Freedom of Religion, by Thomas Jefferson - Abridgment Series
Gregg Zegarelli Esq.
Managing Shareholder at Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC
There are two types of slavery. And, therefore, there two types of freedom: freedom of the body and freedom of the mind.
The United States conquered them both, in the larger sense—by war—with the blood of its men and women.
Those who would enslave, versus those who would be free.
The U.S. Civil War conquered slavery of the body; that is, physical slavery sanctioned by operation of law. We see this effect more clearly, simply because physical things tend to be more apparent to us. We can see a man in shackles and chains, and we can see his wife and child sold at auction for another man's pleasure. We can see the scars of his bodily scourge.
But, the U.S. Revolutionary War conquered slavery of the mind; that is, mental slavery sanctioned by operation of law. We may tend to overlook the clarity of this result, simply because the writhing contortions of a man's mind, by being enslaved to believe in another man's god—or any god—are not quite so apparent.
But, the personal choices any man makes regarding the supernatural, or from personal conscience, is that man's last bastion of true freedom. What we each believe—at least so far in America—is our last property.
Freedom rings in both mind and body. In civil society, mind and body are self. It is for every person to judge which freedom is more important, if one would be more important than the other. Mind or body?
So, on this Independence Day, let us remember the Revolutionary War , and freedom of the mind.
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The back story: The timing of this Thomas Jefferson essay almost immediately follows the Revolutionary War , 1783, and it is prior to the enactment of the U.S. Constitution in 1789.?The complete work, Notes on the State of Virginia , is widely considered to be the most important work printed before 1800.?
Important: A tricky point that you may not recall from your high school history class is that the U.S. Constitution that was enacted in 1789 only governed the federal relationship of the states; that is, the U.S. Constitution only controlled the federal government, not the states.
Until the Civil War, the federal government was relatively weak, each state in the country remained such as a sub-country. Before the Civil War, citizens were loyal first to their respective states; and common practice was to call yourself a citizen of your native state, not the country. (This is why Robert E. Lee refused to fight for the Union in the Civil War: he followed his "country" of Virginia in the Confederate States of America .)?
After the Civil War, it all changed. The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution , and what we Americans commonly understand as "freedom of religion" did not apply to the states until the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution following the Civil War, in 1868.?Therefore, even after passage of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, until post-Civil War and 14th Amendment—for almost 100 years—states remained free to conduct religious persecution, unless their respective legislatures enacted to the contrary.
So, Jefferson's work below appeals for religious freedom to his State of Virginia, in 1783. Thomas Jefferson ("Father of the Declaration of Independence"), James Madison ("Father of the U.S. Constitution") and George Washington ("Father of the United States") were all Virginians; Virginia is a state of particular importance.
Following is an abridged excerpt from Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia , Question 17, which is a part of the larger work.?The full text is available by clicking here.
The first settlers in Virginia were emigrants from England, of the Church of England , just at a point of time when the Church of England was flushed with complete victory over the religious of all other persuasions.
Possessed, as the Church of England became, of the powers of making, administering and executing the laws, they showed equal refusal of tolerance here in Virginia with their Presbyterian brethren.?
The poor Quakers were flying from persecution in England.?They cast their eyes on these new countries as asylums of civil and religious freedom; but they found civil and religious freedom only for the reigning sect.
Virginia legislation made it illegal for parents to refuse to have their children baptized;
Virginia had prohibited the unlawful assembling of Quakers ;
Virginia had made it illegal for common carrier to bring a Quaker into the state;
Virginia had ordered the Quakers already in Virginia and coming here to be imprisoned till they should renounce Virginia with death for their third return;
Virginia had inhibited all persons from allowing Quaker meetings in or near their houses, or entertaining them individually, or disposing of books which supported Quaker beliefs.
If no execution of Quakers took place in Virginia, as was occurring in New England, it was not owing to the moderation of the church, or spirit of the legislature, as may be inferred from the law itself.
The present state of our laws on the subject of religion is this:?
The Virginia convention of May 1776 [declaring independence to authorize Virginia's vote at the "Federal" Continental Congress to follow in July at Philadelphia], in their declaration of rights, declared it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the exercise of religion should be free.??However, when they proceeded to form the actual legislation, instead of taking up every principle declared in the bill of rights, and guarding it by legislative sanction, they passed over that which asserted our religious rights, leaving them as they found them.
