By David K. Trimble

America’s Semiquincentennial is a fitting occasion for me, as President of the Religious Freedom Institute, to draw attention to the centrality of religious freedom in the founding of our country. Please follow with me as I share a few key thoughts from my own personal reflections on this historic July 4th.

Thomas Jefferson 

On this 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the right place to begin is with its primary author, Thomas Jefferson. He led the formulation of one of the most important ideas ever expressed by a civil authority:  

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In celebration of the 250th anniversary, biographer Walter Isaacson wrote his short book entitled The Greatest Sentence Ever Written in which he spends eighty pages analyzing and extolling the profound truths expressed in this single sentence. As part of my “holiday reading” last December, Isaacson reminded me to fix my attention on the importance of this single sentence for understanding America’s founding and America’s future. The key point is that the source of human dignity and human rights, given equally to all, is the Creator of all things. And, by implication, the purposes and limits of a rightly ordered government are shaped by “these truths,” which then form the basis for religious freedom. 

In the opening lines of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779), Jefferson similarly grounds his defense of man’s freedom of conscience in God’s will that man should be free, a freedom that Jefferson recognized as applying even in our response to God himself:      

…Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his Supreme will that free it shall remain…That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments…or civil incapacitations…are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who…being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone…

James Madison

While any discussion of religious freedom’s prominence in the American founding must give Thomas Jefferson his due, it is the “Father of the Constitution” who merits even greater attention. We find in James Madison a two-pronged argument. A just society ought to respect and protect religious freedom both because it is an “unalienable right” given by God and because it enables human beings to fulfill their unparalleled duty to God. 

Out of respect for our fourth president on this day of celebration, allow me to quote Madison at length in A Memorial and Remonstrance: 

…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. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation to the claims of Civil Society. [emphasis added]

A right necessarily points to a corresponding duty. Claiming the former means owning the latter. What I find so compelling is that Madison brings to the fore what is all-too-often left implicit and unstated in deliberations surrounding religious freedom today. The fundamental right to freedom of religion is accompanied by the duty to seek religious truth. But what is religious truth? It is the truth about a greater-than-human source of being and ultimate meaning. When that source is understood to be the Creator of all things, including our very existence, then we can begin to grasp the weight of the “duty which we owe to our Creator.” 

Madison’s emphasis on our duty to God, and his recognition that it must be fulfilled freely, also reinforces the notion that this duty precedes, and supersedes, the demands of any other human authority or responsibility. Perhaps the great paradox here is that the highest duty we have as human beings is one that must not be coerced by human authority and is not coerced by divine authority.   

Religious Freedom: Good in Itself and Good for Society

Importantly, Jefferson, Madison, and other founders saw religious freedom as necessary not only because the nature of reality – i.e., the natural law and our lives in relation to it – requires a just society to respect and protect religious freedom but also because the success of the new nation depended upon it. Their conclusion on this matter was especially consequential given the serious disagreements over religion among early Americans. RFI’s America’s First Freedom Curriculum makes the point well: 

…despite these disagreements, our Founders saw religion itself—the natural human search for truth and ultimate meaning—as good for the new Republic. They believed religion to be a primary source of virtue and morality and its free exercise necessary to protect the common good. (Lesson 2, pg. 1)

Much more could be said about the founders’ approach to America’s First Freedom, which would further illuminate the full measure of the historical achievement that was America’s founding. Their decision to secure the “free exercise” of religion in the First Amendment rather than the mere freedom of conscience or freedom of worship is one such example. In their understanding of religious freedom’s true meaning, Madison and his fellow framers found their way to a properly capacious term that captured religiously motivated belief, speech, and action, in order to protect this “unalienable right” against government encroachment in private and public life.

Closing Thoughts

To bring these brief reflections on the place of religious freedom in America’s founding to a close, I turn your attention to the America Charter for Freedom of Religion and Conscience, which RFI and many wonderful partners issued in 2018. Of religious freedom, the authors of the American Charter declare:

As a fundamental right grounded in the dignity of the human person, freedom of religion and conscience is foundational—it is not a gift or favor of the state and its officials. Rather, it serves to limit state power and promote the common good. This right exists prior to the state because it is ordered to transcendent truth and ultimate reality, which are before and above any political community. (American Charter Article 3, pg. 14)

By design, this passage clearly echoes Madison’s understanding. There are many treasures worth exploring in the document, but today allow me to end how it ends by looking forward: 

We acknowledge the challenge of the unfinished task. Our nation’s founders launched this “great experiment” almost two hundred and fifty years ago. The right to the free exercise of religion and conscience, as set out in the first words of the First Amendment, has been of paramount importance to this project. Successive generations have defended and expanded this and other freedoms in order to enlarge their promise and include more and more people. But there must be no turning back. 

…

As our society expands its protections for freedom and rights for all, especially for minority groups that face discrimination, it is essential that we ensure that freedom of religion and conscience be protected. Although it is not always possible to uphold both non-discrimination and religious liberty claims in particular cases, both claims should be taken seriously, and both sides should seek common ground. Religious and ideological factors are today an inescapable dimension of the search for peace, order, and stability around the world. These aims will be achieved only by recognizing the rights of all, including the indispensable place ultimate beliefs have in human life and, therefore, the crucial importance of freedom of religion and conscience for all. (American Charter pgs. 29-30)

How to secure the free exercise of religion in a society that the American founders would in many ways find unrecognizable in terms of its religious, ideological, and moral diversity is no straightforward task. And disputes that put religious freedom in conflict with other rights claims remain widespread today. But 250 years into this experiment in ordered liberty, the American founding still offers us much on which to continue to build, in the precept of God-given equal human dignity, the concept of inalienable rights, and the constitutional protection of the free exercise of religion. Accordingly, the occasion of this Semiquincentennial demands both our fervent gratitude and our resolute commitment to defend these founding precepts for our children and our children’ s children. 

---

David K. Trimble is President of the Religious Freedom Institute.