James Madison the 4 th President is known

James Madison the 4 th President is known as the "Father of the Constitution. "

James Madison the 4 th President is known as the "Father of the Constitution. " More than any other he is responsible for the content and form of the First Amendment.

An act for establishing Religious Freedom, passed in the Assembly of Viginnia in the beginning of the Year, 1786

Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance

Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly entitled

Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly entitled "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion, "

Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly entitled "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion, " and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power,

Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly entitled "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion, " and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill,

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. “

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. “ The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man;

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. “ The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.

“The civil government. . . functions with complete success. . . by the total separation of the Church from the State. ”

1786: The Virginia Legislature passes into law the Bill for Religious Freedom, written by both future 3 d President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, and Madison. In this measure, they wrote that a person’s civil rights should not depend in any way on that person’s opinions on religion. They also wrote that everyone should be free to profess and to argue for any view on matters of religion, and that no one’s legal rights should depend in any way on those views, whatever they may be.

1785: James Madison, future 4 th president of the United States, who collaborated on religious liberty issues with Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments in opposition to a proposal in the Virginia Legislature to use government funds for the support of any ministry.

1785: James Madison, future 4 th president of the United States, who collaborated on religious liberty issues with Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments in opposition to a proposal in the Virginia Legislature to use government funds for the support of any ministry. Madison wrote that the religion of each individual must be left to the conviction and conscience of each individual. He also said that such a right is inalienable because each of us makes up our minds about religion on only that evidence which our minds contemplate and thus we cannot follow the dictates of others.

1785: James Madison, future 4 th president of the United States, who collaborated on religious liberty issues with Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments in opposition to a proposal in the Virginia Legislature to use government funds for the support of any ministry. Madison wrote that the religion of each individual must be left to the conviction and conscience of each individual. He also said that such a right is inalienable because each of us makes up our minds about religion on only that evidence which our minds contemplate and thus we cannot follow the dictates of others. 1786: The Virginia Legislature passes into law the Bill for Religious Freedom, written by both future 3 d President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, and Madison. In this measure, they wrote that a person’s civil rights should not depend in any way on that person’s opinions on religion. They also wrote that everyone should be free to profess and to argue for any view on matters of religion, and that no one’s legal rights should depend in any way on those views, whatever they may be.

James Madison - To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion, " and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill,

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. " The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.

This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.

James Madison on Separation of Church and State James Madison (1751 -1836) is popularly known as the "Father of the Constitution. " More than any other framer he is responsible for the content and form of the First Amendment. His understanding of federalism is theoretical basis of the US Constitution.

James Madison on Separation of Church and State James Madison (1751 -1836) is popularly known as the "Father of the Constitution. " More than any other framer he is responsible for the content and form of the First Amendment. His understanding of federalism is theoretical basis of the US Constitution. Madison was 4 th President between 18091817.

James Madison - To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance

Madison's most famous important statement on behalf of religious liberty was the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessment which he wrote to oppose a bill that would have authorized tax support for Christian ministers in the state of Virginia.

"The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. . We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. “ -- James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

James Madison on Separation of Church and State All quotation taken from Robert S. Alley, ed. , James Madision on Religious Liberty, pp. 37 -94. James Madison (1751 -1836) is popularly known as the "Father of the Constitution. " More than any other framer he is responsible for the content and form of the First Amendment. His understanding of federalism is theoretical basis of our Constitution. He served as President of the United States between 1809 -1817. Madison's most famous statement on behalf of religious liberty was his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, which he wrote to oppose a bill that would have authorized tax support for Christian ministers in the state of Virginia.

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. ” - “It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. ” - “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. ” - James Madison

James Madison, the leading opponent of government-supported religion, combined both arguments in his celebrated Memorial and Remonstrance. In the fall of 1785, Madison marshaled sufficient legislative support to administer a decisive defeat to the effort to levy religious taxes. In place of Henry's bill, Madison and his allies passed in January 1786 Thomas Jefferson's famous Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, which brought the debate in Virginia to a close by severing, once and for all, the links between government and religion.

Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Madison's principal written contribution to the contest over Henry's general assessment bill was his Memorial and Remonstrance. Madison's petition has grown in stature over time and is now regarded as one of the most significant American statements on the issue of the relationship of government to religion. Madison grounded his objection to Henry's bill on the civil libertarian argument that it violated the citizen's "unalienable" natural right to freedom of religion and on the practical argument that government's embrace of religion had inevitably harmed it. Thus, he combined and integrated the two principal arguments used by opponents of Henry's bill.

http: //candst. tripod. com/tnppage/qmadison. htm Separation of Church and State Home Page

James Madison on Separation of Church and State All quotation taken from Robert S. Alley, ed. , James Madision on Religious Liberty, pp. 37 -94. James Madison (1751 -1836) is popularly known as the "Father of the Constitution. " More than any other framer he is responsible for the content and form of the First Amendment. His understanding of federalism is theoretical basis of our Constitution. He served as President of the United States between 1809 -1817. Madison's most famous statement on behalf of religious liberty was his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, which he wrote to oppose a bill that would have authorized tax support for Christian ministers in the state of Virginia.

