- "and though
he hoped to see Christians [in office], yet by the
Constitution, a papist, or an infidel was as
eligible as they" — concerns
of Amos Singletary, state delegate in Massachusetts
- "...a
papist, a Mohomatan [sic], a deist, yea an atheist
at the helm of government" — a fear expressed in New
Hampshire
- "the
exclusion of religious tests" was "dangerous and
impolitic" and "pagans, deists, and Mahometans [sic]
might obtain offices among us." Without a religious
test, "to whom will they [officeholders] swear
support — the ancient pagan gods of Jupiter, Juno,
Minerva, or Pluto?" — Henry Abbot, state delegate in
North Carolina
- Proposed
Constitution opens door to "Jews and pagans of every
kind" — Rev. David Caldwell, Presbyterian minister,
state delegate in North Carolina.
- Recoiling
"at the idea that Roman Catholics, Papists, and
Pagans might be introduced into office, and that
Popery and the Inquisition may be established in
America" — Maj. Thomas Lusk, state delegate in
Massachusetts.
- A North
Carolina state convention delegate waved a pamphlet
suggesting that the Pope of Rome might be elected
President, and that in "the course of four or five
hundred years.... Papists may occupy that
[presidential] chair."
- "as there
will be no religious test [Quakers] will have
weight, in proportion to their numbers, in the great
scale of continental government" — writer in the City
Gazette, Charleston, South Carolina, January
3, 1788.
- Anticonstitutional
article in the New York Daily Advertiser, January
1788, reprinted within days in papers in
Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts: No
religious test? Then federal offices will have "1st.
Quakers, who will make the blacks saucy, and at the
same time deprive us of the means of defence — 2dly.
Mahometans, who ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity
— 3dly. Deists, abominable wretches — 4thly.
Negroes, the seed of Cain — 5thly. Beggars, who when
set on horseback will ride to the devil — 6thly.
Jews etc. etc." and because the President will have
command of all militias, then "should he thereafter
be a Jew, our dear posterity may be ordered to
rebuild Jerusalem."
- A writer
calling himself "Philadelphiensis" (November 1787)
complained about the framers' "silence" and
"indifference toward religion."
- A warning
was given of "the pernicious effects" of the
Constitution's "general disregard of religion," its
"cold indifference towards religion" — An
anonymous writer, Virginia Independent Chronicle,
October 1787.
- The
"Constitution is de[i]stical in principle, and in
all probability the composers had no thought of God
in all their consultations" — Thomas
Wilson, Virginia.
- In a
pamphlet called "The Government of Nature
Delineated or An Exact Picture of the New Federal
Constitution" one pamphleteer "Aristocrotis"
of Carlisle, Pennsylvania attacked the supposedly
naturalistic Constitution: "...there has never been
a nation in the world whose government was not
circumscribed by religion." The framers were trying
to form "a government based upon nature." To the
drafters of the Constitution, "[what] is the world
to the federal government but as the drop of a
bucket, or the small dust of the balance! What the
world could not accomplish from the commencement of
time till now, they easily performed in a few
moments by declaring that 'no religious test shall
ever be required as a qualification to any office,
or public trust under the United States.'" Such
however "is laying the ax to the root of the tree;
whereas other nations only lopped off a few noxious
branches." The "new Constitution, distains...belief
of a deity, the immortality of the soul, or the
resurrection of the body, a day of judgement, or a
future state of rewards and punishments" because of
the framers' deism. "If some religion must be had
the religion of nature [Deism] will certainly be
preferred by a government founded upon the law of
nature. One great argument in favor of this
religion, is that most member of the grand
[Constitutional] convention are great admirers of it
[Deism]; and they certainly are the best models to
form our religious as well as our civil belief on."
- "A Friend
of the Rights of the People" from New Hampshire
attacked "the discarding of all religious tests."
"Will this be good policy to discard all religion?"
