2. Founders
Four groups of founders: Puritans,
Evangelicals, Republicans, Enlightenment
exponents.
These groups held up the four corners of a
wide and swaying canopy of opinion on
religious liberty in eighteenth-century America.
Beneath this canopy were the “essential rights
and liberties” of religion.
3. “Essential Rights and Liberties” of
Religion
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Liberty of conscience
Free exercise of religion
Religious pluralism
Religious equality
Separation of church and state
Disestablishment, at least of a national
religion
4. Liberty of Conscience
The principle of liberty of conscience was
almost universally embraced in the young
republic.
Voluntarism – the unalienable right of private
judgment in matters of religion.
The principle of liberty of conscience informed
some of the federal constitutional debates on
religion.
5. Liberty of Conscience
1.
2.
3.
Protected voluntarism
Prohibited religiously based discrimination
against individuals
Guaranteed “freedom and exemption from
human impositions, and legal restraints, in
matters of religion and conscience.”
These three aspects of liberty of conscience
were embodied in early state constitutional
laws.
6. Free Exercise of Religion
Freedom of conscience was closely tied to
free exercise of religion for many founders.
Free exercise of religion was the right to act
publicly on the choices of conscience once
made.
Every early state constitution guarantee “free
exercise” rights of some sort.
7. Free Exercise of Religion
Free exercise rights generally connoted
freedom to engage in a variety of public
religious actions informed by the dictates of
conscience:
Religious
worship
Religious speech
Religious assembly
Religious publication
Religious education
8. Religious Pluralism
The founders regarded “multiplicity,” “diversity,”
or “pluralism” as an important and independent
principle of religious liberty.
In one sense, religious pluralism was not a
principle but rather a cause, condition, and
consequence of giving freedom of conscience
and free exercise rights to all, with the
assurance of equality before the law.
In another sense, religious pluralism was just a
sociological fact.
9. Pluralism
The founders distinguished two kinds of
pluralism pertinent to religion.
Confessional pluralism – the maintenance and
accommodation of a plurality of forms of
religious expression and organization in the
community.
Structural or social pluralism – proponents
encouraged each community to maintain and
accommodate a variety of social units to foster
religion.
10. Religious Equality
The efficacy of the principles of liberty of
conscience, free exercise of religion, and
religious pluralism depended on a guarantee
of equality of all peaceable religions before the
law.
The founders’ arguments for religious equality
became particularly pointed in their debates
over religious test oaths as a condition for
holding federal political office.
11. Religious Equality
Religious equality was persuasive in outlawing
religious test oaths entirely – first at the federal
level and eventually in many states as well.
Most founders extended the principle of equality
before the law to all peaceable theistic religions,
including Jews, Muslims, and Hindus.
The principle of equality found its place in early
drafts of the First Amendment religion clauses.
12. Separation of Church and State
The principle of separation of church and state
is often regarded as a distinctly modern
American invention but it is in reality an
ancient Western teaching.
The principle also had solid grounding in
political sources that appealed to American
Enlightenment and Republican writers.
13. Separation of Church and State
A range of theological and political sources
formed the background for the American
founders.
The founders sifted through European and
colonial legacy of church-state separation to
distill five major themes.
14. Church-State Separation Themes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
To protect the church from the state.
To protect the state from the church.
To protect the individual’s liberty of conscience
from the intrusions of both church and state.
To protect individual states from interference by
the federal government in governing local
religious affairs.
To protect society and its members from
unwelcome participation in and support for
religion and its morals in positive law.
15. Disestablishment of Religion
Some eighteenth-century founders saw no
inconsistency between having one established
religion in a state yet guaranteeing liberty of
conscience, free exercise, religious equality of
a plurality of faiths, and a separation of church
and state to all others.
16. Religious Establishments
Seven of the original thirteen states still had
religious establishments when the First
Amendment was being drafted in 1789.
Though local practices varied in these
establishment states, their governments still
exercised some control over religious doctrine,
governance, clergy, and other personnel.
Despite these state establishments,
disestablishment movements were gaining
support.
17. Establishment of Religion
Establishment of religion was an ambiguous
phrase in the eighteenth century – “to establish”
mean “to settle firmly,” “to make firm,” “to ordain,”
or “to enact.”
Disestablishment of religion, under this
understanding, protected the principle of liberty of
conscience by foreclosing government from
coercively prescribing mandatory forms of
religious belief, doctrine, and practice.
18. Disestablishment of Religion
It further protected the principles of equality
and pluralism by preventing government from
singling out certain religious beliefs and bodies
for preferential treatment.
It also served to protect the basic principles of
separation of church and state.
19. Interdependence of Principles
For all the diversity of opinion that pervades the
constitutional convention debates, most influential
writers embraced this role of “essential rights and
liberties of religion.”
Eighteenth-century writers designed these
principles to work together to prevent repressive
religious establishments while simultaneously
being mutually supportive and subservient to the
highest goal of guaranteeing “the essential rights
and liberties of religion” for all.