Other sources for Madison's beliefs are his letter to Jasper Adams, where he argues on behalf of letting religion survive on its own merits, and a 1792 article in which he suggests that there is no specific religious sanction for American government. Finally, a good deal of Madision's Detached Memoranda concerns the issue of religious liberty. This material is particularly important in that it gives Madision's views of a number of events that are sometimes disputed by accomodationists (eg. , congressional chaplains, days of prayer, etc. ).

Direct references to separation: 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 (Letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819). 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 (Detached Memoranda, circa 1820). 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 (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822). 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. (Letter Rev. Jasper Adams, Spring 1832). 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 otherwise discharged my

Madison's summary of the First Amendment: Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform (Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15 th, 1789 pages 730 731).

Against establishment of religion The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of wellmeaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity (Letter to F. L. Schaeffer, Dec 3, 1821). Notwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, and the full establishment of it in some parts of our country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Government and Religion neither can be duly supported. Such, indeed, is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded against. And in a Government of opinion like ours, the only effectual guard must be found in the soundness and stability of the general opinion on the subject. Every new and

On Congressional chaplains and proclaimations of days of prayer: Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In the strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation? The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To

Did Madison want the Bill of Rights to apply to the states? No state shall infringe the equal rights of conscience, nor the freedom of speech, or of the press, nor of the right of trial by jury in criminal cases [Proposed amendment to make certain parts of the Bill of Rights to apply to the states]. The Congressional Record of August 17, 1789 made the following comment on Madison's proposal: MR. MADISON Conceived this to be the most valuable amendment on the whole list; if there was any reason to restrain the government of the United States from infringing upon these essential rights, it was equally necessary that they should be secured against the state governments; he thought that if they provided against the one, it was an necessary to provide against the other, and was satisfied that it would be equally grateful to the people (from Alley, James Madison on Religious Liberty, pp. 75 -76). Madision's definition of "establishment": One can get some idea of Madison's defintion of establishment by looking at his veto messages for certain

James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion, " and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill, 1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. " The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men,

Madison's letter to Jasper Adams See Robert Alley, James Madison on Religious Liberty, pp. 8688. Background: Jasper Adams was president of the College of Charleston. He had sent Madison a copy of his pamphlet, The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States, and requested Madison's comments. Adams contested the view "that Christianity had no connection with our civil government. " Rather, he argued, "the people of the United States have retained the Christian religion as the foundation of their civil, legal, and political institutions. " Adams sent the pamphlet to numerous other statesmen, including John Marshall and justice Joseph Story. Marshall replied, "The American population is entirely Christian, and with us, Christianity and religion are identified. " Story went further, writing, "I have read it with uncommon satisfaction. I think its tone and spirit excellent. My own private judgment has long been (and every day's experience more and more confirms me in it) that government can not long exist without an alliance with religion; and that Christianity is indispensable to the true interests and sold foundations of free government. " Madision, of course, disagreed. In his reply, Madison argues that history demonstrates that religion flourishes most freely when it is not supported by the state, and that the state should not impose religion

Madison's "Who are the Best Keepers of the People's Liberties? " (1792) Research by Jim Allison According to historian Robert Morgan, one of the reasons Madison called for a strict separation of church and state was his distrust of appeals to "irrational sources of authority in the American Republic" (James Madison on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, p. 150). In 1792, for example, Madison authored a famous article in the National Gazett in which he contrasted his republican views with those who argued that the role of the people is mearly to submitt to the dictates of its leadership. In the process of arguing that the people themsleves are the best guardians of the people's liberty, he denies that their is any special religious sanction for American Government. Morgan comments on the Article as follows: Composing it [the article] in the form of a dramatic dialogue, Madison ascribed to an imaginary "anti-republican" the belief that the people are "stupid, suspicious, licentious. " They cannot trust themselves and, therefore, must resign themselves to "obedience, " once they have established government. They should leave their liberties to the care of their "wise rulers. " To this call for elite rule a "republican" replies that

Exerpts from 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. They offer glimpses of Madison's opinions on several topics and personalities. What follows is that part of the "Memoranda" devoted to the subject of religious liberty. The entire document was published by Elizabeth Fleet in the William and Mary Quarterly of October 1946. The danger of silent accumulations & encroachments by Ecclesiastical Bodies have not sufficiently engaged attention in the U. S. They have the noble merit of first unshackling the conscience from persecuting laws, and of establishing among religious Seas a legal equality. If some of the States have not embraced this just and this truly Xn principle in its proper latitude, all of them present examples by which the most enlightened States of the old world may be instructed; and there is one State at least, Virginia, where religious liberty is placed on its true foundation and is defined in its full latitude. The general principle is contained in her declaration of rights, prefixed to her Constitution: but it is unfolded and defined, in its precise extent, in the act of the Legislature, usually named the Religious Bill, which passed into a law in the year 1786. Here the separation between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of Man excepted from