The Church Historians Who made the First Amendment What it is Today
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4517364 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Donald L Drakeman (0000-0001-5757-4767, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 27-56 |
| Publication date | 2007-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religion and American Culture A Journal of Interpretation (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1052-1151 • E-ISSN: 1533-8568 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1525/rac.2007.17.1.27 |
| OpenAlex | W1980712883 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are frequently identified as the framers of the religion clauses in the First Amendment, thus making their efforts to establish religious freedom in colonial Virginia relevant to the Constitution's meaning. This interpretive approach first appeared in a Supreme Court opinion in 1878 when Chief Justice Morrison Waite applied the religion clauses to the case of a Mormon official prosecuted under a federal antipolygamy law. For historical background, Justice Waite studied books by church historians Robert Reid Howison and Robert Baylor Semple. There, he encountered narratives of the political activism of the Baptists and Presbyterians who, in conjunction with the efforts of Madison and Jefferson, were responsible for Virginia's statutory commitment to religious freedom. The Chief Justice then grafted Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments and Jefferson's now-famous "wall of separation" letter onto the Constitution's bare text, an emendation that has endured for well over a century. Church historians Semple and Howison, and the pivotal role they played in the foundation of First Amendment jurisprudence, have been essentially lost from the historiographical record of church-state relations in America, a situation this article seeks to remedy
Constitution · Economic Justice · Establishment Clause · First amendment · Historiography · Jurisprudence · Original meaning · Originalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Supreme court · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Catholicism and Religious Studies · Law · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Philosophy
Strangers in the Land Patterns of American Nativism 1800-1925
The transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790
Separation of Church and State
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State
Chief Justice Waite
The Great School Wars
The Establishment Clause
Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
Religion, Race, and Reconstruction
The Mormon Question
Mormonism
The First Freedoms
Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Virginia
The Blinding Light
Church and State in America
Dr. Howison's Autobiography
The Politics of American Religious Identity
Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury Baptists Revisited
Sworn on the Altar of God
Thomas Jefferson, Religious Freedom, and the Supreme Court
Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776-1787
Duelling in Virginia
Church and State in America
Mormonism
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |