Assembly convened in 1785 Henry’s bill was easily defeated. A few months later Madison completed the rout of the establishment forces by successfully arguing for the passage of Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom. We can only imagine Madison’s pleasure in writing the good news to Jefferson in Paris, exulting that its passage meant that Virginia had “extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.” (Koch 30) Jefferson’s own delight also must have been extreme, because he later decreed that his grave marker at Monticello would memorialize him only as “Author of the Declaration of Independence, Founder of the University of Virginia, and Author of the Virginia Bill of Religious Liberty.”
Madison’s Remonstrance systematically posits fifteen numbered and rather eclectic points in opposition to the clergy tax. If Madison’s arguments were rendered in the “bullets” typical of a Power Point™ presentation, they might read as follows:
1. As an “unalienable” and fundamental natural right, religion is a matter between man and God, and therefore is not subject to civil authority.
2. Since religion is not subservient to government, it cannot be subservient to the legislature, which is a government institution.
3. A clergy tax may seem innocuous, but it is the first step on a slippery slope that ends in the loss of liberty.
4. If all men are truly equal, a religious tax discriminates against non-believers.
5. Anyone who thinks that government officials are competent to judge matters of religious truth is arrogant or stupid, or both.
6. Religion does not need the support of human laws; to the contrary, it has flourished despite opposition from them; God will take care of religion without our help.
7. Government involvement actually injures religion because it leads to “pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, and in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”•
8. A just government can exist without a religious establishment.
9. A religious tax is unfaithful to America’s heritage as a place of religious asylum and refuge.
10. Citizens offended by the clergy tax may elect to leave Virginia.
11. The tax will encourage sectarian strife and discord.
12. A religious tax will discourage non-believers from coming to Virginia, where they might hear and receive the message of Christian salvation.
13. Like other unpopular measures, the tax will promote disrespect for the law.
14. There is no evidence that the people want this tax.
15. The concept of the tax is inimical to the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the Virginia Declaration of Rights.
These cryptic renderings of Madison’s arguments border on rhetorical insult, because the persuasiveness and longevity of the Remonstrance rests on its eloquence as well as its substance. Although most Americans have never heard of it, it deserves to be read, re-read, and studied by anyone who seriously undertakes to understand what the Founders intended by the First Amendment’s decree that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .”
Fortunately, many judges appreciate that the study and application of Constitutional Law requires, in the words of the North Carolina Constitution, “a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles,” including the principles laid out by Madison in his remarkable document. In furtherance of this maxim, courts often look to Madison’s Remonstrance: it has been cited in dozens of state and federal cases involving the relationship between church and state, and Justice Hugo Black’s opinion for the Supreme Court of the United States in Engel v. Vitale — the case that prohibits government officials from prescribing prayers to be said in public schools — cites it no fewer than five times. Perhaps the most lasting and significant effect of the Remonstrance, however, is that it established Madison as the Founder whose views concerning religious freedom were the most respected and set him on the road that led eventually to his authorship of the First Amen