Founding Executive Director

Council for America’s First Freedom

Richmond, Virginia, United States of America

                First, a story.  It begins in America’s 18th century colonial period. While some of the original thirteen colonies recognized religious diversity and insisted on toleration under the rule of law, others perpetuated a concept the settlers had known in Europe: an officially established church.

                The critical period is the mid-1780s. By this time the United States had won its independence. Thomas Jefferson was in Paris as ambassador to France. Jefferson’s views on religious liberty and government’s role in matters of faith were on record. A bill he authored in 1777--the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom–proposed to do something no piece of written legislation had done before: To formally separate church and state. But Jefferson himself could not get his bill through the Virginia legislature. So he left it in the guardianship of his friend James Madison.

                During this period, increasingly bitter debate over renewal of a general public assessment for support of the official church in Virginia turned the attention of the state’s lawmakers to solutions of the kind Jefferson offered in his proposed statute. By the time Madison drew on its text as the answer, the climate was right for a decisive stroke.  On January 16, 1786, Virginia enacted “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom.” (I am pleased, of course, that the efforts of the Council for America’s First Freedom have fostered contemporary congressional and presidential recognition of every January 16 as National Religious Freedom Day.)

                Jefferson’s Virginia statute embodies two principles--related, but quite distinct. One holds that religious belief --or non-belief--is not the business of government, that citizens may neither be compelled to worship nor barred from worshiping however and whenever they wish. The statute states this principle in eloquent language: “. . . [T]he opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.” Here is the premise from which was derived the clause in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution that guarantees the free exercise of religion.

                But for Thomas Jefferson, freedom to believe and to worship was not enough. He had seen too much of the established church not to realize that true religious liberty needed another safeguard. So his Virginia statute contains a second guarantee: “. . . [N]o man shall be compelled . . . to support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever. . . .” Here is the corollary premise from which was derived the First Amendment clause barring any law respecting an establishment of religion. What Jefferson and Madison seem to have had in mind was something more than just protecting Baptists and Presbyterians and Catholics and Jews--and, for that matter, non-believers too--from being forced by government to pay for the support of someone else’s church. For them it was no less vital that those  who worshiped in the dominant faith be free to decide whether to give at all to their own church, and if so, how much.  This was the other side of religious freedom--the side Jefferson, in a classic early sound bite, was to term “the wall of separation between church and state.” And a strong wall it has remained.

                Jefferson’s insights may be self-evident, but they are not self-executing. How do we transform his ideals into reality? In coming to grips with this problem, we must face at least four serious questions.

                First, how can we expect reason to prevail when people contend over articles of religious faith?

                Jefferson sometimes seemed to assume that religious sensibilities were like other ideas and emotions vying for acceptance in the marketplace--as if religion were on the same plane as architecture or biology or mathematics.  He once said that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Well, maybe not his pocket or his leg. But believers may not find it so easy to accept his insouciant open-mindedness. Is a Buddhist to take no injury in the claim that the Buddha was wrong in teaching the cessation of all sin, the pursuit of virtue, and the purifying of the heart? Is a Muslim to feel no offense at the charge that Muhammad was no prophet? Is a Jew to react with calm reason when told that God did not speak from the fire to Moses, or that Hitler did not murder and defile with fire in the holocaust? Is a Christian to be meeky or cheeky when told that Jesus was out of control in the Sermon on the Mount (the poor are wretched, not blessed; and the brazen shall inherit the earth--indeed, they already have!)? Since Jefferson wrote the Virginia statute the world has witnessed two centuries of religious wars. Why should we believe that reason has any chance of success against the tornadic winds of religious passion?

                The second question: How is spirituality possible in a society that embraces competition and free enterprise and winning as its driving ethos? Did Jefferson create a society whose only soul is in the marketplace?

                Third, in a libertarian society--a society that emphasizes individuality, conscience, and autonomy, how is genuine community possible?

                And fourth, how is the ideal of religious tolerance ever to be collectively internalized? Jefferson wrote a law.  Words on paper! How do we get people to genuinely embrace the idea of diversity and tolerance? How do we get them to live it? Can a law do that?

                Jefferson knew history. He could look back on centuries of religious war in Europe. He knew from history and from human nature how easy it is to rouse murderous mass passion when religious demagogues cry that God wills it.  He resolved that religious war should never tear apart his beloved America. The only way to avoid religious war, he reasoned, was to guarantee religious freedom. And the history of the United States is the proof of Jefferson’s wisdom.  The fire of religious war has never scorched the land. Instead, from the beginning, refugees  from religious persecution have come to America for safety.