The proposed Constitution notwithstanding, "it is
acknowledged by all that civil government can't well
be supported without the assistance of religion." No
one "is fit to be a ruler of protestants, without he
can honestly profess to be of the protestant
religion."
- One
delegate in the New Hampshire state ratification
convention went so far as to argue that under the
Constitution, "congress might deprive the people of
the use of the holy scriptures."
- Another
warned that Americans under the Constitution might
be subject to divine judgment as Samuel the prophet
said to Saul, "because thou hast rejected the word
of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee" — An
Anti-Federalist writing in a Boston newspaper,
January 10, 1788.
- "without
the presence of Christian piety and morals the best
Republican Constitution can never save us from
slavery and ruin" — Charles
Turner, Massachusetts Anti-Federalist.
- "David" in
the Massachusetts Gazette, March 7, 1788, praised
Massachusetts' "religious test, which requires all
public officers to be of some Christian, protestant
persuasion" in contrast to the federal
Constitution's "public inattention" and "leaving
religion to shift wholly for itself." "...it is more
difficult to build an elegant house without tools to
work with, than it is to establish a durable
government without the publick protection of
religion."
- Letter to
the Virginia ratifying convention (June 1788) called
for Christian academies to be set up "at every
proper place throughout the United States" where
youth could be taught "the principles of the
Christian religion without regard to any sect, but
pure and unadulterated as left by its divine author
and his apostle." If established, "we would have
fewer law suits, less backbiting, slander, and mean
observations, more industry, justice and real
happiness than at present."
- A motion to
amend the Preamble to the Constitution by William
Williams, a state delegate in Connecticut: "We the
people of the United States in a firm belief of the
being and perfection of the one living and true God,
the creator and supreme Governor of the World, in
His universal providence and the authority of His
laws: That He will requireof all moral agents an
account of their conduct, that all rightful powers
among men are ordained of, and mediately derived
from God, therefore in a dependence on His blessing
and acknowledgment of His efficient protection in
establishing our Independence, whereby it is become
necessary to agree upon and settle a Constitution of
federal government for ourselves, and in order to
form a more perfect union, etc., as it is expressed
in the present introduction, do ordain, etc." The
Connecticut state convention rejected the motion
(1788).
- A
motion was proposed in the Virginia state
convention to amend ARTICLE VI itself: "no other
religious test shall ever be required than a
belief in the one true God, who is the rewarder of
the good, and the punisher of the evil."
Rejected.
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- In February
1788, James Madison twice defended the 'no religious
test' clause of ARTICLE VI in the Federalist Nos. 51, 56
"as one of the glories of the new Constitution" (Kramnick &
Moore, 1996). "The door of the Federal Government, is
open to merit of every description, whether native
or adoptive, whether old or young, and without
regard to poverty or wealth, or to any profession of
religious faith."
- Tenche
Coxe, wealthy Philadelphian merchant, former member
of the Continental Congress, October 1787: "No
religious test is ever to be required" of public
officers in America, unlike Spain, Italy, and
Portugal which barred Protestants, or "in England,
every Presbyterian, and other person not of their
established church, is incapable of holding an
office." The Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia (1787) had "the honor of proposing the
first public act, by which any nation" allowed
public service to "any wise or good citizen."
"Danger from ecclesiastical tyranny, that long
standing and still remaining curse of the people can
be feared by no man in the United States" and
compared the future US with Holland "an asylum of
religious liberty."
- James
Iredell, North Carolina, future US Supreme Court
associate justice: The Constitution's ban on
religious tests (a form of "descrimination")
embodies the "principle of religious freedom" so
that "representatives who have no religion at all,
and that pagans and Mahometans" may be chosen by the
citizenry. "[I]s it possible to exclude any set of
men"? Such exclusion lays "the foundation on which
persecution has been raised in every part of the
world."
- Virginia
Baptist leader John Leland praised ARTICLE VI of the
Constitution "as consistent with his conviction that
the integrity of religious faith is best served by
no government involvement" (Ibid., p. 39).
