Church & State

Thomas Jefferson was chairman of a committee of five to prepare a draft of the Declaration of Independence from England; he was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776; served as Secretary of State under the first president of the United States, and as our nation's third president. Knowing the stranglehold that the church had held over Europe through the Dark Ages, Jefferson was adamant that church and state must be kept separate.

Jefferson rejected advice from religious representatives at the time to institute days of prayer, saying that he believed that government officials did not have legal justification to call people to pray. Jefferson spelled out his position and that of the nation's Constitution with this observation--

"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, disciplines or exercises." He further clarified this, saying, "Every religious society has the right to determine for itself the times for (religious) 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."

One of the numerous milestones during Jefferson's two terms as president was the definition of treason by the Supreme Court--in the Justus Erich Bollman case (1807) which established an important precedent in the law of the writ of habeas corpus and the crime of treason. The principle laid down was that an actual levy of war, and not merely an intention to levy war, must be established to convict a person of treason. Today we must ponder points of habeas corpus and treason, and whether this precedent covers lying a nation into war.

A friend and colleague of Jefferson, James Madison, was an American statesman and now recognized as the "Father of the Constitution," and he served as the fourth President of the United States. Madison had made the notable contribution to the Virginia Constitution in a clause granting a "free exercise of religion"--one of the earliest provisions for religious freedom in American law. Features of the Virginia Constitution were later incorporated into the Constitution of the United States.

Events led Madison to recognize the dangers of too much central authority in a democratic government, as well as the enormous danger to democracy of religion mixed into government. After he had been manipulated into issuing a few religious proclamations, he found himself regretting that he had done so. He later wrote, "There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation."

Today we find a relentless move by religious factions to take advantage of religious freedom that Jefferson and Madison championed to actually usurp those true democratic principles.