Imagine you live in 18^th Century America. You are officially a part of the British Empire, living in one of the colonies.

The official religion of the British at that time was the Church of England – the Anglican Church. The new world has many other religious traditions behind it as well. One thing is certain, if you lived in the colonies in the 1700’s, you were Christian, Jewish, or Deist…atheists were few.

The state church had political power as well as the moral and spiritual force represented by its faith. Europe underwent a terrible time as various groups challenged the religious and political power of the Papacy. Very often a person’s allegiance to a particular doctrine or leader put him or her into conflict with their political leadership, usually a king or queen.

For this reason, the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention shared a bias: religion and government make bad partners organizationally. Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and the others didn’t want a particular religion controlling the mechanisms of a federal government. They believed in a very weak federal government, strong state government, and strongest local and personal government.

This explains why the first Congress passed a series of Constitutional amendments to enshrine religious liberty as a cornerstone of America. The First Amendment makes clear that, “…Congress shall make no law establishing a religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The purpose here was NEVER to push religion out of the public sector, but rather that the government and the various religious organizations would be neither married to the government nor banned by federal law.

Interestingly, this only applied to the federal government. At the time of passage, several of the states had an official connection to religious organizations: Massachusetts was Congregational, Virginia and most of the others were Anglican. But religious freedom in these places was impressive, especially in comparison with European states.

Our political leaders were deeply influenced by Judaeo-Christian ideals and philosophy. They are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Among these are the beliefs that human beings are the work of a Creator and that our rights come not from government, but from God. Washington was a leader in his local Anglican parish. Adams was a Unitarian Christian. James Madison attended the Episcopal church, even though he was highly critical of organized religion.

This is our founding, our history, and our political tradition.