At the common law, heresy was punishable by burning at the stake.?Its definition was left to the ecclesiastical judges, before whom the conviction was rendered.?It was standardized by declaring that nothing should be deemed heresy but what had been so determined by authority of the canonical scriptures, or by some other council having for the grounds of their declaration the express and plain words of the scriptures.?Then, our own act of assembly in 1777 gave cognizance to heresy. The execution is by the writ De h?retico comburendo for burning at the stake.
By our own act of assembly 1705, if a person brought up in the christian religion denies the being of a God, or the trinity, or asserts there are more Gods than one, or denies the christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offense by incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military; on the second by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor or administrator, and by three years imprisonment, without bail.
A father’s right to the custody of his own children being founded in law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, the father's right to custody of his children may of course be severed from him and put, by the authority of a court, and the child transferred into more orthodox hands.
This is a summary view of that religious slavery under which a people have been willing to remain who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establishment of their civil freedom.?The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws.?
But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them.?The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit.?We are answerable for them to our God.?
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.?
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.?It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.?
If it be said his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man.?It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them.?
Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.?Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation.
Reason and inquiry are the natural enemies of error, and of error only.?Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, christianity could never have been introduced.?Had not free inquiry been indulged, at the moral revolution of the reformation, the corruptions of christianity could not have been purged away.?
If reason and inquiry be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.?
Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.?Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food.?
Government becomes just as infallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics [by allowing free thought and inquiry].?Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere.?And, Newtonian principles of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in and to make it an article of necessary faith.?
Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them.?It is error alone which needs the support of government.?Truth can stand by itself.
Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors??Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons.?And why subject it to coercion??
To produce uniformity.?
But is uniformity of opinion desirable??No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of molds then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter.
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Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion.?The several sects perform the office of censor of the morals over each other.?Is uniformity attainable?
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 the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit.
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us.?The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.?Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal.
This quality is the germ of all education in him.?From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.?
If a parent could find no motive either in his love of others or his self-love, for restraining anger towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present.?But generally it is not sufficient.?The parent storms, the child looks on at the wrath of the master, learns to do the same, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a growth to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny.
The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by observing such behavior.
For if a slave [in thought or body] can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him.
With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed.?For in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.?This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor.?
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God??That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!
The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.—But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil.
We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind.?I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution.
The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.?
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.?It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.?
Those who would enslave, versus those who would be free, in America. The mind, the body. And, we are to remember and to be wise and vigilant, for enslavement of the mind is not always so obvious as enslavement of the body.
*?Gregg Zegarelli , Esq., earned both his Bachelor of Arts Degree and his Juris Doctorate from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His dual major areas of study were History from the College of Liberal Arts and Accounting from the Business School (qualified to sit for the CPA examination), with dual minors in Philosophy and Political Science. He has enjoyed Adjunct Professorships in the Duquesne University Graduate Leadership Master Degree Program (The Leader as Entrepreneur; Developing Leadership Character Through Adversity) and the University of Pittsburgh Law School (The Anatomy of a Deal). He is admitted to various courts throughout the United States of America.
Gregg Zegarelli , Esq.,?is Managing Shareholder of?Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC .?Gregg is nationally rated as "superb" and has more than 35 years of experience working with entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes, including startups,?INC. 500, and publicly traded companies.?He is author of?One: The Unified Gospel of Jesus ,?and?The Business of Aesop ? article series, and co-author with his father,?Arnold Zegarelli , of?The Essential Aesop: For Business, Managers, Writers and Professional Speakers .?Gregg is a frequent lecturer, speaker and faculty for a variety of educational and other institutions.?
Copyright ? 2017 Gregg Zegarelli. Gregg can be contacted through?LinkedIn .
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Algemeen manager bij Rbjb45rxq7p0ky
7 年What implicates freedom of religion?
Retired CIA TECHNICAL OFFICER ARGO Team Member 3200+
7 年Well the biggest issue is with the Catholics and Jews under the Bonaparte family of United States Secretary of the Navy Charles Joseph Bonaparte and Banker Moses Michael Hays.