As we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it’s worth taking a few minutes to reflect on what that momentous document has meant for freedom of religion.
Princeton Professor Robert George has described religious liberty as “the right to be who we truly are as human beings.” It guarantees us the ability to “ponder life’s deepest questions and to seek meaningful, truthful answers.” It also protects our ability to gather with others in a shared community of faith and belonging, where we can both seek reinforcement and help others find their way through life’s many challenges. The right to live one’s faith openly and honestly is one of the most important rights any person can enjoy.
The Declaration of Independence typically is thought of in terms of its immediate political effects. Through it the 13 colonies renounced allegiance to Great Britain and declared themselves “Free and Independent States.” The declaration led to the Revolutionary War, the British surrender at Yorktown, and the founding of the United States.
But it also marked an important moment for the cause of religious liberty in at least three ways.
First, the Declaration of Independence expressly recognized the concept of natural, unalienable rights, including the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those natural rights are inextricably bound up with freedom of religion. Second, the declaration laid the groundwork for the Constitution a decade later, including its guarantee of the “free exercise” of religion. Third, it opened the door to a new form of government in which individual rights would stand at the fore and government would be understood as a protector, not a source, of rights.
How the Declaration of Independence promoted religious freedom
Start with the first point. The phrase “religious liberty” does not appear in the Declaration of Independence. Nor does the Declaration list infringements on religious exercise as one of the “long train of abuses” committed by the Crown. But the declaration does expressly recognize two key concepts that are central to freedom of religion.
The first is that all men and women have unalienable rights that come from God, not government. Our leaders cannot lawfully abridge those rights because they do not depend upon civil authority for validity.
The second is that those unalienable rights include the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As Jeffrey Rosen, the former president of the National Constitution Center, has explained, the pursuit of happiness at the time of the founding was understood as “the pursuit of lifelong virtue,” that is, the effort to develop “habits of industry, temperance, moderation and sincerity.”
Religious liberty, of course, is one of our foundational natural rights. And religious exercise is rightly associated with efforts to improve oneself and society according to the precepts taught by one’s faith. By recognizing the concept of natural rights and affirming that those rights include both liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the declaration laid an important foundation for religious freedom in the new republic.
The declaration of Independence was a momentous step in our country’s journey toward greater legal protections for religious liberty.
Turn now to the second way the Declaration of Independence marked an important moment for religious liberty. A little over a decade after the declaration announced our nation’s independence, delegates returned to Philadelphia to “form a more perfect Union” through creating a new national charter, the Constitution.
Although we typically think of the First Amendment as our federal guarantee of religious freedom, Article VI of the Constitution also contains an important prohibition on religious tests for office. And two years later Congress passed and submitted for ratification the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment’s promise that religious exercise would be “free.”
Without the declaration, there would have been no Constitution. Equally important, the Constitution built on the declaration’s recognition of natural rights by spelling out for our young country those rights that would receive clear federal protection. And the first right listed was freedom of religion.
Finally, the Declaration of Independence was the first step toward a new government that derives its power from the people and that exists to protect their fundamental rights.
Early American leaders continually emphasized religious liberty
George Washington identified religious liberty as one of those rights in his famous 1790 letter to a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island. Washington wrote that religious “toleration” is no longer “spoken of as if it were [through] the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.” To the contrary, “the Government of the United States” gives “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” and “requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Thomas Jefferson, while president, offered similar assurance to another religious minority — a group of Ursuline nuns in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. Responding to the nuns’ concerns that the new U.S. government would not be as accommodating of their religious practices as the French had been, Jefferson affirmed that “the principles of the constitution and government of the United States are a sure guarantee to you that [your property] will be preserved to you sacred and inviolate.” Jefferson promised the nuns that “your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to it’s [sic] own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority.”
These are but two statements among many by our nation’s early leaders that affirm the primacy of religious liberty. Their work after the Revolution to fortify freedom of religion was an outgrowth of the document adopted in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. The declaration of Independence was a momentous step in our country’s journey toward greater legal protections for religious liberty. On this 250th anniversary, let us remember — and be grateful — for that important contribution.