On January 1, 1784, a bill was introduced in Virginia that could have changed the course of history. A Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion, as it was called, proposed a general tax assessment to fund Christian ministers and religious instruction. While obviously favoring Christianity, the bill’s proponents noted that it did not promote one sect of Christianity over another, and that it could be passed “without counteracting the liberal principle heretofore adopted and intended to be preserved by abolishing all distinctions of preeminence amongst the different societies or communities of Christians.” Taxpayers could choose which Christian denomination received their assessment, and if no denomination was noted, the funds were placed in a public treasury.
The bill’s supporters must have expected it to pass—and with flying colors—since it was widely supposed that Christianity “hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices, and preserve the peace of society,” the bill read. But there was one obstacle standing in its way: the fervent opposition of the principal author of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights himself—James Madison.
In his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, Madison laid out his case against the bill, and, in doing so, preserved a timeless argument for the eternal separation of church and state.
We would all be well-advised to consider what he said.
Madison’s Case Against Religious Establishment
We can begin with a question: What is the issue, exactly, with the government raising revenue to pay teachers it thinks will improve the moral fortitude of its population? Christianity was no fringe religion, after all; it was widely practiced and considered a force for social good. Many prominent individuals—Patrick Henry among them—supported the Virginia bill, and saw no issue promoting the religion many people believed had a net positive effect on public morality. So what was the problem?
As it turns out, there were several, and Madison believed they struck at the very foundation of liberty itself. To understand why he opposed the bill so fiercely—and to appreciate the enduring relevance of his views on church-state separation—we must turn to his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, one of the most important defenses of religious liberty ever written in America.
The document is well worth reading in its entirety. For our purposes, however, Madison’s case against religious establishment can be distilled into three central arguments: first, that matters of religion belong to the individual conscience and lie beyond the legitimate authority of government; second, that history demonstrates how the union of religion and political power breeds division, persecution, and violence; and third, that religion itself is corrupted when it becomes entangled with the ambitions and biases of those who wield political power.
Let’s explore each objection in turn.
1. Religion belongs to the individual conscience
Madison begins his argument by noting the “fundamental and undeniable truth” that religion “can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”
While some Christians tend to forget they do not practice the world’s sole religion, Madison was well aware that religious liberty always meant religious diversity. If someone’s “conviction and conscience” led them away from Christianity, then the state had no right or authority to force or encourage them to fund its propagation, just as the state would have no right to force Christians to fund the teaching or transmission of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or even competing Christian sects. To fully appreciate the point, imagine the reaction if the bill had been titled A Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Muslim Religion.
And here’s another crucial point: this principle holds even if Madison, personally, thought Christianity should be universally practiced. “Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin,” Madison wrote, “we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.” This closely echoes the thoughts of Madison’s close friend and political ally, Thomas Jefferson:
Religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions.
The government may regulate conduct to prevent harm to others and promote the general welfare, but it has no legitimate authority over individual opinion or belief. On this principle, Jefferson and Madison converged, forming the impetus for our First Amendment protections of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
2. The history of religion in politics is marked by division, conflict, and violence
Those who wish to demolish the wall separating church and state cannot be very familiar with European history, nor with the countless conflicts, wars, persecutions, trials, and general intellectual tyranny the mixing of ecclesiastical and civil authority spawns. Here’s how Madison describes it:
Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution….Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy.
Madison was an avid student of history, widely read in the political history of Ancient Greece and Rome, the rise and fall of republics, European political systems, and, crucially, European religious conflicts and wars. And after years of rigorous study, Madison concluded:
What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.
State-sanctioned religions corrupt governments and infringe on civil rights; governments in turn pervert religions for the purposes of accumulating power and control; and in no historical instance has the mixture of the two ever been good for the people. Madison therefore felt the need to drive a wedge between them indefinitely.
