The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

Summary

An Act for establishing religious Freedom is a law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, passed by the General Assembly on 16 January 1786. Thomas Jefferson drafted it in 1777 as part of a committee's general revision of Virginia's laws after independence, and it was introduced in 1779, when it failed to pass. The Church of England had been the established church of the colony, supported by taxes, and dissenters such as Baptists and Presbyterians had faced fines and imprisonment. In 1784 a bill supported by Patrick Henry proposed a general assessment, a tax to support teachers of the Christian religion with each taxpayer naming the church to receive his share. James Madison opposed it, and his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785), together with many petitions from dissenting congregations, helped defeat it. Madison then brought Jefferson's bill forward and guided it through the Assembly while Jefferson was serving as minister to France. The act has three parts. The first is a single long preamble, a chain of clauses beginning with Whereas. It states that Almighty God created the mind free and that attempts to influence it by punishments or civil disabilities produce only insincere and mean habits and depart from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who, though Lord of body and mind, chose not to spread it by coercion. It charges legislators and rulers, civil and ecclesiastical, with setting up their own fallible opinions as infallible; calls it sinful and tyrannical to compel a man to pay for opinions he disbelieves; holds that even forcing him to support a teacher of his own persuasion deprives him of the liberty of choosing his pastor; and declares that civil rights do not depend on religious opinions any more than on opinions in physics or geometry. Religious tests for office corrupt the religion they mean to encourage. The magistrate may act when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order, but not before. Truth, left to herself, is the sufficient antagonist of error and needs only free argument and debate. The second part, the enacting clause, provides that no one shall be compelled to attend or support any worship or ministry, nor suffer in body or goods for his religious opinions, and that all shall be free to profess and argue their opinions without any effect on their civil capacities. The third part admits that one Assembly cannot bind later ones, yet declares that the rights asserted are natural rights of mankind and that any repeal would infringe them. The enrolled act is signed by Archibald Cary, Speaker of the Senate, and Benjamin Harrison, Speaker of the House of Delegates. The Assembly shortened Jefferson's preamble before passage, and the library text is the enrolled act as transcribed by the Library of Virginia.

Top Lessons

• Faith cannot be forced

  The preamble argues from the nature of the mind and from the example of the author of Christianity, who chose not to spread his religion by coercion. Punishments and penalties, it says, produce not belief but outward pretence and meanness of spirit.

• Paying for another's teaching

  The act calls it sinful and tyrannical to make a man pay for the spread of opinions he disbelieves, and holds that even supporting his own church by tax takes away his freedom to choose the pastor he finds most persuasive. This was the issue of the general assessment debate of 1784-1785.

• Opinions and acts

  The statute separates opinions, which government may not restrain, from overt acts against peace and good order, which it may. It warns that a magistrate who judges opinions by their supposed tendency will simply make his own opinions the rule.

• Truth and free argument

  The preamble ends with the conviction that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, needing only free argument and debate. The enacting clause accordingly protects the freedom to profess opinions and to maintain them by argument.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The statute concerns religious liberty and the limits of civil government and has no medical content.