National Religious Freedom Day commemorates the Virginia General Assembly’s adoption of Thomas Jefferson’s landmark Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom on Jan. 16, 1786. This vital document became the basis for the separation of church and state, and led to freedom
National Religious Freedom Day commemorates the Virginia General Assembly’s adoption of Thomas Jefferson’s landmark Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom on Jan. 16, 1786. This vital document became the basis for the separation of church and state, and led to freedom of religion for all Americans as protected in the religion clause in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
Religious Freedom Day is officially proclaimed on Jan. 16 each year by an annual statement by the president of the United States. This day is commemorated by the First Freedom Center in Richmond, Va., by an annual First Freedom Award banquet.
The separation of church and state is a legal and political principle derived from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” The modern concept is often credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke, but the phrase “separation of church and state” is generally traced to an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, where Jefferson spoke of the combined effect of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. It has since been quoted in several opinions handed down by the United States Supreme Court, though the court has not always fully embraced the principle.
The phrase “a 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, in his 1644 book The Bloody Tenent of Persecution. The phrase 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 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.
The first amendment 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 modern legal concept of religious freedom as the union of freedom of belief and freedom of worship with the absence of any state-sponsored religion, originated in the United States of America.
Happy reading!
Anne Hutchison:
Religious Leader
By Beth Clark
YA 974.402 Cl
Freedom of Religion
Edited by Gary Zacharias
YA 342.0852
Founding Faith: Providence, Politics and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America
By Steven Waldman
323.44209 Wa.
God on Trial:
Dispatches from
America’s Religious Battlefields
By Peter Irons
342.0842 Ir
The First
Amendment Book
By Robert J. Wagman
342.085 Wa
American Gospel:
God, The Founding
Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
By Jon Meacham
322.10973 Me
• Carolyn Larson, head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library, brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library. Book annotations are culled from online publishers’ descriptions and published reviews.
