The fact that the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, make no direct mention of God, and have only a few phrases pertaining to religion, does not mean that it was not imbued with the religious thinking and perspectives of its Framers. To be sure, many of the Framers if not openly religious, such as George Washington, and John Adams, were nevertheless deeply influenced or subjected to one of the many religious faiths of the time.
The Bill of Religious Freedom, which was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson for consideration in the Virginia legislature, is illustrative of how religion influenced the Framers and how those influences would eventual seep into the Constitution. In the Bill, Jefferson discusses how there are some rights, natural rights, that are bestowed by God and that no government can limit, prohibit, or control. A sampling of those rights, according to Jefferson include but are not limited to, the right of a person to believe in the God or religious faith of his or her choosing, as well as a prohibition of forcing or mandating that a specific religion be followed or worshipped, and that a person’s religious belief should not be a determinant of the civil rights that they shall enjoy.
Theses ideal of freedom of religion, freedom to follow one’s own beliefs, faith, and conscious, and the proscription of governmental interference in these areas of privacy that Jefferson spoke of, were advocated for and supported not only by a broad range of Framers leading up to the drafting, passage and ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights but also by a similar diverse set of early American leaders in the first several decades of the 1800s. Thus provides clear evidence that
Bibliography
Witte, John. God’s Joust, God’s Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006.