                Religious bigotry has an inevitable evil consequence on religion itself. Young people growing up in such an   environment--in the atmosphere of forced religious practice, come to recognize its hypocrisy. Monolithic religious systems may employ governmental power in an effort to compel allegiance and obedience to orthodoxy. But  a union of government and religion cannot compel the assent of mind and heart.

                Jefferson was adamantly opposed to the forced imposition of a particular form of religious faith. But this Renaissance man of the 18th and 19th centuries would be surprised that 200-plus years into this experiment in democracy, Americans who speak in the public arena out of a faith tradition may now experience a subtle form of intimidation. Such intimidation is not just against the use of traditional faith language, but against any suggestion that our various religious traditions have something to say about the importance of core value systems shaping how we live together as a people. The answer does not lie in promoting any single faith tradition, but in our willingness to speak frankly of our belief in agreed upon values--principles which reward honesty, honor discipline, advocate truth-telling,  and stand for the kind of responsibility that responds to the needs of others. The American identity is not shaped solely by Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or Protestant religious traditions. The United States is a nation of people who believe that these traditions and a myriad others contribute to the formation of a set of core values with which we all agree. And we agree to live out our common lives together according to these values.

                Americans really do want Americans to practice their faith--to use, in a spirit of conciliation, religious insights in public meetings. The spiritual dimension will illuminate questions that all of society is asking: In our neighborhoods and in our institutions, how do we learn how to respect one another and live in peace and safety? How do we preserve the family? Guard and instruct our children? Protect the weak? Teach restraint to the strong? Make safe our cities? Preserve the environment? How do we allocate our national resources to do the greatest good for the greatest number? To paraphrase Winston Churchill: “One cannot confront evil with appeasement; one must confront evil with a superior force that insures its demise.”

                These urgent social and political questions are also religious issues. A dry secularism, devoid of mystery and passion, cannot breathe life into a nation’s values. Our religious consciousness, with its universal sympathy for the afflicted and its reverence for God’s creation, has within it the power to lift up the fallen and bring harmony amid diversity.

                We are becoming increasingly aware that the loss of biological diversity threatens our existence. The earth was fashioned by the Creator to uniquely satisfy our survival requirements and our culturally derived wants and needs. Diversity is the hallmark of creation. The Creator knew it and we are finding out about it. We must avail ourselves of its wonders. Certainly this applies to our religious beliefs--or their absence. When we seek to impose singularity on diversity, we threaten that Creator-bestowed quality that makes us different from other forms of life. That quality is humaneness. We are soon to be six billion humans on this fragile planet earth. If humaneness departs from our lives, we can only speculate on the consequences. Wrote Jefferson:  “. . . I have sworn eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the minds of man.” That extended to those who would impose their religious beliefs on others--and take their lives if they resisted. Such intolerance Jefferson would not tolerate--and so he helped found a nation based on true tolerance and respect for diversity. Tolerance is still a necessary part of humaneness. Today, if we cannot or choose not to practice tolerance, then we will take the path of human devolution--a path the Creator did not intend for us to follow.

                The diversity that exists never needs to be a source of bigotry, intolerance, and hatred. I believe the Creator had in mind that our spiritual obedience should be a source of loving, caring, nurturing, sharing, and respecting. As we approach the 21st century, it is incumbent upon all of us to make our religion, or our spiritual beliefs, relevant to life. Relevance implies diversity.

                There is now a quickening tempo, a temporal telescoping of forces and events. These strongly suggest--no, make certain--that, individually and collectively, our lives are spinning out of control, propelling us faster and faster toward a future where the magnitude of our global societal ills will vie with the forces of global environmental change for our belated attention. Paramount among these will be the irreconcilable divisiveness of religious intolerance, of bigotry and hatred. Unless they are checked, they will tear away the very fabric of our society--civility and respect.  They will deprive us of our humaneness and cast a shadow of darkness over generations whose grandparents are yet unborn.

                Edmund Burke reminds us that when good people do nothing, evil triumphs. In behalf of religious liberty, let us always be among those who do something.

                Condensed and edited from Ms. Negus’ address to the IRLA’s Fourth World Congress on Religious Liberty, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1997. For thoughtful contributions to her article, the author is indebted to Robert M. O’Neil, Director, The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression; Richard Marius, writer and lecturer; Rodney Smolla, Allen Professor of Law, University of Richmond; and James Lee, The College of William and Mary.

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