ugh Madison’s wording change apparently did not seem momentous to the convention (Banning 86-87; Ketcham 73), it had enormous implications. Professor Lance Banning says that while the failure of Madison’s first proposal left the establishment issue unresolved, “the logic of his second still demanded equal treatment for competing faiths. . . In its final phrasing Article 16 erected an ideal that no society had every written into law and spurred the commonwealth at once toward its achievement.” (Banning 86) Ketcham agrees. By converting religious nonconformity from something merely to be “tolerated” into a right exercisable according to one’s own conscience, “Madison had made possible complete liberty of belief or unbelief, and the utter separation of church and state.” (Ketcham 73)
After the Virginia convention adjourned on July 5, dissenters quickly seized on Article 16 to call for formal disestablishment of the Anglican Church. By the time the Virginia Assembly convened in October, Baptists and Presbyterians had submitted petitions (one of which contained almost 10,000 names) asking the Assembly to free them from “a long night of Ecclesiastical bondage.” They requested that “all Church establishments be pulled down, and every tax upon conscience and private judgment be abolished” in order that Virginia might become “an asylum for free inquiry, knowledge, and the virtuous of every denomination.”
Madison apparently met Thomas Jefferson for the first time when both arrived in Williamsburg as members of the House of Delegates in the autumn of 1776. Jefferson, who had been busy with the Continental Congress in the spring, promptly took up the fight for formal disestablishment and Madison, who served on the Committee on Religion, became his ally.
In a November speech to the House of Delegates, Jefferson outlined his views concerning the proper relationship between government and religion. According to his notes, he began with an historical overview of the evils of religious establishments. He noted that in Virginia church attendance was compulsory and that heresy was punishable by death and denial of the Trinity by three years’ imprisonment. The fact that these laws were not enforced, he said, did not remove their stigma. He also decried the ongoing persecution of Baptist ministers, and the fact that dissenters were taxed to support the Anglican Church. Jefferson also argued for change on political, as well as philosophical, grounds. How, he asked, could nonconformists be expected to support a government that discriminated against them on behalf of a church associated with the oppressive British government?
Jefferson’s and Madison’s efforts on behalf of disestablishment met with limited success. The issue was so controversial that it engendered 10 days of fractious debate by the entire Assembly. Eventually a series of compromises — proposed by George Mason — were adopted. The Assembly revoked all parliamentary statutes concerning religion, exempted dissenters from religious taxes, and suspended government payments to the clergy for a year. At the same time, the government retained the power to license ministers, Anglican clergy alone were authorized to perform legal marriage ceremonies, and the parishes of the established church continued to perform several civil functions.
Between 1776 and 1784 — a period in which Madison did not serve in the Assembly — religious issues were not prominent in Virginia. Although Jefferson served in the Assembly until his election as governor in 1779, the year he introduced his famous Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom, the colony was preoccupied with the war against Britain. Except for repeal of the suspended law providing salaries for the Episcopal clergy, the legislature passed no major bills relating to religion during the period.
Freedom of religion returned to the Assembly’s agenda in 1784, the year that Madison, who had been serving as a member of the Continental Congress, returned as a member. Mason and Henry also were present, but Jefferson had embarked for Paris as Minister to