When I taught government, I started with the Declaration of Independence of 1776.. It was born of a conviction that America was indeed born from ideas, or a proposition, as Lincoln put it.the declaration is celebrated on July 4, and it should not be confused with the Constitution put before popular conventions in 1787. Contrary to recent propaganda, neither are religious documents.
Perhaps Jefferson was the progenitor of “spiritual but not religious.”Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration.He also recoiled from the sad history of religious coercion of belief and warfare over belief.Jefferson placed two divine references in the original document, the Creator, and nature’s God. Congress added two more referenced, Providence and the judge of the world. They were not claiming special or exalted status for the fledgling nation.
Isaiah Berlin spoke of negative and positive liberty. Negative liberty is a preventive measure that one is able to speak and act without interference. Positive liberty is acting without harm to another. The Declaration sees government as not only to be feared but a guarantor of rights, including one would see in the first Amendment, religious liberty.
In a Virginia Religious Bill, Jefferson wrote: “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, nor 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, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” In our time, he would be saying that the government must be neutral toward religious belief.
While president, Jefferson started a project of editing the Gospels by comparing different texts, including Greek and Latin.. Then before he died, he produced a collection of the teachings of Jesus, shorn of miracles."The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. "(Letter of Jefferson to John Adams, January 24, 1814.)
“Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights.... Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.”-- Jefferson, to the Virginia Baptists (1808) In those days Baptists were the most ardent defenders of separation of church and state. Notice too that he includes obedience to the laws. He is not carving out exemptions as in the Hobby Lobby case.
The separation of church and state led to the profusion of religious organizations in our country. It created the conditions for people to break the tether from religion to create do it yourself beliefs.Under its expansive rubric, old faiths endure and new ones rise.
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