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The American Invention of Religious Tolerance

The religious tolerance embodied in the Constitution of the United States of America has
its ideological roots in Enlightenment philosophy. In particular, the philosophies of deism,
empiricism and secular humanism influenced the Founders opinions of religion, by changing the
way they framed the very issue of faith, religious disagreement, and worship. Rather than seeing
the nature of god as a question with only one answer, religion was merely another part of the
mysteries of the universe which the reason and ingenuity of man had only begun to unravel.
Building on a legacy laid down hundreds of years before them, the thinkers of the Enlightenment
created new conceptions of god, the universe and the self, and also proposed new ideas regarding
the relationship between the three. In the eleven years between the writing of the Declaration of
Independence and the final ratification of the of the Constitution, many changes took place in the
fabric of American religion. In the end the reasoned thinkers of the Enlightenment, particularly
Thomas Jefferson, prevailed to create a society of religious tolerance, and a secular government
unlike any that existed elsewhere in the world at that time, and which endures to this day.
The authors of the Declaration of Independence, in particular Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams and Benjamin Franklin, as well as the primary author of the American Constitution,
James Madison, could easily be characterized as philosophers of the Enlightenment, a period
which was distinguished by large-scale shifts away from traditional religion and values,
including belief in the God of the Bible. It was given voice in France by men such as Descartes
and Voltaire, culminating with the terror and atheism of the French Revolution. In America,
philosophy, politics, commerce and war all merged to create an elite, all but deified, group of
men known as the Founding Fathers.
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Few of the Founding Fathers were traditional Christians and none of them were ministers
of religion
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, but neither were they atheists. The prevailing religious sentiment amongst them was
deism, or belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with
rejection of supernatural revelation (and that the creator of) the world has since remained
indifferent to it
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. God was seen as a great machine builder who created the universe in all its
intricacies, then stepped back and allowed the machine to go to work. This clockwork god was
not considered to be directly involved in the affairs of humans, if he even existed at all.
The course and effects of American deism can be best traced through the writings of
Thomas Jefferson. In addition to authoring two of the most important works on early American
deism, Thomas Jefferson is credited as the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence.
His original draft has been lost to the annals of history, but several subsequent drafts remain
from which a record of the edits it underwent can be constructed. Several lines, later edited out,
were much more radical than those which made the cut. For example, All men are created equal
and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable. The
second sentence was changed by congress to the more Christian-sounding , endowed by their

