https://34dems.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Adopted-Resolution-540-x-540.jpg 540 540 34th Democrats 34th Democrats https://34dems.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Adopted-Resolution-540-x-540.jpg April 10, 2025 April 10, 2025

Adopted by the members of the 34th District Democrats at the April 2025 meeting.

Resolution Supporting Freedom of Conscience and the Principle of Separation of Church and State

Whereas the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom disestablished the Church of England in Virginia and guaranteed freedom of religion to people of all religious faiths when it was enacted into the state’s law on January 16, 1786, and the substance of the Virginia Statute is incorporated into the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; and

Whereas individuals, groups and institutions in the United States today persist in deliberately misrepresenting the purpose and intent of the Virginia Statute and the First Amendment so that they can unjustly seize power for their own ends and with the intent of subjugating their fellow citizens; and

Whereas state laws, such as the Louisiana law that allows the display of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments in public spaces, are eating away at the separation of church and state and the prohibitions on establishment of religion by governmental bodies in contravention of the First Amendment; and

Whereas it is good to remind ourselves that the erosion of the Establishment Clause through coins bearing “in God we trust,” the Pledge of Allegiance stating “under God,” and allowing prayer in schools has become commonplace since the 1950s,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED the 34th District Democrats fully support and endorse the original intent of the Virginia Statute and the First Amendment; we wholly reject any form of state-mandated religion, any religious exemption from obedience to the law, and likewise any restriction on the private exercise of religion.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED this resolution be shared widely by the 34th District Democrats and forwarded for action by the Washington State Democrats so that we remind everyone of our freedoms and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED this document be forwarded to our state legislators and our congressional representatives for inclusion in their deliberations.

Sponsored by Ted Barker, 34th District Dems member and State Committee Member, 2/25/25

Historical Background

Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786)

SUMMARY

The Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom was drafted by

Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the General Assembly on January 16, 1786, before being signed into law three days later. The statute affirms the

rights of Virginians

to choose their faiths without coercion;
separates church and state; and,
while acknowledging the right of future assemblies to change the law, concludes that doing so would “be an infringement of a natural right.”

Jefferson’s original bill “for establishing religious freedom,” drafted in 1777 and introduced in 1779, was tabled in the face of opposition among powerful members of the established Church of England. Then, in 1784, a resolution calling for a tax to support all Christian sects excited such opposition that James Madison saw an opportunity to reintroduce Jefferson’s bill. It passed both houses of the General Assembly with minimal changes to its text.

One of the most eloquent statements of religious freedom ever written, the statute influenced both the drafting of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the United States Supreme Court’s understanding of religious freedom. Jefferson considered it one of his crowning achievements and a necessary bulwark against tyranny.

Well aware that the opinions and beliefs of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds:

that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint;
that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time:
that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical;
that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry;
that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right;
that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it;
that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;
that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;
that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally,
that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

And though we well know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.