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By Nick Gier | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
In 1773, a 22-year-old James Madison had just returned to his native Virginia from his theological studies at Princeton. He was shocked to learn that Baptists were imprisoned because they refused to pay the state’s church tax. These monies went to pay minister salaries and to maintain Virginia’s “established” (official) Anglican church.
Madison railed against this “diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution.” Over the next 15 years, Madison joined with fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson — plus religious congregations such as the Baptists — to build the proverbial “wall” between church and state that would allow all Americans to practice their religion (or lack thereof) free from government interference.
The dunking of Baptists
Not only did Baptists refuse to pay the church tax, but they also rejected the notion that they had to apply for a license to preach from the state. One Sunday in 1778, a Baptist service led by two ministers was rudely interrupted by a gang of men, who first sang an obscene song, and then dragged off the preachers for a dunking in a nearby pond. It was reported that one was nearly drowned.
The European Anabaptists were obviously correct in their observation that infant baptism was never practiced in the New Testament. This did not prevent both Protestants and Catholics from accusing them of the crime of “double baptism.” They were burned at the stake, beheaded, hanged and most often in Switzerland, drowned. A popular option was to sew them in bags (like unwanted kittens) and throw them in the nearest river.
Patrick Henry is defeated in Virginia
Returning to Virginia, in 1786 Patrick Henry introduced a bill that would require a “general assessment on all citizens to support Christianity itself as the established religion of Virginia.”
The Baptists were not satisfied and they circulated a petition, gathering a huge number of signatures, demanding that non-Christians, even Deists, be protected from legal culpability and persecution in general. The petition contained the argument that supporting any religion would corrupt religious life rather than promoting it.
With the help of Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, Jefferson and Madison were successful in defeating Henry’s assessment bill. In its place, Jefferson proposed legislation that offered complete religious freedom. Its central tenet provided that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief.”
Jefferson and the Danbury Baptists
Fifteen years later, Baptists still lived in fear of persecution. On Oct. 7, 1801, Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, wrote to Jefferson about their fears of being a religious minority in their state. They began by stating that “religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, and that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions.” The Baptists complained that “what religious privileges we enjoy, we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights.”
In a letter dated Jan. 1, 1802, Jefferson answered agreeing with the Danbury Baptists that religion is a private matter, and he assured them that the Constitution protected them from persecution. He reminded them that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing any law “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The crux of Jefferson’s letter is his explanation that the First Amendment “builds a wall of separation between church and state.” Emphasizing its constitutional origin, historian James Caldwell explains that Jefferson’s “wall” is “shorthand for the Establishment Clause that we use today.”
North Carolina debates religious oaths
It is significant to note that when the delegates met in 1787 to draft the Constitution, they rejected Benjamin Franklin’s proposal that their sessions opened with prayer. In contrast to some state constitutions that heretofore required a religious oath for office holders, the delegates voted to require no such oath.
There was heated debate in the various states regarding ratification of the Constitution. In July of 1788, at the North Carolina State Ratifying Convention, Henry Abbot argued that “if there be no religious test required, pagans, deists, and Muslims might obtain offices among us, and that the senators and representatives might all be pagans.”
Responding to Abbott in turn, James Iredell reminded the delegates of “dreadful mischiefs have been committed by religious persecutions. Under the color of religious tests, the utmost cruelties have been exercised.” Jefferson’s wall separating church and state held fast: North Carolina and all the other states ratified the Constitution.
Protest from New England Calvinists
Jefferson had the help of Presbyterians in Virginia, but in 1789 a group of conservative Presbyterian (Calvinist) ministers from New England wrote to newly elected President Washington. They protested that the true sovereign of the United States should be “the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent.” Ever indirect and subtle in matters of religion Washington answered as the Baptists did above: “The path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.”
Would that Washington were here today to warn Moscow Calvinist pastor and Christian nationalist Doug Wilson about how unwise it would be, as he suggests, for the Supreme Court to declare that the U.S. is “a Christian nation and has been such from the beginning.”
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