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The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and introduced into the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond in 1779. [1] On January 16, 1786, the Assembly enacted the statute into the state's law.
Religious Freedom Day commemorates the Virginia General Assembly's adoption of Thomas Jefferson's landmark Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom on January 16, 1786. The statute, written by Jefferson in 1777 and shepherded through the legislature by James Madison in 1786, became the basis for the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and led to freedom of ...
Championed through the Virginia General Assembly by James Madison, the statute was the first law of absolute religious freedom enacted in the young nation and served as a template for the religion clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would be ratified five years later (1791).
The history of religion in early Virginia begins with the founding of the Virginia Colony, in particular the commencing of Anglican services at Jamestown in 1607. In 1619, the Church of England was made the established church throughout the Colony of Virginia , becoming a dominant religious, cultural, and political force.
The acknowledgement of religious freedom as the first right protected in the Bill of Rights points toward the American founders' understanding of the importance of religion to human, social, and political flourishing. The First Amendment makes clear that it sought to protect "the free exercise" of religion, or what might be called "free ...
The "religious test" clause has been interpreted to cover both elected and appointed federal officials, career civil servants (a relatively recent innovation), and political appointees. Religious beliefs or the lack of them have not been permissible tests or qualifications with regard to federal employees since the ratification of the Constitution.
The 22nd Amendment — passed by Congress in 1947 after Franklin Delano Roosevelt won four terms in office — currently bars Trump and all two-term holders of the Oval Office from running for a ...
The Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791 as ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, was one of the earliest political expressions against the political establishment of religion. Others were the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, also authored by Jefferson and adopted by Virginia in 1786; and the French Declaration of the ...