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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: February 15, 2007 11:43:11 PM PST
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Subject: Jefferson on Religion
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/node/1195/print
The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution - Thom
Hartmann's "Independent Thinker" Book of the Month Review
By BuzzFlash
Created 12/05/2006 - 7:00am
THOM HARTMANN'S "INDEPENDENT THINKER" BOOK OF THE MONTH REVIEW
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States of America with a Preface by Cass R. Sunstein
Most Americans have never read the Declaration of Independence or
the Constitution in their entirety, even though the process would
take the average reader less than an hour. There are several small
pocket editions of the two documents, but this one is unique in
that it contains an excellent introduction by Cass R. Sunstein, and
that it contains Thomas Jefferson's brilliant 1777 "Bill for
Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia."
[0] This latter by Jefferson - only 5 pages long in this palm-sized
edition - was referred to by historian William Lee Miller as "one
of the essential documents defining American civilization."
Jefferson's "Bill" reads, in its entirety as follows [keep an eye
out for the "mangled" phrase in the preamble that he necessarily
had to include in order to get it passed, as noted later]:
A BILL FOR ESTABLISHING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
SECTION I. Well aware that:
the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but
follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds;
that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his
supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether
insusceptible of restraint;
that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or
burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget 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 it by coercions on either, as was in his
Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason
alone;
that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as
well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and
uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others,
setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only
true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on
others, hath 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 and abhors, is sinful
and tyrannical; that even the 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; and is withdrawing from the
ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an
approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement
to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions,
any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore
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; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that
very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly
of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally
profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal
who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those
innocent who lay the bait in their way;
that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government,
nor under its jurisdiction; 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 falacy, 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;
that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out
into overt 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; errors ceasing to be
dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
SECT. II. WE, the General Assembly of Virginia, do enact that 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 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 opinions in matters of religion, and that the same
shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
SECT. III. AND though we well know that this Assembly, elected by
the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no
power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted
with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this
act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet 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 be hereafter
passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act
will be an infringement of natural right.
What's particularly amazing about this document is its history.
Jefferson was so proud of it that he wanted written on his
tombstone not that he was President of the United States, but,
instead, that he was: "Author of the Declaration of American
Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and
the Father of the University of Virginia." (This is what is on his
tombstone, by the way.)
In his autobiography, Jefferson discussed its history. At the time
it was passed, the Episcopal Church was the "official" church of
the state of Virginia, so this was a radical slap at the Church, as
well as a dramatic grab of power away from it. Its success in
Virginia in 1778, a decade before the Constitution of the United
States was written and while we were at war with England, set up
the possibility that the separation of church and state could be
included both in the "religious tests" section of the Constitution
and also in the First Amendment.
Jefferson wrote [and I have bolded a few of my favorite and
particularly quotable portions]:
The first settlers of this colony were Englishmen, loyal subjects
to their king and church, and the grant to Sir Walter Raleigh
contained an express proviso that their laws "should not be against
the true Christian faith, now professed in the church of England."
As soon as the state of the colony admitted, it was divided into
parishes, in each of which was established a minister of the
Anglican church, endowed with a fixed salary, in tobacco, a glebe
house and land with 'the other necessary appendages. To meet these
expenses, all the inhabitants of the parishes were assessed,
whether they were or not, members of the established church.
Towards Quakers who came here, they were most cruelly intolerant,
driving them from the colony by the severest penalties.
In process of time, however, other sectarisms were introduced,
chiefly of the Presbyterian family; and the established clergy,
secure for lie in their glebes and salaries, adding to these,
generally, the emoluments of a classical school, found employment
enough, in their farms and schoolrooms, for the rest of the week,
and devoted Sunday only to the edification of their flock, by
service, and a sermon at their parish church. Their other pastoral
functions were little attended to.
Against this inactivity, the zeal and industry of sectarian
preachers had an open and undisputed field; and by the time of the
revolution, a majority of the inhabitants had become dissenters
from the established church, but were still obliged to pay
contributions to support the pastors of the minority. This
unrighteous compulsion, to maintain teachers of what they deemed
religious errors, was grievously felt during the regal government,
and without a hope of relief.
But the first republican legislature; which met in '76; was crowded
with petitions to abolish this spiritual tyranny. These brought on
the severest contests in which I have ever been engaged.
