Before the American Revolution, no state more seriously
discriminated against and persecuted religious dissenters than
Virginia. Over 50 dissenting ministers, primarily Baptists, were
jailed, and numerous Baptists and Presbyterians were beaten or
harassed. African-American congregants were treated particularly
viciously. By the time the U.S. Constitution was adopted, no state
provided more extensive protection to religious freedom, nor did so
in terms nearly so elegant as Thomas Jefferson's Statute for
Establishing Religious Freedom. This dramatic change occurred
because Virginia's dissenters, constituting as much as one-third or
more of the population, demanded religious freedom before they
would mobilize for the American Revolution; Virginia's
establishment leaders, the same gentry leaders who led much of the
persecution, had little choice but to grant that freedom. In
return, dissenting ministers played an important role both in
encouraging enlistments during the Revolution and themselves
joining in the fighting. By comparison, British efforts to co-opt
religious dissent were wan and failed to gain significant support
in Virginia. By the end of the war, though, religious liberty was
not yet complete, and with the necessity of mobilization
eliminated, establishment leaders, led by Patrick Henry, sought to
reinvigorate the formerly established church through a general tax
to benefit all Christian denominations. This proved too much for
the dissenters who had demanded religious freedom based on both
their politics and theology; politicized by the negotiations during
the Revolution and with James Madison coordinating legislative
efforts, they rose up to quash the idea of a religious tax and
insisted upon adoption of Jefferson's Statute. In doing so, these
eighteenth century evangelicals demanded a strict separation of
church and state. The impact of their joining the polity and the
robust religious liberty which they left as a legacy still resonate
today.
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