America's True History of Religious Tolerance

[L.Wood]

America's True History of Religious Tolerance
Outstanding article at Smithsonian.Com,
October 2010

It's too lengthy to significantly quote but they do draw from Jacoby's Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

However, here is one point missed by all current religionists:

"Madison also made a point that any believer of any religion should understand: that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. “Who does not see,” he wrote, “that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?”
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[Dardedar]

Sometimes the rightwing religious like to ask, "where does it say separation of church and state in the constitution?" (pretending they don't understand the first amendment and are unaware of Jefferson's explanation to the Danbury Baptists). We know the founders had in mind separation of church and state because they spoke of it plainly. Here are five important (and rather rare) references from James Madison:



***
JUNE 3, 1811
"To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have other wise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself."
Source:
Letter to Baptist Churches in North Carolina, June 3, 1811. Letters And Other Writings of James Madison Fourth President Of The United States In Four Volumes Published By the Order Of Congress, Vol..II, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, (1865), pp 511-512.

***

MARCH 2, 1819
"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State."
Source:
Letter to Robert Walsh from James Madison. March 2, 1819 Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, in Four Volumes, Published by Order of Congress. Vol. III, J. B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, (1865), pp 121-126. James Madison on Religious Liberty, Robert S.Alley, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y. (1985) pp 82-83)

***

1817-1833
"Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and Gov't in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents' already furnished in their short history. . . ."
Source:
Madison's Detached Memoranda. This document was discovered in 1946 among the papers of William Cabell Rives, a biographer of Madison. Scholars date these observations in Madison's hand sometime between 1817 and 1832. The entire document was published by Elizabeth Fleet in the William and Mary Quarterly of October 1946.


***

JULY 10, 1822
"Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together . . ."
Source:
Letter to Edward Livingston from James Madison, July 10, 1822. Letters and Other writings of James Madison, in Four Volumes, Published by Order of Congress. VOL. III, J. B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, (1865), pp 273-276. James Madison on Religious Liberty, Robert S.Alley, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y. (1985) pp 82-83.

***

SEPTEMBER 1833
". . .I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others". . . .
Source:
Letter to Rev. Jasper Adams from James Madison, September, 1833. Writings of James Madison, edited by Gaillard Hunt, microform Z1236.L53, pp 484-488.

*madison

[Dardedar]

Have been having a little round and round with a fellow on Huff Po who seems to think he has a slam dunk case against Madison on the church state separation issue because Madison voted for a congressional chaplain (which is truth, kinda). He gave a source which he thought supported him, but he failed to read it. It's over 200 pages and is in fact entirely devoted to refuting his claim (that Madison's one vote means this).

***
"Perhaps the most important reason for Madison’s vote in favor of the
omnibus bill of 1789, however, was the fact that it was omnibus. Madison
was trying to get the new government up and running; he could not afford
to delay or possibly derail an already much-delayed compensation plan for
the new national legislature in order to contest one line item. A functioning
Congress would require payment of member and staff salaries as soon as
possible. Madison voted for the 1789 compensation bill, despite his objections
to the paid chaplains (which may have been well known or widely
suspected after his publication of the Memorial and Remonstrance in 1785),
because a vote on the bill did not represent a vote on chaplains as much as a
vote on the new national government. He was in favor of almost anything
that would move the process forward at that point, after so much delay." pg. 205

"On the question of the legislative chaplaincy, the weight of the historical
evidence suggests that the principal Framer of the First Amendment,
James Madison, squarely and consistently opposed the practice throughout
his lifetime...

It is equally
clear that he explicitly claimed the legislative chaplaincy was an unconstitutional
and unwise violation of natural rights, and that he had never supported
it. In essence, Madison begged his future biographers to take
account of the entire historical record, including the particular contexts in
which he acted." --pg 220

http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawrevi ... 1Olree.pdf