The Rights of Religious Conscience

The Rights of Religious Conscience
Religious Freedom Day is celebrated in America each year on January 16 -- the date of the 1786 passage of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. That measure ended the state-established church in Virginia, finally protecting religious rights for all denominations.
The Anglicans had fined, persecuted, jailed and even killed Christians who were not part of the state-established church, but Jefferson, a lifelong fervent advocate for the rights of religious liberty and religious conscience, had worked hard to protect and defend those Christians.
To hear that Jefferson was a zealous defender of the rights of Christians may seem unusual to those who know Jefferson only by today's errant portrayal as being a secularist who desired "a separation of church and state." Jefferson definitely was not a secularist, and furthermore, his definition of separation of church and state actually was to keep the state from becoming secular!
(Many of the remarkable beliefs held by Thomas Jefferson not only on religious liberty but also in many other surprising areas are set forth in the popular book The Jefferson Lies by David Barton.)
The rights of religious conscience that Jefferson and other Founders had contended for were subsequently enshrined at the federal level in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Jefferson made numerous bold declarations about these precious rights:
No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience.

[O]ur rulers can have no authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted.

[I]t is inconsistent with the spirit of our laws and Constitution to force tender consciences.
Today, let's celebrate the rights of religious liberty and conscience that Jefferson and so many other Founders worked so hard for all of us to enjoy. And let's pray that our judges and public officials will once again begin protecting these rights!

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