Right of Religious Conscience

Religious Freedom Day is celebrated in America each year on January 16, the date of the 1786 passage of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.

Thomas Jefferson was one of America's strongest voices in support of public religious expressions and religious freedom, but today his image has been transformed by the media and ill-informed or ill-intentioned academics into someone who was hostile to public religious expressions. But the truth is just the opposite.

Jefferson's documented record is that he openly promoted the use of the Bible in schools, religious meetings in public buildings, and the study of the Bible for all Americans. As he told a noted political leader, "I have always said, and always will say, that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands."

(For an accurate view of Jefferson's beliefs on faith and so many other areas, obtain the best-selling book The Jefferson Lies.)

He believed that one of the important aspects of religious freedom is to protect the right of religious conscience from government interference. Yet today, too many government officials and bureaucracies routinely attack this right, especially when it conflicts with their pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, pro-secular views about issues ranging from wedding bakers and florists to nurses who refuse to participate in abortions. But Jefferson pointedly declared, "[I]t is inconsistent with the spirit of our laws and Constitution to force tender consciences."

Many other Founding Fathers also acknowledged the importance of the right of conscience:

[T]he consciences of men are not the objects of human legislation. . . . For what business, in the name of common sense, has the magistrate. . . . with our religion?
William Livingston (Signer of the Constitution)

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . . Conscience is the most sacred of all property.
James Madison (Signer of the Constitution, 4th President of the United States)

On Religious Freedom Day this year, let's remember that the foundation of all of our religious liberties is the right of religious conscience; a right long protected in America's governing documents.