Adams v. Jefferson: The Freedom of Public Religion (original) (raw)
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From Establishment to Freedom of Public Religion
Capital University Law Review, 2004
This Article juxtaposes the theories of religious liberty developed by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. It argues that Jefferson’s notion of a “wall of separation between church and state” was a minority view in his day, and in the century to follow. More commonplace was Adams’ view that balanced the freedom of all peaceable private religions with the “mild and equitable establishment” of one public religion. Adam’s model of religious liberty dominated much of nineteenth-century law and culture, Jefferson’s model a good bit of twentieth-century law and culture. In its most recent cases, the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be developing a new model of religious liberty that draws on the insights of both Jefferson and Adams, but rejects their respective calls for the privatization or the establishment of religion. The Court’s formula is that both private and public forms of religion deserve constitutional freedom and support, though neither may be given preferential treatment.
Beyond the Separation of Church and State in America
Oasis, 2012
This Essay analyzes the convergence of secularization theory and separation of church and state logic in mid-20 th century American law and culture. It also shows that First Amendment law has moved beyond this separationist logic in recent opinions, and suggests a new integrative theory of religion, culture, and politics in its support.
Facts and Fictions About the History of Separation of Church and State
Journal of Church and State, 2006
Responding to several new histories of church and state in America, this Article warns against the emerging view that separation of church and state is a distinctly American and relatively modern invention that has been used principally to harm religion and religious freedom. The Article traces the historical roots and routes of the principle of separation of church and state in biblical, patristic, Catholic, Protestant, and Enlightenment sources. It then shows how the eighteenth-century American founders used this principle to press five religious liberty concerns: protection of the state from the church; protection of the church from the state; protection of liberty of conscience from both church and state; protection of the new states from the federal government in their treatment of religion; and protection of citizens from unwelcome support and participation in religion. Finally, the article analyses the uses and misuses of this principle in the later history of American law.
2016
A broadly shared methodological commitment to originalism in church-state matters has not produced much agreement among Supreme Court justices. An underappreciated reason why is that, while the Founders agreed about the existence and importance of a natural right to religious freedom, they disagreed over how to separate church from state. The aim of this chapter is to explain the Founders’ shared and competing understandings of religious freedom. Part I explains the Founders’ common understanding of the existence of a natural right to religious liberty. Part II considers the Founders’ disagreement over how that natural right to religious liberty ought to limit the scope and exercise of governmental power in church-state matters. By better understanding how and why the Founders agreed and disagreed about religious liberty, it is hoped that Americans today might more accurately and thoughtfully deliberate how best to protect our “first freedom.”
2018
This Essay argues that it’s perfectly fine for religious citizens to openly bring their faith-based values to public policy disputes. Part II demonstrates that the Founders, exemplified by Thomas Jefferson, never intended to separate religion from politics. Part III, focusing upon Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to slavery, shows that religion and politics have been continuously intermixed ever since the Founding. Part IV, emphasizing the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., argues that no other reasons justify barring faith-based arguments from the public square.
The prevailing view of both theU.S. Supreme Court and liberal theory inAmerica is that liberal principles are neither essentially religious nor essentially secular, "religion but somehow foundationally " This or in the words challenges the cogency of this view through a comparative examination of two strong defenders of religious freedom from theAmerican revolutionary era: Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Backus. Jefferson, neutral, of the Court neutral between and nonreligion. essay theEnlightenment rationalist, and Backus, theCalvinist-Baptist, may initially seem tailor-made for this foundational neutrality, but closer examination reveals that religious freedom for them was not only an extension of their radically opposed views on religion but also an instrumentfor thepromotion of those views throughout society. The ambiguity ofAmerica's founding principles is best understood, not through thenotion of neutrality, but as theproduct of a yet unsettled struggle between devout religion and secular Enlightenment.
Reconsidering Jefferson on Race, Gender, and Religion, History Department Roundtable, Bishop's University, Sherbrooke, Qc. "Let's begin with this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." It is a phrase I have committed to memory by virtue of my work on John F. Kennedy, who contended with longstanding religious resentments in his bid for the presidency and in his time in the White House. As I began to ponder the theme of this event—the paradoxes of Jeffersonian thought—I began to see how much these two presidents, Jefferson and JFK, had in common. Both faced tremendous religious opposition and wrestled with the religious clauses of the First Amendment, though not in perfectly symmetrical ways. [...]"
The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, 2018
Intellectual fissures about how to best protect religious liberty in the United States are the product of a nation that has become increasingly more diverse and the Supreme Court's application of the Religious Clauses. But tensions over how to protect religious liberty were evident even at the founding of the American Republic. This is revealed in the debates within and outside of the Constitutional Convention, the thirteen state ratifying conventions, the First Federal Congress, and the creation of one of America's first public secular universities-the University of Virginia. Colonial Americans disagreed about how to best preserve religious liberty, especially whether it was better to provide protections in the federal or thirteen state constitutions. A historical examination of these debates can provide a deeper understanding of the complexity of drawing boundaries for the exercise of religious liberty. The historical record also calls into question the wisdom of the Supreme Court adopting Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor as its constitutional touchstone for Establishment and Free Exercise cases. Fortunately, another standard, rooted in the historical record, can be constructed-the Mutual Independence of Church and State. This standard can be used by the Supreme Court and the lower courts to better protect and promote religious liberty in postmodern America.
One Public Religion, Many Private Religions: John Adams and the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution
The Founders on God and Government, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark D. Hall, and Jeffrey R. Morrison, 2004
John Adams is gaining new respect today both for his political shrewdness and his religious wisdom. Both these talents were on full display in the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution that Adams largely crafted. Striking a via media between defenders of the traditional Congregationalist establishment and religious dissenters, Adams' constitution established one public religion but granted freedom to all peaceable private religions. This juxtaposition reflected Adams' political and religious philosophy. Every state and society, he believed, had to establish by law some common values and beliefs to undergird and support the plurality of private religions that it embraced. The notion that a state and society could remain neutral and purged of any public religion was, for Adams, a philosophical fiction. Absent a commonly adopted set of values and beliefs, politicians would invariably hold out their private convictions as public ones. But every state and society also had to respect and protect a plurality of forms of religious exercise and association. The notion that a state could coerce all persons into adherence and adherents to a single established religion alone was, for Adams, equally a philosophical fiction. Persons would make their own private judgments in matter of faith and conscience, even if they pretended to conformity.