Brian Stokes Mitchell:
In the dawning days
of the American Republic,
a band of remarkable characters
came to
a revolutionary conclusion.
Matthew Holland: It was
an extraordinary collection
of ingenious people.
They truly were
the best and brightest.
They were very
gifted individuals.
Gordon s. Wood: Jefferson was
accused of being unchristian.
Well, he said
to himself and his friends,
"what does it matter
whether my neighbor believes
"in 20 gods or no God?
What does it hurt me?"
George Washington was
the most cautious man
that, I think,
I have ever read about.
Forrest church:
Benjamin Franklin,
he believed
in the practicality
of religion,
that religion was a useful tool
to organize society
and keep people loving
their neighbor as themselves.
Doug Brinkley: James Madison,
well, he liked the idea
of freedom of conscience,
that each individual makes up
their own belief about God.
The first real life test
for religious freedom took place
in the election of 1800
between John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell:
These men and others,
fathers
of the American revolution,
saw to it that religion
and religious thought
would be removed completely
from the rule of state
and that instead
it was the state itself
that should be ruled
by the people.
[Singing in hebrew]
Mitchell: This first
separation of church and state
would change
world history forever.
Freedom of religion is
in many ways
the first freedom.
This established
our nation as a nation
where people could honor their
own conscientious convictions
and worship God in the way
that they believed,
in conscience,
God wished to be worshipped.
friends of nci
Mitchell: For many
early English colonists,
the very idea of America rested
on religious freedom.
The puritans hoped
to create utopia
in the new england wilderness,
a place where they could
follow their faith in peace.
Their religion would
create a community.
Man as John winthrop:
We must be knit together
in this work, as one man.
We must entertain each other
in brotherly affection.
We must delight
in each other,
make others' conditions
our own...
Mitchell: John winthrop,
in 1630, led a group
of puritans sailing
from england to Massachusetts.
A brilliant man
and a natural leader,
winthrop had already been
elected as governor
of the new Massachusetts
bay colony,
and he would be reelected
no less than 12 times.
For we must consider that we
shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people
are upon us.
Mitchell: As they were leaving,
winthrop gave
a departure sermon,
telling his fellow puritans
that their colony would be
a different kind of society.
It would be a model
of righteousness.
Holland: There were some
who have called it
the greatest sermon
of the last thousand years.
That's quite a statement,
but it's something
that stands at the beginning
of our political
civic consciousness.
Winthrop was very purposefully
self-conscious,
and he wanted his new colony
to be self-conscious,
to be aware that God
was watching this colony
and that other peoples
around the world
were going to be watching
it as well.
Wood: The founders
were all believers in God.
They all had a confidence
that in some sense
God was looking
after the Republic.
A lot of nations,
probably all of them,
think that they're
God's special favorite,
but America has a special sense
of responsibility
regarding itself
as a model,
not a nation that seeks
to conquer so much
as one that wants to be copied.
Mitchell: Governor winthrop was
often reasonable and charitable,
but he could also be obstinate,
domineering, and autocratic.
"A democracy,"he said,
"is accounted the meanest
and worst of all forms
of government."
Winthrop's colony
would not abide dissent.
Patricia bonomi: They
didn't come to establish
religious liberty.
They came to practice their own
form of christianity
without interference
from anybody else.
Mitchell: In 1637,
an unlikely opponent emerged
in Boston--Anne hutchinson,
a 46-year-old woman
then in the midst
of her 15th pregnancy.
Women in the colony were
forbidden from preaching,
but the brave
and strong-willed hutchinson
began conducting
popular Bible groups.
Man as winthrop: We see not
that any hath authority
to set up any other exercises
besides what authority
hath already set up.
Mitchell: By 1637,
the puritan powers
had had enough.
Anne hutchinson was brought
to civil trial for sedition
with John winthrop presiding.
She defended herself
skillfully,
but there would be no escape
from judgment.
We are your judges
and not you ours.
Mistress hutchinson,
the sentence of the court
you hear is that you
are to be banished
from out
of our jurisdiction
as being a woman not fit
for our society.
I desire to
know wherefore
I am banished?
Say no more.
The court knows wherefore
and is satisfied.
