The Northwest Ordinance outlined the requirements for statehood to prospective territories.  The House approved it on July 21, 1789 and the Senate gave approval on August 4, 1789.  It was signed by President George Washington on August 7, 1789.  Article III of that Ordinance is the only one to speak of religion or education.  It states: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”  [Constitutions (1813), p.364), “An Ordinance of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio,” Article III].

             Supreme Court Justice, Josiah Brewer, rendered a high court decision in 1892 that included pages of historical fact emphatically showing that America is a Christian nation.  He concluded: “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind, It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our

institutions are emphatically Christian.” [Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 US 457-458, 36 L ed 226.]

             The “Wall of Separation Between Church and State” is attributed to Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson’s concern, reflected in “The Statute for Religious Freedom,” was that one particular Christian denomination not be set up as a state religion with its unique dogmas and doctrines.  Efforts prior to 1785 in Virginia sought to establish the Anglican church as a state church.  Jefferson never set up a wall of separation

between Christianity and State.  Anglican supporters sought to make the Anglican Church the state church of Virginia in which taxes would support Anglican clergy.   Jefferson saw the danger of state churches.  On the title page to a collection called The Jefferson Collection (now at the Library of Congress) Jefferson wrote on the title page: “I am for freedom of Religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.” [Millard, Catherine, Rewriting of America’s History, Horizon Books, 1991, p. 100].

             The Baptist Church at Danbury was concerned that the First Amendment implied that the government gave people the right to faith and the expression of faith.  If government given then the rights were alienable, but if God given they are inalienable.  In a letter written to Noah Webster Jefferson agrees that the government has no power over the free expression of religious faith.  He wrote: “...experience has nevertheless proved they [governing authorities] will be constantly encroaching on [all our rights] if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which

experience has proved peculiarly efficacious against wrong and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove.  Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion.” [The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, (Washington D. C.; Gales and

Seaton, 1834), Vol.1, p. 451, James Madison, June 8, 1789]

             Jefferson, showing his agreement with the Danbury Baptists wrote back assuring them that the government has no right to involve itself within religious affairs. 

Jefferson argues for the freedom of religion from government oppression saying that there is a wall that separates the state from interfering with religion.  The church cannot establish a state church, however, the state is not free from the influence of the church.

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