Thanks to your advocacy efforts on our behalf, we're happy to report that the recently passed Omnibus Spending Bill includes a very small increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities! While our work is not over with regards to the upcoming 2018 budget to be passed in the fall, the Omnibus Spending Bill represents an endorsement of the important work that the humanities do for our communities. These funds will continue to support our work of providing free access to authoritative content about Virginia's history and culture.
A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, was introduced to the
House of Delegates on June 12, 1779, but eventually tabled. James Madison reintroduced a slightly different version in 1785, which
was passed by the General Assembly on January 16,
1786.
Well aware that the opinions and belief 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 falacy,
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.