Mitchell: The trial had to do
with the role of women,
but at its core,
it was about religious liberty,
and religious liberty lost.
Richard bushman:
John winthrop was devoted to
making the Massachusetts
bay colony work,
and he felt religion
was the heart drive
of the whole operation,
but for that very reason,
he could not let religion
disrupt the bay colony,
and Anne hutchinson seemed
like a very dangerous person,
and he felt obligated
to quiet her
or drive her from the colony.
Mitchell: The rampant prejudice
behind Anne hutchinson's trial
lasted throughout
the 17th century
in Massachusetts.
More than a half century
later in 1692,
over 150 people were arrested
in the infamous witch trials.
One woman was accused
of wearing pieces of lace.
Another was convicted
after testimony
from her daughter,
who was 4 years old.
It was primitive,
barbaric, and sad.
In the end, 20 people
were put to death.
Mitchell: The puritans
established stable
and quite Democratic communities
in an untamed wilderness.
The flaw
in the puritan experiment
was the inability
to allow serious dissent,
but democracy in the 1600s
seldom extended to faith.
It would take a revolution.
Some 8 years after the puritans
came to Massachusetts,
the American dream began
to change shape.
The new world was now
a more secular beacon.
It was the place to look
for a better life.
Religion for many new
arrivals was secondary.
The church became
the stepchild of government,
not the master,
and clergymen themselves
came under popular fire.
Some seemed to be
in it for the money.
Many had run dry
of inspiration.
The services were not
all that interesting to people.
In many cases they were long,
they were oriented
towards doctrine,
often read from manuscript.
Whitefield changed all that.
He only had about
8 sermons, I think, you know,
and he went up and down
the seaboard,
but he was charismatic.
Bonomi: He was a phenomenon.
He was sort of
the first great celebrity,
you might say.
Mitchell: One day in 1740,
a fevered crowd
of tens of thousands
gathered before the steps
of the Philadelphia courthouse.
They'd come not in rebellion
but in ecstasy
to hear the passionate,
energetic,
and theatrical
George whitefield.
The son of an innkeeper,
whitefield had worked
his way through Oxford
as a servant.
By 1740, he was already
the most famous religious
figure of the day.
He toured America,
preaching nearly every day
to huge crowds.
Bonomi: He preached
out in the open,
he didn't have to be
inside a church.
He preached in the fields.
He preached
in Philadelphia
in the center
of the street apparently.
Whitefield was a radical
in certain ways
in denouncing
conventional faith.
Holmes: His message
was that God cared
even for the poor,
for the Indians,
for the blacks,
as well as for the wealthy.
Narrator at the end
of his sermons,
whitefield would boom out his
universal invitation,
"come poor, lost,
undone sinner,
come just as you are to Christ."
If religion didn't
cut deeply,
if it didn't move
people powerfully,
then it was no good,
and so he would thumb
his nose at the clergy,
say they were
too conventional,
they were too dry,
they were dead.
Mitchell: In the Philadelphia
crowd that day
was Benjamin Franklin,
already a well-known printer,
the author
of the hugely successful
"poor Richard's almanack."
Ben Franklin was
a compendium of American
intellectual interests,
an autodidact who would
go on to chart the Gulf stream
and invent the lightning rod,
bifocals,
and the Franklin stove.
He was a deeply
unconventional man.
He believed in God
but rejected organized religion.
Man as Benjamin Franklin:
I never was without some
religious principles.
I never doubted,
for instance,
the existence of the deity,
that he made the world
and governed it
by his Providence
and that the most
acceptable service of God
was the doing good to man.
Benjamin Franklin.
Church: He believed
in the practicality of religion,
that religion was a useful tool
to organize society
and keep people loving
their neighbor as themselves.
Brethren and fathers
and all ye whom I am
about to preach
the kingdom of God,
I suppose you need not be...
Mitchell:
Franklin didn't proselytize.
He didn't discuss
his religious beliefs at all
unless he was pressed.
He gave donations
to a wide variety of churches,
yet he'd decided
beforehand that he would be
impervious
to whitefield's message.
Man as Franklin:
I silently resolved he
should get nothing from me.
