Thomas Jefferson Letter to Danbury Baptists |
The week of Passover and Easter is
a good time to reflect on what a gift our founders gave us in America when it
comes to freedom of religion.
Before America, people in a
nation had to believe the same religion as the ruling authorities or risk being
ostracized. Or worse.
Socrates of ancient Athens was
sentenced for misleading the youth of Athens. He was offered exile or suicide
by drinking hemlock poison.
His crime? He believed in a
single God which threatened the polytheistic belief in the Olympian Gods by the
Athenians.
He chose the hemlock. Leaving the
city he loved was worse than death to Socrates.
Martin Luther risked being burned
at the stake when he famously hung his “95 Theses” on the door of the
Wittenberg Castle Church on October 31, 1517.
He questioned the authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church and took
dead aim at the practice of indulgences whereby people could essentially
“purchase” the salvation of loved ones into heaven.
He was brought to trial before
the Diet of Worms (pronounced “Varmes”) where he said these famous words in his
final defense: “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against
conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help
me God. Amen.”
Somehow he avoided the burning
stake and the Reformation began.
In England, Henry VIII famously
and incongruously took over control of the Catholic Church because they wouldn’t
grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. He
ordered her head chopped off 3 years later.
The King of England was thereafter
the Supreme Authority of the Anglican Church in addition to being monarch.
Talk about the need for a true
“separation of church and state”. Can anyone imagine President Barack Obama or
Donald Trump also being the “Supreme Authority of All Things Religious in
America”?
When English people migrated to
colonial Virginia to escape such abuse of power, they reverted to the norm and
set up the Anglican Church of Virginia which received support from the
Commonwealth of Virginia. Taxpayer money was used to support the Anglican
Church of Virginia for much of their colonial era.
Virginia was so Anglican that a
Baptist or Methodist could not hold public office. Only Anglicans could file to
run for election.
Ever heard of the word
“antidisestablishmentarianism”, the longest word in the English language? It
came from the debate over whether or not to “dis-establish” the Anglican Church
from the government of Virginia.
On the tombstone of Thomas
Jefferson is a list of the 3 things for which he wished to be remembered:
Author of the Declaration of Independence, Founder of the University of
Virginia and Author of the Virginia Statutes of Religious Freedom of 1786.
Those statutes led to the
inclusion of freedom of religion in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The Virginia statutes and the
First Amendment guarantee your freedom to worship any religious deity you choose.
It also guarantees your freedom not to worship anything if you so desire.
Nothing in the First Amendment
guarantees the “separation of church and state”. Those words came from a letter
President Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist congregation in
Connecticut in 1801 who worried that President Jefferson might institute a national
government-sponsored religion.
The First Amendment and Mr. Jefferson guaranteed
that the Danbury Baptists had nothing to worry about because it was not going
to happen again.
As you celebrate Passover or Easter
this week, or Ramadan in May, or nothing every day of the year, give the
Founders of this country full credit for freeing us from elected officials with
the coercive
power of government at their disposal telling you what to believe
and when to believe it.
Freedom of worship is one of the
greatest freedoms mankind has ever had. If we can keep it, that is.
(first published in North State Journal 4/17/19)
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