Religious freedom and the separation of church and state were not new ideas in colonial America. Rhode Island founder Roger Williams asserted that non-believers or believers in other faiths do not impact “true believers,” one of the first calls in North America for freedom of conscience and religion. He analogized that “a false religion out of the church will not hurt the church, no more than weeds in the wilderness hurt the enclosed garden.”[i]
Additionally, he advocated a “wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world…”[ii] Despite William’s early advocacy, the other twelve colonies did not follow Rhode Island’s lead in not mixing the worlds of religion and civil government. At the beginning of America’s Revolutionary Era, “there was not a singular understanding of the proper relationship between the government and religion, but rather multiple understandings.”[iii]
Further complicating the situation, the colonial religious environment was changing fast, bringing on increasing needs to confront religious diversity and re-examine the role of religion in governmental affairs.
[i] Roger Williams, “A Reply to the Aforesaid Answer of Mr. Cotton, in a Conference between Truth and Peace,” in The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed, ed. Edward Bean Underhill (London: Printed by J. Haddon for The Hanserd Knollys Society, 1848), 167.
[ii] Roger Williams, “Mr. Cotton’s Letter, Lately Printed, Examined and Answered,” in The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed, ed. Edward Bean Underhill (London: Printed by J. Haddon for The Hanserd Knollys Society, 1848), 435.
[iii] Nichols, Joel A., “Religious Liberty in the Thirteenth Colony: Church-State Relations in Colonial and Early National Georgia,” New York University Law Review 80, no. 6 (December 2005): 1693.
Primary Sources
The Library of Congress provides an excellent on-line exhibit defining the religious implications of the American Revolution.
Backus, I. Church History of New England from 1620 to 1804: Containing a View of the Principles and Practice, Declensions and Revivals, Oppression and Liberty of the Churches, and a Chronological Table. American Baptist Publication and S.S. Society, 1844. https://books.google.com/books?id=3Mk4AQAAMAAJ.
Committee of Grievances. “The Baptist Association.” Essex Journal, January 25, 1775.
Dreisbach, Daniel L., and Mark David Hall, eds. The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding. Liberty Fund, 2009.
Leland, J., and L.F. Greene. The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland: Including Some Events in His Life. G.W. Wood, 1845. https://books.google.com/books?id=bMAiAAAAMAAJ.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by I. Shapiro. Rethinking the Western Tradition. Yale University Press, 2003. https://books.google.com/books?id=Y9WGs9wwn4EC.
Patapan, Haig, and Jeffrey Sikkenga. “John Locke’s ‘Unease’: The Theoretical Foundation of the Modern Separation of Church and State.” Political Theory 52, no. 5 (October 1, 2024): 808–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231223567.
Providence Gazette. “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom.” May 13, 1780.
Williams, Roger. “A Reply to the Aforesaid Answer of Mr. Cotton, in a Conference between Truth and Peace.” In The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed, edited by Edward Bean Underhill. London: Printed by J. Haddon for The Hanserd Knollys Society, 1848.
———. “Mr. Cotton’s Letter, Lately Printed, Examined and Answered.” In The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed, edited by Edward Bean Underhill. London: Printed by J. Haddon for The Hanserd Knollys Society, 1848.
Secondary Sources
Arnn, Larry P. The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012.
Aubrecht, Michael. Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Faith & Liberty in Fredericksburg. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2024.
While there are numerous scholarly assessments of Thomas Jefferson’s religious beliefs, few books have been devoted to his Virginia “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,” and none describe the drafting process and setting where he composed the ground-breaking religious freedom statute. A historian, technical writer, and media producer, Michael Aubrecht fills this gap with a focused, new monograph. The author is a long-time Fredericksburg resident passionate about writing books describing the city’s religiosity and eighteenth and nineteenth-century history.
