In 1607 Jamestown was settled by Anglicans from England and their minister, Robert Hunt, held daily "Common Prayer." The King's charter read that the colony's purpose included "the conversion ... of the people in those parts unto the true worship of God and Christian religion, in which respect we should be loath, that any person should be permitted to pass, that we suspected to effect the superstitions of the church of Rome" and "that none be permitted to pass in any voyage ... but such, as first shall have taken the oath of supremacy" to the Church of England.

Contemporary history revisionists of the so-called "religious right" erroneously declare that the United States of America was founded upon Judeo-Christian principles. The facts are that the Jewish religion had nothing to do with the founding of Virginia, and its charter was obviously anti-Roman Catholic. The governing policies of colonial Virginia established religion by civil authority and did not advocate religious freedom.

The following are some of the rules and laws which prevailed during the first 150 years of Virginia"s existence:

1609--Instructions from the Council. Indian medicine men were to be seized in order to destroy their heathen ceremonies.

1610--Dale's Code. The penalty for blasphemy was to push a "bodkin" through the blasphemer's tongue. Whipping was the penalty for working on Sunday. Protesting the doctrine of the Trinity or the Christian religion was punishable by death.

1617--Governor Argall's decree. "Every Person should go to church, Sundays and Holidays, or lye Neck and Heels that Night, and be a Slave to the Colony the following Week; for the second Offence, he should be a Slave for a Month; and for the third, a Year and a Day."

1618--London Company orders to Governor Yeardley. "In every of those cities or Boroughs the several Quantity of One Hundred Acres of Land be set out in Quality of Glebe Land toward the maintainance of the several ministers of the Parishes" and "to make the living of every minister two hundred pounds sterling per annum or more."

1619--Act of the Assembly (colonial legislature). "All ministers shall duely read divine service and exercise their ministerial function according to the Ecclesiastical lawes and orders of the churche of Englande."

1624--Act of the Assembly. Anyone missing one Sunday service was fined one pound of tobacco; one month, fifty pounds. No one was allowed to sell crops until the minister had received his portion, and it had to come from the "first and best tobacco and corn."

1628--Proclamation of the Governor. Colonists were forbidden "to marry without lycence or asking in church."

1632--Act of the Assembly. All ministers were required to maintain complete uniformity to the teachings and constitution of the Church of England, and ministers were to receive from each family the twentieth calf, kid, and pig.

1642--Act of the Assembly. "All nonconformists upon notice of them shall be compelled to depart the collony with all conveniencie." "No ministers shall be admitted to officiate in this country, but such as shall produce to the governor a testimonial that he hath received his ordination from some bishop in England, and shall then subscribe, to be conformable to the orders and constitutions of the church of England, and the laws there established." The tithe tax, for ministers salaries, of ten pounds of tobacco and one bushel of corn was applied to "all youths of sixteen years of age as upwards, as also for all negro women at the age of sixteen years."

1660--Act of the Assembly. The captain of any ship bringing Quakers into the colony was fined 100 pounds, and all Quakers who did enter were to be expelled.

1661--Act of the Assembly. All parishes were required to furnish glebes, houses, and stock for ministers.

1662--Act of the Assembly. Ministers were required to prove that they were ordained by an English bishop, and all others were prohibited from teaching or preaching, publicly or privately.

Responsibility for administering church matters was given to vestrymen elected by the people of the parish. The vestries determined the amount of taxes (and tax rates) necessary for the minister's salary, other church expenses, and relief of the poor. Obviously, religion in colonial Virginia was established by law; and, because taxation was also a significant matter of law, vestrymen were usually wealthy politicians and often members of the House of Burgesses. In his 1910 book Separation of Church and State in Virginia --from which the historical information in this essay is taken, H. J. Eckenrode says: "The union of church and state put the church under a political control. ... The church was thoroughly subordinated to the state" (p. 14).

1727--Act of the Assembly. Ministerial salaries were set at 16,000 pounds of tobacco, each parish was required to provide 200 acres of land on which a parsonage was to be built, and vestrymen were authorized to levy taxes on the people of the parish to pay for the minister's house.

1754--Order of the Council. Clerymen were forbidden to hold the office of Justice of the Peace--a source of additional income.

