Editor's note: When Thomas Jefferson penned the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, he recognized that future legislators would have the power to amend it. Toward that end, he added a warning: “If any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.” Stephen Strehle, associate professor of philosophy and religious studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, believes that the U.S. Supreme Court has done what Jefferson warned legislators not to do: narrowed the operation of religious freedom in its interpretation of the First Amendment. He believes it is time to clarify Jefferson's intent with an amended statute. Below he presents his rationale and the amended version. Although not a Baptist, Strehle is a deeply committed Christian.
In 1786 the legislature of this great state passed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which made a monumental contribution to the cause of religious liberty within the Commonwealth and soon inspired the rest of the American states to follow.
Strehle
The statute rejected previous coercive practices of imposing specific creeds upon the people, exacting religious tests for office, compelling church attendance and collecting taxes to support denominations within the Christian faith. By these ways and means the state of Virginia rejected its previous policy of guaranteeing a place of privilege to a specific religious profession, which would insure its place among the people in the future.
The statute rejected a priori commitments to specific religious ideologies, but in doing so it never intended to place a stricture upon the valuable participation of religious people and their ideas in shaping the civil government and its policies a posteriori. In fact, the statute based its concept of freedom upon a religious doctrine or the “plan of the Holy author of our religion” to create human beings with a free mind and give them this liberty as a natural right. By deferring to the deity, it conceived of human freedom as finding its surest foundation within a religious matrix.
The new statute that I propose proceeds with a strong commitment to its predecessor, but finds it necessary to update the act by offering additional provisions, which address the present concerns of the people.
The context of the current statute relates to the compelling need, felt by the people, to withstand the secular forces of modern society that would attack the rightful place of religion in society and cleanse the public forum of its ideas, symbols and people. These forces have attempted to create an unfair hegemony for their secular ideology, using the increasing size and power of the state to promote their agenda and marginate religion more and more to the fringes of society. These forces pretend that a secular and godless government is neutral in its treatment of religion, leaving and limiting the realm of pious devotion to private matters, but the results of this policy are far from neutral. Today people recognize that inclusion is the hallmark of a just society, and any policy that excludes and segregates a certain kind of people or ideas marginates them to the role of second-class citizenship. Any policy that fails to include religion as an important aspect of government sentences its ideas to relative insignificance and creates a secular society de facto through the power of the state. Such a policy belies the importance of religion in providing a solid foundation for our moral view of life and the importance of religious people, who brought the vision of liberty, equality and democracy to these shores.
A proposed amendment to the Virginia Statute:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That the state of Virginia welcomes the participation of religion and its people within the public square and provides a space for its just representation, as it does for any other opinion or group. The state finds it appropriate to represent the faith of the people by affording them access to public institutions and inviting them to interpret their faith and provide spiritual and moral guidance in determining its laws and actions. It also finds it appropriate to represent the faith of the people through public symbols and ceremonies, acknowledging the basic views of the people as they change over time, respecting the rights of minority views to dissent or abstain, and recognizing the serious limitations placed upon the government to impose any ideology on a free society.
The full text of the existing Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
I. Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and 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; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow-citizens he has a natural right; that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of the tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment; and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
II. Be it enacted by the General assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, not shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, that that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
III. And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.