Democracy’s Documents: James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments”

St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, approved as a public school by Oklahoma’s charter school board, plans to incorporate Catholic teachings into its curriculum. The state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, has argued against the school in court. Defending the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which had ruled against the school, he claimed that a religious public school would violate the First Amendment and the State Constitution, which bans spending public money to support religious institutions.

This is the latest among recent conflicts over the role of government regarding religion in public schools.  Other examples include measures such as displaying the Ten Commandments in schools (Louisiana), using the King James Version of the Bible in classroom instruction (Oklahoma) and offering voluntary chaplains as a resource for students (Florida). According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, lawmakers in 29 states proposed over 91 bills in 2024 to promote religion in public schools.

America’s founding generation believed virtue was essential for self-government.  Most agreed that religion could foster virtue, but they were very wary of an active government role in supporting a specific religion.  Their understanding of history reminded them that when that happened, it often led to discrimination, persecution and violence.  

In Virginia a major debate ensued in 1785 when the General Assembly considered a proposed tax to support “teachers of the Christian religion.”  While public schools did not exist then, James Madison feared the consequences of state support for religion using taxpayer funds.  He wrote a petition opposing it.  Titled “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” his reasoning is worth reviewing as we consider current efforts to use taxpayer funds to foster religion in schools.     

Madison’s objections focused on how government funding to support religious instruction could undermine the freedom of conscience essential for liberty. “[T]he religion of every man,” he said, “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”   Thus, it “cannot follow the dictates of other men,” which to Madison meant government.  Since government is based on majority rule, he held, using taxpayer funds to support teachers of the Christian religion could lead to situations where “the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.”

Madison thus concluded that religion must “be exempt from the authority of the State at large.” Indeed, using very strong language that recalled the charges against King George III which led to the American Revolution, he argued that rulers who use their power to encroach on freedom of conscience exceed “the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants.”

Madison also warned of a slippery slope once government exercises any authority over religious thought and behavior.  Where will it stop, he argued, for “the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with that same ease any particular sect of Christianity, in exclusion of all other Sects.”  And what of those who do not profess any religious faith?  “[W]e cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.” 

Why, Madison asked, is a tax to support teachers of the Christian religion even needed? The bill under consideration he wrote “implies that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy,” which Madison argued is both arrogant and a “perversion of the means of salvation,” which depends on the individual not the government.  Religion “both existed and flourished” without the support of human laws, he wrote.  Laws governing it, he said, actually will weaken believers’ faith and “foster in those who still reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits.”

Madison also argued that State power over religion could lead to social discord, degrading “from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority” and “destroy the moderation and harmony” among different sects.  The bill had already created “animosities and jealousies,” among Baptists and Methodists who opposed the tax. Still further, once law is used to enforce support of “the Christian religion,” the principle of adhering to the rule of law will also be weakened among opponents and so too will “the bands of Society.”

Madison’s was not the only petition against the bill and the combined force of opponents derailed the proposal which died in Virginia’s General Assembly. Building on that success in 1786 Madison succeeded in getting the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, previously drafted by Thomas Jefferson, enacted into law. It would later influence the establishment and free exercise clauses of the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Photo Credit: National Constitution Center -Painting by John Vanderlyn

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