The heart of the problem runs deep into the nature of religious belief itself: opinions in spiritual matters vary widely, and beliefs based on faith, by definition, cannot be fully reconciled via reason, evidence, or argument. The result is that, whereas knowledge in science tends to converge on shared conclusions supported by evidence, religious convictions often diverge, giving rise to thousands of distinct traditions and tens of thousands of denominations within Christianity itself.
That leaves two options for society at large: forced compliance in religion—with the stains of its bloody history—or religious liberty, free of state interference altogether. Madison chose the latter—and we would be wise to follow suit.
3. Human fallibility and greed are powerful corruptors of religion
Even in the absence of nefarious motives, can we really trust something as important and personal as religion to the civil authorities? “The Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy,” Madison wrote. “The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”
In other words, the last person you should want dictating your religion is a politician. At best, they’ll misunderstand it; at worst, they’ll distort its teachings intentionally for political advantage. And in no scenario should the spiritual fate of the many be in the hands of an “uninspired few.” As Jefferson wrote in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:
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.
What Jefferson is saying is that, not only is religion a personal issue and an inalienable right, but that, even if it weren’t, you could never trust civil or ecclesiastical authorities to be infallible spiritual judges for all people at all times—for any religion. That means that even Christians—perhaps especially Christians—ought to be most fearful of living under a Christian government. As Madison wrote:
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? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?
Tyranny is tyranny, under any form and any name. Once you hand the government powers over your conscience, it doesn’t matter what religion it collectively professes to believe in. Sooner or later, it will use that religion against you, or in ways unrecognizable to your understanding of its precepts and values. Far better to keep religion and politics entirely separate, and religion in the hands of the individual and the religious communities to which they belong.
Resisting the Experiments on Our Liberties
Religious intrusion in government (or vice versa), as Madison warned, must not be tolerated, no matter how minor the intrusion appears. Small precedents can quickly snowball into tyranny. “[The Virginia Bill] degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority,” Madison wrote. “Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance.”
This is why we must “take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties,” as Madison so memorably put it. Wherever and whenever religion intrudes in the public sphere—and especially when supported by taxpayer funds—we must remain vigilant and resist such encroachments. Religious beliefs may inform the views of legislators, but the laws they enact should be justified in religiously neutral, secular terms that citizens of many different faiths, and of none, can debate on equal footing. Such a principle is essential to a pluralistic nation built through the convergence of diverse peoples, cultures, and beliefs.
It’s truly puzzling that any of us should continue to deny the unconstitutionality of taxpayer funded or government-endorsed religious instruction or ceremony when Madison himself—the father of the Constitution—was so vehemently against it. As Madison wrote—in the plainest of terms—in the Detached Memoranda.
The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles.
It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Madison was against funding or supporting any form of government-sponsored religious worship because it violated the equal rights of the nonreligious, in addition to the rights of individuals practicing different faiths.
We can see now why Madison so vociferously opposed the Virginia Bill as a “first experiment on our liberties.” Madison thought, like Jefferson, that freedom of conscience—expressed most strongly in the form of religion—was the foundation of all civil rights, and that, if this were infringed, then all derivative rights were at risk of collapsing along with it. That’s why religion is listed first in the First Amendment. And why Madison concluded his argument by forcefully making the point:
Either we must say, that they may controul the freedom of the press, may abolish the Trial by Jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary Assembly or, we must say, that they have no authority to enact into law the Bill under consideration.
Thanks in large part to Madison’s efforts, the Virginia bill did not pass. His (and Jefferson’s) insistence on church-state separation would then be enshrined in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and later the Bill of Rights. But the noble principles contained in these documents are only as good as the paper they’re written on. If we do not understand them or their intent—or, for that matter, if we don’t even read documents in the first place—then they can offer us no protection.
So the question remains the same today as it was in 1785: will we take up the mantle of true Patriotism—regardless of our personal religious differences—and preserve the freedom of conscience Madison considered the foundation of all our liberties, or will we allow government to assume powers over religion that he believed no free people could safely surrender?