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. That measure ended the State-established church in Virginia, protecting religious rights for all denominations.
Jefferson was a strong advocate of those rights as well as of public religious expressions. He openly promoted the use of the Bible in schools, religious meetings in public buildings, and the study of the Bible for all Americans. He also 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.”
The Founding Founders subsequently enshrined the rights of religious conscience at the federal level in the First Amendment of the Constitution, and Jefferson made numerous declarations about the importance of these precious rights:
No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience.
[O]ur rulers can have no authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted.
[I]t is inconsistent with the spirit of our laws and Constitution to force tender consciences.
Other Founders likewise stressed the significance of the rights 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 this year’s Religious Freedom Day, let’s take time to appreciate the rights of religious liberty and conscience that Jefferson and so many other Founders worked so hard to protect for all of us. And let’s pray that our judges and public officials will diligently protect these rights!