1755 and 1758--Acts of the Assembly. Laws were passed "to enable the inhabitants of this colony to discharge their tobacco debts [to the clergy] in money" (rather than in the best of tobacco which could normally be sold for even more money). The Anglican clergy appealed to the Bishop of London whose influence prompted the King to veto the action of the Assembly. The general reaction in Virginia added to a growing resentment of both the clergy (as a tax burden) and the king (as a threat to home rule).

1763--A clergyman sued (The Parsons’ Cause) his vestry for lost income because of the Assembly's vetoed acts. Patrick Henry defended the vestrymen and argued that the king was guilty of tyranny in overturning a just law passed by English freemen. A jury composed of Virginians, including some Irish Presbyterians, awarded one penny in damages.

1771--A convention of Anglican clergymen resolved to petition the King of England for a Bishop to be appointed in Virginia. An increasingly anticlerical attitude, combined with a growing nationalism and an ever increasing number of dissenters, prompted even one Anglican to say, "I profess myself a sincere son of the established church, but I can embrace her Doctrines without approving of her Hierarchy, which I know to be a Relick of the Papal Incroachments." The state and the Anglicans were legally united in the colony, and the church was financially dependent on the state--vestrymen and legislators wanted to maintain control of both.

1776--The Declaration of Independence declared civil freedom from the laws of England and its King, and on December 9, 1776, the legislature of Virginia suspended payment of taxes for support of the Anglican clergy. This was a major first step toward total disestablishment of the Anglicans in Virginia, but the controversy was not over; many laws respecting religion continued to exist.

June 2, 1779--Thomas Jefferson's "Bill for Religious Freedom" was introduced; it objected to establishment of religion by law or by required tax support for religion: "The impious presumptions 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." Petitions for and against Jefferson’s bill were drafted.

October 1779--A petition from the county of Essex declared: "We, ... being much alarmed at the appearance of a Bill entitled Religious Freedom, consider it very injurious to the Christian Religion" and "direct our Representatives to Vote for the destruction of all such Diabolical Schemes. And further pray ... that no person, [not] being a Protestant nor not professing the Christian Religion ... be permitted to hold or exercise any Civil Authority within this state. A general assessment, for the support of Religious Worship, wou'd be most agreeable."

October 25, 1779--James Henry introduced legislation to establish the Christian religion as the state religion of Virginia; however, because Virginia's politicians were still evenly divided, neither Jefferson's nor Henry's bill prevailed.

1783--In the continuing debate, supporters of government religion testified to the decline of morals. George Mason wrote to Patrick Henry that "Justice and virtue are the vital principles of republican government but among us a depravity of manners and morals prevails." However, Virginians like Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee "were advocates of a proposition to make every man contribute something to the support of the Christian religion, as the only sure basis of public and private morality" (p. 74). Lee proclaimed that "the experience of all times shows religion to be the guardian of morals; and he must be a very inattentive observer in our country who does not see that avarice is accomplishing the destruction of religion for want of legal obligation to contribute something to its support" (p. 75). Does this argument sound familiar two hundred years later?

Nevertheless, it is proper to acknowledge that there were petitions which asserted that religion should be "duly aided and patronized by the civil Power." A petition from Dinwiddle said, "We being fully pursuaded ... that Christianity may be, by a Law, made and declared to be, the established Religion of this Country." A petition from Surry said, "It is with the most heartfelt concern that your Memorialists see the countenance of the civil power wholly withdrawn from religion, and Mankind left without the smallest coercion to contribute to its support. ... We cannot observe without concern that the United States of America exhibit to the world the singular instance of a free and enlightened government destitute of a legal provision for the support of religion." But, these views were held by a minority of less than 10 percent of the those who signed the petitions.

1784--The "Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" was again introduced in the General Assembly. This bill levied taxes for support of the Christian religion and allowed every taxpayer the right to designate to which church or religious society he wanted his share of the taxes to go (an early version of a state voucher plan).

1785--James Madison"s "Memorial and Remonstrance" was drafted and circulated as a petition. It protested not only against taxes for religion, but also against the legal establishment of religion: "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?" As for Christianity, Madison wrote, "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” Madison continued, "What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny, in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people."