I had in my pocket
a handful of copper money,
3 or 4 silver dollars,
and 5 pistoles in gold.
As he proceeded,
I began to soften
and concluded to give
the coppers.
Another stroke of his
oratory made me ashamed of that,
and determined me
to give the silver,
and he finished
so admirably that I emptied
my pockets wholly into
the collection plate,
gold and all.
Mitchell: In the end,
Franklin would publish many
of whitefield's tracts.
The preacher's eloquence
kick-started what was known
as the great awakening,
a wave of Evangelical fervor
that lasted a decade.
The awakening went
beyond the spiritual.
It instilled the vital idea
that these 13 separate
and very different colonies
were connected,
that their people could share
not only language but beliefs.
Suddenly, these colonists saw
themselves as large actors
upon the biggest stage of all.
Americans began to realize
that they were one people.
Meacham: They were
founding a new world,
there was
a great deal of imagery,
a great deal of conversation
about America being
the new Israel,
the new promised land.
There was an intense
religious feeling shaping
the generation that became
the revolutionary generation.
Mitchell: When
the great awakening ebbed
in the 1750s,
it left more churches
but not more church-goers.
So somewhat surprisingly
in America
in the mid-18th century,
somewhere around
20% to 30%, at the most,
of European American colonists
had any kind
of significant relationship
with a Christian congregation.
Mitchell:
It was in this era,
a time when evangelism had
ripped through America,
uniting it but then departing,
that a very different kind
of passion began
to take hold of the colonies.
This time
the fervor was political.
It would lead,
in the end, to revolution,
and that revolution,
in turn, would lead
to an unprecedented freedom
of religious faith.
Mitchell: The founding fathers
would try to unite
13 colonies into a country,
yet unity was,
in a sense, unnatural.
Religion mattered,
and in terms of religion,
America was strikingly diverse.
Butler: On the Eve
of the revolution,
no single denomination
held a majority.
In fact, the numbers
were very tiny.
Congregationalists were the
largest single denomination.
They comprised only 22%
of all religiously
affiliated colonists.
Next were the presbyterians,
less than that.
Next was the church of england.
Meacham: There were baptists,
there were quakers,
there were christians
of every kind of denomination,
there were hugely patriotic
Jewish Americans.
You also have a number
of slave religions
that have disappeared.
Bonomi: Lutherans,
German reform, the Dutch reform.
Robert p. George:
That makes us really unique.
It certainly made us unique
in the 18th century,
where peoplehood
was the result of having
a common ethnic bond
or tribal bond
or national bond or something
along those lines.
No European society looked
like this at all.
In every European society,
there was a dominant group
that by law could claim
the membership
of virtually everyone,
and then there were some
very small minorities.
America turned that topsy-turvy.
Mitchell: But diversity was
not a recipe for tranquility.
Religious clashes among
the sects were common
and occasionally violent.
The prosperous
and powerful colony
of Virginia was
in a sense typical.
Before the revolution,
the preeminent political voice
was the radical Patrick Henry.
Henry pushed a series
of anti-British resolves
through the house of burgesses
with inflammatory rhetoric,
but Henry's own wife was
not given a Christian burial
because her mental illness
was thought to be
the work of the devil.
True toleration
and religious freedom
were not even up for debate.
Butler: The church of england
sought through local authorities
to ban the activities of both
presbyterians and baptists.
[Bang bang bang]
Mitchell: Edmund Pendleton,
a respected Virginia judge,
was just one
of the Virginia judges
who sentenced
baptists preachers to jail
for what an observer called
"the heinous charge
"of worshiping God according
to the dictates
of their own consciences."
A local sheriff
brutally horsewhipped
one baptist clergyman.
A "gang of well-dressed men"
nearly drowned
two other baptists
by holding their heads
underwater in a nearby river.
Persecution was public practice
in orange, Virginia,
the hometown of a small, frail,
and sickly 17 year-old
named James Madison,
a shy boy whose father
was a prosperous
tobacco planter.
One day in 1768,
the two were out walking
and happened by the local jail.
Fenster: A baptist minister
named Elijah Craig
was arrested in Virginia
for being a baptist minister.
