If you want to know what life without religious liberty looks like, look no further than Virginia in the seventeenth century from the perspective of a Quaker. Quakers, themselves fleeing religious persecution in England for the “asylums of civil and religious freedom” in America, found liberty “only for the reigning sect,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia. To be a Quaker, for all intents and purposes, was to be an atheist in a land ruled by Presbyterians.
And just like atheists, Quakers in the late seventeenth century faced prosecution for the crimes of rejecting state-sanctioned beliefs. Several acts of the Virginia assembly of 1659, 1662, and 1693 made it a criminal offense—in some cases punishable by imprisonment or death—for a Quaker to refuse baptism for their children or to simply peaceably assemble. If Virginia was founded as a Christian colony, it certainly wasn’t the Christianity practiced by the Quakers.
This environment of religious intolerance was a formative experience for Thomas Jefferson, who, in Query 17 of Notes on the State of Virginia, gave us five invaluable lessons on religious liberty (and one important warning) that we ought to keep in mind as the United States prepares for its quarter millennium celebration.
Let’s begin with the idea that religious liberty is desirable for all citizens.
1. Religious Liberty Protects Everyone
If by some happy coincidence your government supports your chosen religion, that does not mean it supports your particular way of practicing it, nor does it guarantee that this arrangement will survive the inevitable changes in political power. Religious liberty, then, does not only, or even primarily, protect the nonreligious from the encroachments of the faithful; in many cases, religious liberty protects the religious from each other. As James Madison wrote in the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments:
Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?
Jefferson saw this first-hand in the persecution of the Quakers, a potent reminder of the evils of religious slavery. But it was an evil that Virginia, with Jefferson’s assistance, would help to eradicate (though it would not, regrettably, eradicate the evils of human bondage).
The Virginia convention of May 1776 “declared it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the exercise of religion should be free.” And in October of the same year, the Virginia general assembly “repealed all acts of parliament which had rendered criminal the maintaining any opinions in matters of religion… and suspended the laws giving salaries to the clergy.” The “poor quakers,” as Jefferson called them, were now free to practice Christianity as they saw fit.
Virginia, however, was not at the vanguard of this liberal legislation. It was simply following the lead of Pennsylvania and New York, both having rejected religious establishment nearly from the start—and reaping its benefits. “The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it,” Jefferson notes. “It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely.”
Which brings us to our second lesson: government neutrality in matters of religion.
2. Governments Should Remain Religiously Neutral
Reflecting on the enviable situation in Pennsylvania and New York—and noting that “their harmony is unparalleled” from their “unbounded tolerance”—Jefferson wrote that “the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them.” Government authority, under a Jeffersonian view, is uncompromisingly restricted: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others,” Jefferson wrote. “But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
If you were to summarize Jefferson’s views on religion and politics in one sentence, it might go like this: Matters of opinion can never be surrendered to the government. Every freedom we’ve come to cherish—speech, press, assembly, petition—relies upon the right to think freely and hold opinions according to the dictates of one’s conscience. But once that right is lost, all other rights and freedoms come crashing down with it.
As a citizen of the US, Jefferson would remind you to always stand firm in your right to believe in one god, no gods, or twenty gods—and to grant the equivalent rights to your fellow citizens. And although you may seek to persuade them otherwise, it must always be through reason and peaceful persuasion, never through coercion or compulsion.
3. Error Alone Needs the Support of Government; Truth Can Stand by Itself
“Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error,” Jefferson proclaimed. When religious beliefs are allowed to circulate within the marketplace of ideas, they tend towards moderation and away from state-sponsored extremism. History repeatedly demonstrates the danger of fusing religious authority with political power, whether in seventeenth-century Virginia, the religious wars of Europe, or modern theocratic states.
Reason has an inherent, protective property. “If a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals,” Jefferson wrote, “good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it.” Jefferson then gives us a perennial truth: “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
Christians everywhere ought to agree. As Jefferson noted, “had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity [itself] could never have been introduced.” And had civil and ecclesiastical repression been more effective historically, the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution may have never materialized either.
The great pioneers of human progress—Galileo chief among them—were forced to challenge the restrictions on free inquiry imposed by church and state, sometimes at the risk of their lives. Had they chosen instead the easier path of submission to authority, we might still be living in the poverty, superstition, and ignorance of the Age of Faith.
4. Conformity of Opinion is Neither Desirable Nor Attainable
Here’s another reason to keep the government out of religion: conformity of opinion leads to stagnation and boredom. Just as we prize variety in “face and stature,” as Jefferson put it, variety in opinion prevents unbearable monotony and listlessness. How tedious would life be if we never disagreed about anything, religious or otherwise? History would cease, creativity would languish. And we would lose the policing effects of reasoned argument itself. As Jefferson wrote, “The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other,” acting as mutual watchdogs to prevent each sect’s tendencies toward extremism and fundamentalism.
But it’s not simply that conformity is undesirable—it’s also manifestly unattainable. As Jefferson memorably wrote:
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
It is often said that when we deny others the freedom to change their minds, we ultimately deny that freedom to ourselves. “Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments,” Jefferson wrote. “To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?”
The right of others to speak their minds is also your right to listen—to encounter new ideas and information that may either correct your own errors or strengthen your existing convictions. No one is infallible, least of all politicians, whom Jefferson collectively described as “fallible and uninspired men.” It is therefore far better to leave the discovery and development of religious, scientific, and moral truth in the hands of a free people than to entrust it to the dictates of government.
In no other sphere save business does the possibility of corruption loom so large as in government (the worst-case scenario is when the two are mixed), which brings us to Jefferson’s most urgent, prophetic warning.
5. Corrupt Rulers Distract Us While Stripping Away Our Rights
Jefferson was proud of the religious freedom protected by his home state, and of the embrace of liberty by its citizens. The “spirit of the times,” he noted, secured all from the encroachment of tyrannical laws. “I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity,” Jefferson wrote. “But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance?”
Jefferson doubted that it was, and gave us this eerily prescient warning:
The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims… [The people] will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore…will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.
“When fascism comes to America,” said Sinclaire Lewis, “it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Yet Jefferson made the same point at the very founding of the country. If freedom of conscience is a free nation’s greatest right, it is also the primary target for aspiring tyrants. Yet the people, distracted “in the sole faculty of making money,” won’t so much as notice that their rights are being attacked from all angles.
In an age of political chaos, division, and confusion, we should ask whether we have forgotten ourselves—and the rights secured by our Constitution. We the people—and not the ramblings of demogogues—are the ultimate guardians of our government, our laws, and our liberties. These institutions exist to protect our rights, but only so long as we refuse to surrender them.
As we approach the United States Semiquincentennial, we might ask ourselves if we’re living up to Jefferson’s ideals of liberty, particularly religious liberty. Or have we, as Jefferson feared, become so consumed by wealth, status, and distraction that we neglect the very rights that sustain a free people? Have we allowed power to become concentrated in ways the founders regarded as profoundly dangerous, while forgetting the higher principles that once united us?
One thing seems certain: as politicians seek to rededicate the nation to God and post the Ten Commandments across our public schools—while actively dismantling all institutions that act as checks on executive power—Jefferson and Madison are both rolling violently in their graves.
References & Further Reading
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia: Query 17
- James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments
- To learn more about Jefferson’s and Madison’s views on religion and church-state separation, read these articles: