Dear Friend,
Sunday is National Religious Freedom Day. There's a presidential statement as there has been annually since 1993, but officially it’s not really different from "National Cheeseburger Day" (September 18), just with more history and lately more controversy.
January 16th was the day in 1786 that the Virginia General Assembly passed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson, championed by James Madison and inspiration for the First Amendment. Jefferson introduced the Statute in the Assembly in 1777 and 1779 but in large part due to the strength of the Anglican Church it did not pass. In 1785, while Jefferson was serving as ambassador to France, a controversial bill that would have levied a tax on Virginians to support churches and church schools came close to passing but ultimately did not have the votes.
The next year, Madison reintroduced Jefferson’s bill to preclude any similar tax and make it official that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, … nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion…” Jefferson’s bill did not mince words: “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” “Religion tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it.”
An amendment was offered to insert the name Jesus Christ into the bill and was rejected. Jefferson later wrote that “the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo [Hindu], and Infidel of every denomination.” Thomas Jefferson did not believe that religious freedom applied only to Christians.
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