James Madison
by John Patrick Michael Murphy
James Madison, the Father of our Constitution and
our fourth president, went to Princeton at 18 to become an Anglican
minister and came back to Virginia a freethinker. At age 22, he wrote,
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits
it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project." He then
fought for religious liberty for all, believer and disbeliever, which
was no easy task - then or now. |
In his day, the notorious "Dade Code" was
part of the Virginia statutes, and he could have been executed for
his efforts. The code was written in London by Anglican bishops who
laid out a tidy list of prohibitions and punishments which were meant
to keep people from thinking and speaking their honest thoughts and
to mold the citizens into conformity. The code provided the death
penalty for anyone who "spoke impiously of the Trinity or one
of the divine persons, or against the known articles of Christian
faith." The same went for "blaspheming God's holy name."
If you were new in town, you had to report to the nearest Anglican
priest who would put questions to you to see if you were holy enough
to stay. Arguing with a clergyman could get you jail time. If you
missed church without good reason on three occasions, the death penalty
could be imposed. The Code excluded all other religions from the colony.
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These laws were fought by Presbyterians, Methodists,
Baptists, and freethinkers. They sought to disestablish the Church
of England from the colony and to allow all other Christian religions
equality. Patrick Henry joined with George Washington, John Marshall,
and other prominent leaders to propose that one could pay the annual
duty to the Christian church of one's choice, or a like amount to
the school fund. This alarmed James Madison and caused him to write
his famous A Memorial and Remonstrance. He looked at the history of
the western world from Constantine to the Reformation and summed up
what had occurred - "During almost fifteen centuries has the
legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has 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." |
He argued that Pennsylvania, New York, and Rhode Island
had no church tax whatsoever and their citizens seemed moral enough.
He stated that our courts should not be deciding which churches were
Christian and which were not. The 1785 legislature of the State of
Virginia removed the church tax completely and in its stead enacted
the law that Thomas Jefferson had proposed a decade earlier, the Religious
Freedom Act, which in turn was incorporated into our Bill of Rights.
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James Madison succeeded Thomas Jefferson as president
and continued to champion separation of state from church and church
from state. As president, he vetoed a bill to provide free lands to
a Mississippi Baptist church, and spiked a bill to establish the Episcopal
Church in the District of Columbia. He could not understand why our
country should pay for a chaplain to pray before Congress.
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Madison had no trouble at home being a man without religion.
He and his beautiful wife, Dolly, pursued happiness together in this
life and found that to be fulfilling enough. James Madison is a Founding
Father the religious right seldom mention when they tell us how good
it was when we were a "Christian nation." |
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Freethinkers of Colorado Springs
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Colorado Springs, CO 80962-2946
Phone: 719-594-4506
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