Numerous similar petitions, signed by Baptists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and some Methodists, flooded the Fall session of the Assembly. Eckenrode says, "The most popular argument in all these papers was the assertion ... that Christianity had grown and prospered in spite of the opposition of the State" (p. 110).

November 18, 1785--Petition from Rockingham County. "In opposition to the scheme of a general assessment for the support of religion. ... We think that where ever Religious Establishments hath taken place it hath been attended with Pernicious Consequences, for Instance, we shall go no further than New England, for no sooner was their Religion Established, their Ministers ample provided for, than Fining Imprisoning Whipping Banishing, etc. Ensued."

December 1, 1785--Petition from Rockbridge. "To our great surprize, before the wounds we received in our Country's Cause had ceased to bleed or the Arms with which we gained our Liberties began to rust, The Episcopal Clergy come in and pray for distinctions incompatible with that political Equality which is the undoubted Privilege of every Christian in the Federal Union as the reward of the common blood and Treasure so freely spent by all. ... We have also been informed that it is in contemplation to have a Law passed this Session of Assembly to establish a general Tax for the Support of the Ministers of the Gospel of all Denominations, with this reserve that each Man may say to whom his quota shall be given--This scheme should it take place is the best calculated to destroy Religion that perhaps could be devised and much more dangerous than the establishment of any one Sect. ... By a general tax all [ministers] will be rendered so independant of the will of the particular Societies for their Support that all will be infected with the Common contagion and we shall be more likely to have the State swarming with Fools, Sots and Gamblers than with a Sober Sensible and Exemplary Clergy."

The majority of the signers of the two petitions above were Presbyterians. The assessment bill died in committee.

1786--Jefferson's most famous contribution to religious liberty (Virginia's Statute) was signed into law by Governor Patrick Henry. It included the following: "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propogation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; ... even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion. ... No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever. ... All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion."

Eckenrode concludes by saying that "in combining complete liberty of opinon and in foridding taxation for church support, the act merely expressed the results of the Revolution" (p. 115); and "separation of church and state in Virginia, instead of weakening Christianity, as the conservatives of the Revolution had feared, really aided it in securing a power over men far greater than it had known in the past" (p. 155). "A large part of the serious and cultured population of Virginia clung to the principle of state support of religion as to a familiar and beneficient policy. Innovations in religion always awaken deep alarm among conservatives, and they are almost always of concern to the state. Conservative Virginians were persuaded that such was the case in point, but the radical spirit had grown strong .... Madison appealed to this spirit of intellectual and political freedom in his Remonstance .... The liberals who rallied behind him, and the evangelicals, gave him the victory over the great body of conservative political and social leaders. ... The main argument of the conservatives was not new--that religion is necessary to the welfare of the State and the supervision of the State necessary to religion. Holding such an opinion, many good people considered the definite separation of church and state as a blow at the existence of religion" (pp. 111-112). Does this controversy sound familiar?

1789--The First Amendment. Religion is not to be established by law; it is to be freely exercised.

1947--Everson v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court researched the history of the religion clauses and said, "The Establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government ... can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions .... No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion" (330 U.S. at 15).

1998--The "religious right" is wrong when it deliberately distorts history by asserting that the 1785 minority viewpoint defines the proper constitutional relationship between religion and government and is the proposition upon which the 1787 Constitution for the United States of America is founded. Instead, the 1785 view which prevailed was that of Baptists like John Leland who preached that religion did not need support of government, that it was tyranny for government to levy taxes for support of religion, that the issue was not merely establishment of an official single denomination, that promotion of religion was none of government's business, and that religion was to be supported voluntarily. The Founding Fathers and the members of the First Congress who wrote the Constitution and the First Amendment rejected the founding principles of religious tyranny in colonies like Virginia and Massachusetts and, instead, provided absolutely no authority for government support of religion--that is the view which prevailed in America in 1787 and 1791 and which puts the religion clauses of the Constitution and the First Amendment into an accurate historical context.

Religion, then, is a matter for individuals, families, churches, and church schools; and, success of the unique American principle of separation between religion and government is easily demonstrated by the many thousands of church institutions and their many millions of members and devotees throughout America--the land where freedom rings. Let us keep it that way.

Copyright 1998 Gene Garman