Madison, Jefferson, and the Separation of Church & State

Source:  Isebrand.com

I’m going to list page references in the book that you can use to help you in answering this question.  They go all the way back to chapter four:

pp 110-112 The congress under the Articles of Confederation include a couple of components that deal with this issue.  The first is at the top of the page and talks about moral education.  The second is a quote from the first article of the Northwest Ordinance.  It is important to note that this part of the Ordinance was modeled after the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom which was authored and introduced into the Virginia assembly by Thomas Jefferson.

Also in this passage you can see an excerpt of Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance which was a response to a religious bill introduced by Patrick Henry.

p 121 On this page there is a quote from Article VI of the Constitution of the United States (this is not the Bill of Rights, but the actual Constitution itself). 

pp 129-130 This passage talks about Madison’s election to the VA ratification congress.  The Baptist pastor, Leland, mentioned here is the same pastor of the ‘mammoth cheese’ when Jefferson is elected president!  In this passage Bennett really tries to explain Madison’s belief about religious liberty. 

p 142 The first amendment of the Constitution (the Bill of Rights) written by Madison includes a reference to freedom of religion.

Now we are up to Chapter 6.

p 179 Here is John Leland again of the mammoth cheese. You need to consider what happened after he arrived to see Jefferson and pay attention to the foot notes in your text.  (You should always read your foot notes!!)

pp 179-180 The Danbury Baptists ask President Jefferson to declare a national day of fasting and prayer.  Consider Jefferson’s response and pay attention to the last sentence of the second paragraph.

Pp 180-181 What was Jefferson’s response to the Federalist’s attacks on Jefferson’s beliefs?  This is the quote from the letter to Dr. Bejamin Rush.

After you have considered all of this evidence and summarized it, ask yourself what kind of case Bennett is making and laying out regarding Jefferson’s intentions when he speaks and acts in favor of a separation between Church & State.  I think Bennett is expressing a particular point of view here and I’m asking you to consider if he is making a fair case, one that you can agree with or trust.

Meet the Author

You’ve probably heard of the Book of Virtues but did you know that it’s author and the author of America the Last Best Hope are one and the same?  William J. Bennett told us why he wrote this book in the introduction, but who is this guy anyway?  What do we know about him?

We know that he is a conservative.  Now you have to decide if you really know what that means.  He is known as a conservative pundit.  That means he is someone who likes to offer his opinion to the media about politics (well, it could be other topics, like sports, but usually it refers to politics).

He has served in official roles in our government.  He was the U.S. Secretary of Education for three years in the late 80’s.  (That combined with his conservative pundancy may underline the explanation he gave us in his introduction about why he wrote our text.)  He also served as Drug Czar under President George H. W. Bush (that’s George Herbert Walker Bush – the father of George W. Bush).  That of course wasn’t the real title of his job, but it is the popularized name for the person who directs the propaganda for drug control policy in our country.  As you can tell from the irony or sarcasm of this title there are some differences of opinion about this government position and its role.  Besides, Director of National Policy on Drug Control is not only boring – it’s too long to say!

He is also known as a political theorist.  That means he has joined the long line of thinkers from Hammurabi to Plato, from Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther, from Francis Bacon and John Locke to Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson, all the way up to Karl Marx, John Dewey and beyond.  There are hundreds of such men – many, many more whose names we won’t recognize – and some I hope that you will in the near future (one of my favorites is Wendell Berry).  So what have they done – do they do exactly?  They think – about ideas like government, and then they tell us what they think.  We get to decide if we like their ideas – if we agree with them or not!

That’s what I want you to know most about the author of our text – that he’s a man.  That just because he wrote the book we are reading does not mean that you necessarily need agree with him.  I wouldn’t have chosen his book if I didn’t think it was a good book for us to use (our book is just one of many that we could read – you can find many more at the library to compare ours with), but that doesn’t mean that I think his opinions – his political theories need necessarily be your own.  Look at the Guide to Reading hand out that I gave you.  Ask those questions as you read your text.  Don’t buy everything you read hook, line and sinker just because the words are on the page.  Test his ideas and decide for yourself if they will hold water.  (But first you have to find his ideas and decide what they mean!!  That’s part of becoming a good reader.  And learning to take into account Point of View when you are making decisions about meaning is one of the next steps toward become a good reader.)  Hopefully now that you’ve read the introduction and this short post you know a bit more about Bennett’s point of view.