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EARLY HISTORY

Early , and dissenting churches would therefore have a significant advantage.

Given the limited variety of religions, nearly all Christian, the diversity of opinion on Christian theological matters was wide. Consequently, the Constitutional Convention believed a Federal sanctioned church would serve to disrupt rather than bind the newly formed union together. George Washington wrote in 1790 to the country's first Jewish congregation, the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island to state:


''"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."


There were also dissidents to the support of any established church even at the state level. In 1773, 's influential Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom was enacted in 1786, five years before the Bill Of Rights .

Most Anglican ministers, and many Anglicans, were British Loyalists . The Anglican establishment, where it had existed, largely ceased to function during the American Revolution , though the new States did not formally abolish and replace it until some years after the Revolution.


Jefferson, Madison, and the "wall of separation"

The phrase " {Link without Title} hedge or ''wall of separation'' between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world" was first used by Baptist theologian Roger Williams , the founder of the colony of Rhode Island ."Mr. Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered," The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, Volume 1, page 108 (1644).Feldman, Noah (2005). ''Divided by God''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pg. 24 ("Williams's metaphor was rediscovered by Isaac Backus, a New England Baptist of Jefferson's generation, who believed, like Williams, that an established church -- which he considered to exist in the Massachusetts of his day -- would never protect religious dissenters like himself and must be opposed in order to keep religion pure.") It was later used by Thomas Jefferson as a description of the First Amendment and its restriction on the legislative branch of the federal government, in an 1802 letter
''To Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge and Others, a Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, in the State of Connecticut.'' January 1, 1802. Full text available online .
to the Danbury Baptists (a religious minority concerned about the dominant position of the Congregationalist Church in Connecticut ), assuring that their rights as a religious minority would be protected from federal interference. As he stated:


''Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a '''wall of separation''' between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.''


Jefferson's letter was in reply to a letter''Danbury Baptist Association's letter to Thomas Jefferson'', October 7, 1801. Full text available online .
that he had received from the Danbury Baptist Association dated 1801-10-07 . In an 1808 letter to Virginia Baptists, Jefferson would use the same theme:


''"We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."''

Jefferson and had included provisions binding the States, as well as the Federal Government, from an establishment of religion, but the House did not pass them.

Jefferson's opponents said his position was the destruction and the governmental rejection of Christianity, but this was a caricature.See Morison and Commager, vol I In setting up the University of Virginia, Jefferson encouraged all the separate sects to have preachers of their own, though there was a constitutional ban on the State supporting a Professorship of Divinity, arising from his own Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom .( Jefferson's letter to Thomas Cooper, November 2, 1822 This arrangement was "fully compatible with Jefferson's views on the separation of church and state". Dumas Malone, ''Jefferson and his Times'', 6, 393

Jefferson's letter entered American jurisprudence in the 1878 Mormon polygamy case Reynolds V. U.S. , in which the court cited Jefferson and Madison, seeking a legal definition for the word "religion." Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Johnson Field cited Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists to state that "Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order." Reynolds v. U.S. , 98 U.S. 145 (1878)
Considering this, the court ruled that outlawing polygamy was constitutional.


Patrick Henry, Massachusetts, and Connecticut

Jefferson and Madison's approach was not the only one taken in the eighteenth century. Jefferson's Statute Of Religious Freedom was drafted in opposition to a bill, chiefly supported by Patrick Henry , which would permit any Virginian to belong to any denomination, but which would require him to belong to some denomination and pay taxes to support it. Similarly, the Constitution Of Massachusetts originally provided that "no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience... provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship," (Article II) but also that:

the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.


And the people of this commonwealth have also a right to, and do, invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers aforesaid, at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously and conveniently attend. (Article III)


Since, in practice, this meant that the decision of who was taxable for a particular religion rested in the hands of the Selectmen , usually Congregationalists, this system was open to abuse. It was abolished in 1833. The intervening period is sometimes referred to as an "establishment of religion" in Massachusetts.

The Duke Of York had required that every community in his new lands of New York and New Jersey support ''some'' church, but this was more often Dutch Reformed , Quaker or Presbyterian , than Anglican . Some chose to support more than one churches. He also ordained that the tax-payers were free, having paid his local tax, to choose their own church. The terms for the surrender of New Amsterdam had provided that the Dutch would have liberty of conscience, and the Duke, as an openly divine-right Catholic, was no friend of Anglicanism. The first Anglican minister in New Jersey arrived in 1698, though Anglicanism was more popular in New York.''The story of New Jersey''; ed., William Starr Myers (1945) Vol. II, chapter 4

Connecticut had a real establishment of religion. Its citizens
did not adopt a constitution at the Revolution, but rather amended their Charter to remove all references to the British Government. As a result, the Congregational Church continued to be established, and Yale College , a Congregational institution, received grants from the State until Connecticut adopted a constitution in 1818 partly because of this issue.


Test Acts

The absence of an establishment of religion did not necessarily imply that all men were free to hold office. Most colonies had a Test Act , and several states retained them for a short time. This stood in contrast to the Federal Constitution, which explicitly prohibits the employment of any religious test for Federal office, and which through the Fourteenth Amendment later extended this prohibition to the States.

For example, the New Jersey Constitution Of 1776 provides liberty of conscience in much the same language as Massachusetts (similarly forbidding payment of "taxes, tithes or other payments" contrary to conscience). It then provides:

That there shall be ''no establishment'' of any one religious sect in this Province, in preference to another; and that ''no Protestant inhabitant'' of this Colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles; but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of ''any Protestant sect'', who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a member of either branch of the Legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity, enjoyed by others their fellow subjects. (Article XIX, italics added)

This would permit a Test Act , but did not require one.

The original charter of the Province Of East Jersey had restricted membership in the Assembly to Christians; the Duke of York was fervently Catholic, and the proprietors of Perth Amboy, New Jersey were Scottish Catholic peers. The Province Of West Jersey had declared, in 1681, that there should be no religious test for office. An oath had also been imposed on the militia during the French And Indian War requiring them to abjure the pretensions of the Pope, which may or may not have been applied during the Revolution. That law was replaced by 1799.

The Pennsylvania Constitution Of 1776 provided:

:And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz:

::I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration.

:And no further or other religious test shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this State.

Again, it provided in general that all tax-paying freemen and their sons shall be able to ''vote'', and that no " man, ''who acknowledges the being of a God'', be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship."


BILL OF RIGHTS


The first amendment to the US Constitution states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" The two parts, known as the "establishment clause" and the "free exercise clause" respectively, form the textual basis for the Supreme Court's interpretations of the "separation of church and state" doctrine.

The First Congress' deliberations show that its understanding of the separation of church and state differed sharply from that of their contemporaries in Europe. As 19th-century Union Theological Seminary historian Philip Schaff observed:
“The American separation of church and state rests upon respect for the church; the anticlerical separation, on indifference and hatred of the church, and of religion itself…. The constitution did not create a nation, nor its religion and institutions. It found them already existing, and was framed for the purpose of protecting them under a republican form of government, in a rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.”