- Samuel
Spencer, North Carolina called for religion to stand
independent "without any connection with temporal
authority."
- Rev. Samuel
Langdon, New Hampshire state delegate: The 'no
religious test' clause was "one of the great
ornaments of the Constitution" and proclaimed that
he "took a general view of religion as unconnected
with and detached from the civil power
— that
[as] it was an obligation between God and his
creatures, the civil authority could not interfere
without infringing upon the rights of conscience."
- Rev. Daniel
Shute, Congregational minister, state delegate in
Massachusetts: "Who should be excluded from national
trusts? What ever bigotry may suggest, the dictates
of candor and equity, I conceive, will be, none"
even "those who have no other guide, in the way of
virtue and heaven, than the dictates of natural
religion [i.e., Deism]."
- Rev. Isaac
Backus, distinguished Baptist, Massachusetts state
delegate: "Nothing is more evident, both in reason
and The Holy Scriptures, than that religion is ever
a matter between God and individuals; and,
therefore, no man or men can impose any religious
test without invading the essential prerogatives of
our Lord Jesus Christ.... And let the history of all
nations be searched... and it will appear that the
imposing of religious tests had been the greatest
engine of tyranny in the world."
- One "Elihu"
(actually radical Deist Elihu Palmer) wrote an
avowedly radical Deist defense of the Constitution
in Massachusetts and Connecticut newspapers,
February 1788 of the Constitution as "a rational
document for a wise people and an enlightened age" (Kramnick &
Moore, 1996). The old times had passed away "when
nations could be kept in awe with stories of God's
sitting with legislators and dictating laws" Now no
religious or civil authorities could use religion
"to establish their own power on the credulity of
the people, shackling their uninformed minds with
incredible tales." "[T]he light of philosophy has
arisen... miracles have ceased, oracles are
silenced, monkish darkness is dissipated.... Mankind
are no longer to be delude with fable." Those
assembled at the Constitutional Convention had
refused "to dazzle even the superstitious, by a hint
of grace or ghostly knowledge. They come to us in
the plain language of common sense, and propose to
our understanding a system of government, as the
invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down
to dictate it, not even a god appears in a dream to
propose any part of it."
- William Van
Murray, Esq., in a 1787 essay in the American
Museum, wrote that America "will be the great
philosophical theater of the world," because the
Constitution recognizes that "Christians are not the
only people there." Furthermore, religious tests are
"A VIOLATION of THE LAW OF NATURE." Governments are
established according to the "laws of nature. These
are unacquainted with the distinctions of religious
opinion; and of the terms Christian, Mohamentan, Jew
or Gentile."
- John Adams,
later the second President of the United States,
wrote in 1786 that "the United States of America" is
"the first example of governments erected on the
simple principles of nature." Those who established
the governments of the United States had not "had
interviews with the gods [n]or were in any degree
under the inspiration of Heaven." Government is
"contrived merely by the use of reason and the
senses." "Neither the people nor their conventions,
committees, or subcommittees considered legislation
in any other light than as ordinary arts and
sciences, only more important.... The people were
universally too enlightened to be imposed on by
artifice.... [G]overnments thus founded on the
natural authority of the people alone without a
pretense of miracle or mystery, and which are
destined to spread over the northern part of that
whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained
in favour of the rights of mankind."
- "A
Landholder" (actually Oliver Ellsworth, formerly a
delegate to the Continental Convention, later in the
1st US Congress, and also Chief Justice of the US
Supreme Court) in the Connecticut Courant,
December 17, 1787 (and reprinted in neighboring
states) wrote: "To come to the true principle. . . .
The business of civil government is to protect the
citizens in his rights. . . . civil government has
no business to meddle with the private opinions of
the people. . . . I am accountable not to man, but
to God, for the religious opinions that I embrace. .
. . A test law is . . . the offspring of error and
the spirit of persecution. Legislatures have no
right to set up an inquisition and examine into the
private opinions of men."
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