1
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Roads of Modernity: the British, French and American Enlightenments. New York:
Random House, 2004.
2
P. Brians, The Enlightenment, (Seattle: Washington State University, 2000).
3
The New English Bible. NY: Oxford University Press, 1972.
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Creator before the document was signed and sent to England.
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To a deist such as Jefferson, this
edit was likely not very bothersome, but why was it edited at all?
Before the Enlightenment, and indeed for many years afterwards, kings derived their
right to rule from God. Several verses from the Bible support the divine right of kings to rule;
"For rebellion as is the sin of witchcraft." (1 Samuel, 15:23) This philosophy is eloquently
espoused in The Trew Law of Free Monarchies by James I of England, written in 1598. To
summarize, the right to govern comes from God. A bad monarch is punishment from God to an
impious people, and they are under no circumstances to try to unseat a him, as good monarchs
are sent by God as well, albeit to govern over pious peoples. Kings, as divinely invested stewards
of the children of God, had the right, and in fact the responsibility, to do as they pleased. God
carefully crafted every trait of the vessel called monarch, and the greatest virtue any king could
possess is simply to follow his own nature.
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This was the political landscape of the world into which the Founders were born, and this
is part of what they were addressing when they made claims such as men are equal and that the
right to govern derives from the governed (not from God). When the founders edited the
Declaration of Independence to include a creator as being the source of the power of people this
was a direct contradiction of the prevailing sentiment of the kings of Europe and those
unfortunate slaves of men who felt obligated to obey them.
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This practice of religious tolerance adopted by Thomas Jefferson and others has its roots
in deism. A clockwork god who was not a miracle worker, and not deeply involved in affairs of
man had no cause to be offended if his people practiced one form of Christianity as opposed to
another.
Before his death, Jefferson explicitly left instructions for the words that he wanted
engraved on the stone that would mark his final resting place. Here was buried Thomas
Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for
Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia. Let us not forget that Thomas
Jefferson was president for two terms, founded the Democratic-Republicans, made the Louisiana
Purchase and wrote his own copy of the Bible. It is from this clear how important he considered
this document to be, how radical he knew it was, and how firmly he believed every word of it.
Because by these wrote Jefferson, I wish to be most remembered
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Jefferson wrote in The Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty (1786) that: our civil rights
have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or
geometry. In an age of Enlightenment and reason, the creator of the universe was yet another
mystery of existence which had yet to be found out, like any of the mysteries of science. And
only the light of reason would ever illuminate gods face. Healthy debate is encouraged in
scientific spheres, at least ideally, so why would it be a problem for there to many differing
opinions on the nature of god? To the deists, it was not. Points of contention were merely patches
of darkness yet to be illuminated by the light of reason.
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4
The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, Volume 1: To 1877, Gary B. Nash and Julie Roy Jeffrey,
Custom Version for SLCC (New York: Pearson Education, 2013). Chapter 16, the Declaration of Independence.
5
Stuart, James. Constitution.org, "The Trew Law of Free Monarchies." Last modified March 31, 2011. Accessed
March 31, 2014.
6
P. Brians, The Enlightenment, (Seattle: Washington State University, 2000).
7
Kean, Robert H. "History of the Graveyard at Monticello," in Shackelford, Descendants
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Brown, Richard D. Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2000. Pgs. 324-5.
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There were, of course, individuals who vehemently disagreed with Jefferson and his
contemporaries about their notion of a rational, albeit absentee, God. More importantly there
were many who could not fathom the idea of a state that was not supported by and/or stood in
support of some kind of institutional religion.
The legislators of Massachusetts were one such group in 1870. Although the
Massachusetts Declaration of Rights asserted that in addition to men possessing certain
unalienable rights not unlike life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and property it is also
their right as well as their duty to worship the supreme being, the creator god. It is similarly
important for the people to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of
the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public protestant teachers of
piety, religion and morality, in all such cases where provisions shall not be made voluntarily. It
is clear that the legislators of Massachusetts naturally assumed that institutional religion would
be part of the new United States, and that the people would summarily be taxed in order to
support it.
It was precisely sentiments of that nature to which Jefferson was responding the emphatic
the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom when in Part II he explained emphatically what all
his arguments amounted to in practical terms:
Be it enacted by 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, 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 opinions in matters of
Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil
capacities 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.
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In Jeffersons view, all religions were to be legal and allowed, but none was to be lorded
over the others, and none was to be oppressed. Taxation in support of religious bodies was to be
categorically outlawed. It was this very sentiment and those of James Madison and other, less
eloquent, writers that would go on to inspire the First Amendment of the Constitution, and
would create the high wall separation between church and state that has survived to this day,
albeit heavily modified.
It is important to note that when the Constitution was drafted, great care was taken to
keep out all references to religion, save one. The first amendment proclaims in no uncertain
terms: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof.
This practice of religious tolerance recommended by Thomas Jefferson and others of the
founders has its roots in the deism of the Enlightenment. A clockwork god who was not a
miracle worker, and not deeply involved in affairs of man had no cause to be offended if his
people practiced one form of Christianity as opposed to another. One other important factor
influenced the intelligencia of the day and their strongly liberal views of religious egalitarianism.
Starting in the Renaissance, and bleeding through the Reformation into the Age of
Reason is a trend towards individualism in the European identity. In the Middle Ages, personal

9
Brown, Richard D. Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2000. Pgs. 314-5.
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identity was defined in terms of the community of god and ones place within it. The humanist
writers of the Italian, and later the Christian Renaissance such a Petrarch, Boccaccio and
Erasmus began to define the importance of humanity, and of the validity of individual self,
creative expression, and personal competition. The standard of liberal arts classical education
was set during the Renaissance, and all the best thinkers of the Enlightenment were heirs to the
legacy of this movement, as are modern westerners and their concept of the self.
This strong trend towards individualism is key in understanding the secular government
that was created in the United States. Thinkers like John Calvin applied these ideas towards
ones relationship to the divine stressing a very personal and direct relationship with god. If
every man could and should convene with god on their own, the importance of institutional
religion is greatly diminished, and it in fact becomes a threat to liberty.
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America was a land of tremendous religious diversity at the time of the framing of the
Constitution, but it was not fragmented Christian sects which controlled the minds of the
Founders, and therefore the fate of the country. An overarching and relatively united philosophy
of deism, empiricism and secular humanism drove the vehicle of the nation towards religious
liberty and the formation of a truly secular state.


10
Brown, Richard D. Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2000. Pg. 334-339.