though,
they might be said to demonstrate both that freedom of conscience was a topic
very much on the minds of many of the American colonists for decades before and
after the Revolution took place, and that Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most
radical among them, and the most willing to see their shared philosophical ideal
out to its logical conclusion.
Though the colonies of
Pennsylvania and Rhode Island are most well-known for having promoted religious
liberty from a period very early in their respective histories, in the context
of 17th-and-18th-century North America they were far from
the norm. It is also, I think, worth noting that while Rhode Island’s charter
guaranteed unqualified liberty of conscience, Pennsylvania’s only allowed
unrestricted worship and participation in government to believers in a
monotheistic faith (that is, someone who believes in the existence of a single
god or deity). Granted, outside of whatever Native Americans may have resided
within the borders of the colony (who would not have been afforded full civil
rights anyway) there was virtually no one to whom this restriction would have
applied. Nevertheless it is a restriction, of a kind, and one that was
reinforced and strengthened by the subsequent Pennsylvania constitution of
1776. This document stated that each member of the legislature, before they
took their seat, must acknowledge the existence of the one, true God, and that
the Old and New Testaments were the products of his divine inspiration.
Similar qualifications were all
too typical of the colonial and later state governments. New York, for example,
had been granted a degree of religious liberty by its proprietor, the Duke of
York (later King James II). A fervent Catholic, the Duke was no friend of the
Church of England and permitted the inhabitants of his colony to belong to whichever
church they preferred (though it was clear they had to belong to some kind of church). This state of affairs was
later undone when the Duke ascended the throne in 1685 and New York became a
crown colony, placing it within the orbit of the British government and its
Anglican allies. Certain of the later state governments made similar efforts to
ease existing restrictions on religious liberty, but almost always with
reservations.
The first constitutions of both
Massachusetts and New Jersey attempted to guarantee the people’s freedom of
conscience, but did so without completely abandoning an explicit religious
preference. While the 1780 Massachusetts constitution stated that every person
had the right to worship, “in the manner and season most agreeable to the
dictates of his own conscience,” it also made provisions for the levying of
taxes intended to pay for “the institution of the public worship of God, and
for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety,
religion and morality.” New Jersey’s constitution was even more direct,
mandating that in accordance with the prohibition of any kind of religious
establishment, “no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied
the enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles.”
Though these sorts of provisions were no doubt drafted with the best of
intentions, they effectively disenfranchised, or made financially responsible
for faiths not their own, however many Jewish or Catholic residents of
Massachusetts or New Jersey there were in that era. While there may have been,
in the 1770s or 1780s, few of either group residing in these states, it was the
principle of religious liberty that Jefferson believed was important, and in
need of protection and promotion, lest the United States fall into the
well-worn habits of its former mother country.
And Britain’s would, indeed,
prove to be an example to avoid. In spite of the brief reign of James II
(during which a Catholic was officially the head of the Church of England),
Britain’s prohibitions against political participation by non-Anglicans held
fast for 150 years. It was not until 1828 that anyone was permitted to hold
public office without taking Anglican communion, and not until 1829 were
Catholics afforded the same privilege. The United States, in the same era, had
enjoyed over 50 years of relatively peaceful coexistence between a variety of
faiths, as Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists and Puritans served
alongside each other in Congress and in state assemblies. I would not go so far
as to say that this was because of
the influence of Jefferson’s Statute, but his was certainly among the first,
and most philosophically grounded, attempts to enshrine the principle of unrestricted freedom of conscience in
the laws of the United States. That freedom of religion was among the rights
guaranteed by the First Amendment, held in as high esteem as free speech and
freedom of the press, is telling of the Statute’s influence and of similar
attempts made at the end of the 18th century to break away from the
religious establishments that so dominated Americans’ shared British past.
Now, before I finish I’d like to
touch on one last thing. The last section of the Statute is a sort of caveat,
or a warning to future generations. It says, essentially, that though no group
of elected officials (in this case the Virginia General Assembly) has the right
to bind their successors to the decisions they chose to make, or prevent them
from repealing whatever law they feel no longer serves their purpose, whoever
chooses to repeal the Statute for Religious Freedom will be committing a crime
against the laws of nature, and no doubt by extension “nature’s God.” This is
such a fundamentally Jeffersonian thing to add, I find I couldn’t resist
commenting on it.
Jefferson was, after all, a man
who said or wrote at numerous points over the course of his lengthy career some
variation on the phrase, “The earth belongs to the living.” It was a radical
notion and he quoted it at length, maintaining that the dead should no more
have the ability to decide what their successors can and can’t do, than a
minister in Austria should be able to set the laws in Spain. And yet in the
matter of freedom of conscience, among the most sacred of the natural rights he
often championed, he was willing to violate one of his most dearly held
principles, claim that his all-important Statute should never be repealed, and
lay a moral injunction against those that would attempt to do so (in keeping
with the rights he admits they possess). It’s among one of the most direct
examples of Jeffersonian doublespeak, of his ability to claim a principle,
violate it, and then assert that the violation actually reinforces the
principle in question. Time and again he did this, on a variety of scales and
with a variety of results, and for those who have studied the third president
it’s one of his defining characteristics, and part of what makes him such a
fascinating and at times elusive figure.
But please, do see for yourself: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Virginia_Statute_for_Religious_Freedom
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