Our great opponents were Mr. Pendleton and Robert Carter Nicholas;
honest men, but zealous churchmen. The petitions were referred to
the committee of the whole house on the state of the country; and,
after desperate contests in that committee, almost daily from the
llth of October to the 5th of December [1776], we prevailed so far
only, as to repeal the laws which rendered criminal the maintenance
of any religious opinions, the forbearance of repairing to church,
or the exercise of any mode of worship; and further, to exempt
dissenters from contributions to the support of the established
church; and to suspend, only until the next session, levies on the
members of that church for the salaries of their own incumbents.
For although the majority of our citizens were dissenters, as has
been observed, a majority of the legislature were churchmen.
Among these, however, were some reasonable and liberal men, who
enabled us, on some points, to obtain feeble majorities. But our
opponents carried, in the general resolutions of the committee of
November 19, a declaration that religious assemblies ought to be
regulated, and that provision ought to be made for continuing the
succession of the clergy, and superintending their conduct.
And, in the bill now passed, was inserted an express reservation of
the question, Whether a general assessment should not be
established by law, on every one, to the support of the pastor of
his choice; or whether all should be left to voluntary
contributions; and on this question, debated at every session, from
'76 to '79, (some of our dissenting allies, having now secured
their particular object, going over to the advocates of a general
assessment,) we could only obtain a suspension from session to
session until a time when the question against a general assessment
was finally carried, and the establishment of the Anglican church
entirely put down.
In justice to the two honest but zealous opponents who have been
named, I must add, that although, from their natural temperaments,
they were more disposed generally to acquiesce in things as they
are, than to risk innovations, yet whenever the public will had
once decided, none were more faithful or exact in their obedience
to it. .
Jefferson then talked at length about the various sponsors of the
bill and the backroom politics, that lasted more than a year, and
how James Madison's joining the Virginia legislature in 1777, and
the help of George Mason, was what made it possible to actually
pass the bill. At this point in his autobiography, he also talks
about his opposition to the death penalty, and multiple attempts he
put forward from the 1760s to the 1790s to end slavery in Virginia.
Then he gets back to his Bill:
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of
which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in
all the latitude of reason and right.
It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the
preamble, it was finally passed; and 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. .
The restoration of the rights of conscience relieved the people
from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the
establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting
sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people; and
these, by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to
understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with
intelligence their parts in self-government; and all this would be
effected, without the violation of a single natural right of any
one individual citizen.
To these, too, might be added, as a further security, the
introduction of the trial by jury, into the Chancery courts, which
have already ingulfed, and continue to ingulf, so great a
proportion of the jurisdiction over our property.
Today, there is an entire movement devoted to arguing that
Jefferson and his peers never intended there to be "a wall of
separation between church and state." I'll leave it to you to read
the passages from his autobiography above (not reproduced in this
book and hard to find in print outside of his autobiography itself)
and his Bill itself to make up your own mind.
In the meantime, in addition to reading Jefferson's Bill, please
take an additional 20 or 30 minutes to read the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution. Both are written in startlingly
crisp prose, easily understood without a law degree, and largely
unambiguous.
These two documents have particular relevance to our day, as the
Republican Party and a minority of Democrats have frontally
assaulted both with the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act,
and the most recent military appropriations bill, which strikes
down the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (not part of the Constitution,
but certainly contemplated by the Third Amendment and the arguments
against standing armies in time of peace that led to the Second
Amendment).
This small volume, which fits comfortably into a shirt pocket, is
an essential distillation of the vision for this nation held by our
Founders (signers of the Declaration of Independence) and the later
Framers of the Constitution.
Buy several and give as many as you can to young people who have
suffered the purges of the Reagan years of civics from our public
schools (and the ongoing assault on teaching "liberal" American
History in our colleges by folks such as David Horowitz).
THOM HARTMANN'S "INDEPENDENT THINKER" BOOK OF THE MONTH REVIEW
Get your copy of "The Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution of the United States of America [0]" from the
BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace [1].
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored
Award-winning best-selling author, and host of a nationally
syndicated daily progressive talk show and a morning progressive
talk show on KPOJ [2] in Portland, Oregon. www.thomhartmann.com [3]
His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight [4],"
"Unequal Protection [5]," "We The People [6]," "The Edison Gene
[7]", and "What Would Jefferson Do? [8]"
Source URL:
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/articles/hartmann/012
Links:
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[2] http://www.620kpoj.com/
[3] http://www.thomhartmann.com/commondreams.shtml
[4] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400051576/thomhartmann/
ref=nosim/
[5] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1579549551/thomhartmann/
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[6] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1882109384/thomhartmann/
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[7] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892811285/thomhartmann/
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[8] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400052084/thomhartmann/
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