He began to preach
a sermon through the window
of his cell,
and a crowd gathered,
awed by what was happening.
Mitchell: The moment made
a lasting impression
on the sensitive
young Madison.
His response was a lifelong
pursuit of religious freedom
by the man who would was perhaps
the most influential
founder of all.
"That diabolical,
hell-conceived principle
of persecution rages
here in Virginia,"
Madison wrote.
"There are 5 or 6
well-meaning men
"in close jail for publishing
their religious sentiments,
so I must beg you to pray for
liberty of conscience for all."
Liberty of conscience was
no fact of life
in the American colonies
in the decade
before the revolution.
If Virginia persecuted
its baptists,
the northern colonies
had their own heretics,
Roman catholics.
In overwhelmingly
protestant New York City,
catholics practiced
their religion in secret.
Bonomi: There were
no catholic churches
in New York
or in Massachusetts.
You couldn't enter
New York as a catholic.
It was against the law.
They weren't even seen
by some as christians.
They were called heathens,
but then, the catholics called
the protestants heathens.
This is the way
they spoke to each other.
Opposition to catholicism
had actually been
a uniting force
within england itself.
England defined itself
as a protestant nation
over against catholic France,
and America inherited
that anti-catholicism
from their English parents.
Holmes: The Spanish
and the French empires
as far as they stretched
were on the whole intolerant
of protestants.
They put them to death
as heretics.
Protestants were afraid that
if they gave equal treatment
to Roman catholics and they grew
and multiplied
that they would again be
under Roman catholic authority.
Mitchell: Yet britain had
a problem called Canada.
By winning
the French and Indian war,
britain had taken over
what is now quebec in 1763.
Its denizens
were still French
and still catholic.
To mollify their new citizens,
the British parliament passed
the quebec act in 1774.
It granted Canadian catholics
complete freedom of worship.
Anti-catholic Americans
were furious.
Engraver Paul revere drew
a cartoon showing
Roman catholic bishops
dancing in glee.
Some of the loudest protests
came from an unsuccessful
businessman and tax collector
in Boston named Samuel Adams.
Adams was 51, an established
and vocal leader
of popular resistance
to the crown.
He was volatile,
bellicose, God-fearing,
and deeply prejudiced.
He came from Massachusetts
and the puritan background
that was known
for its ferocity
in favor of its own
particular religious beliefs.
There were suspicions
that catholics owed allegiance
to a foreign prince,
that being of course the pope.
Man as Samuel Adams:
Much more is to be dreaded
from the growth
of popery in America
than from stamp acts
or any other acts destructive
of men's civil rights.
Samuel Adams.
Children:if gallic papists
have a right
to worship their own way
Mitchell: In Philadelphia,
the outrage was put into verse.
of poor americans
there were enough
examples of raw friction
and even violence to give
the founding generation
first-hand knowledge
of the power of religion
and how it could shatter
a society or unite it.
Mitchell:
One of the greatest members
of the founding generation
was born in Quincy
near Boston in 1735.
John Adams, cousin of Sam,
was part of the fifth
generation of adamses
in puritan Massachusetts.
John studied for the ministry
but gave it up in disgust.
He found the local clergymen
were dogmatic and back-biting.
Man as John Adams:
The study of theology
and the pursuit of it as
a profession would involve me
in endless altercations
and make my life miserable.
John Adams.
Mitchell: Adams switched
to the law but proudly boasted
that when healthy
he never once missed
Sunday services
during his entire life.
Man as John Adams:
Ask me not, then,
whether I am a catholic
or a protestant,
calvinist or Armenian.
As far as they are
christians,
I wish to be a fellow disciple
with them all.
John Adams.
Mitchell: Yet John Adams
would never be loved by all.
He was a prominent, skillful,
and deeply knowledgeable lawyer.
His ideas on government
would help shape the nation,
but John Adams was simply
too contentious to be loved.
Wood: Wore his heart
on his sleeve,
a very passionate man,
full of ideas,
honest to the core,
politically incorrect.
Church: In Lewis carroll terms,
Adams is the red queen--
everything was
"off with their heads."
He was a great fulminator,
tremendously energetic,
always angry.
Mitchell: By the 1770s,
Adams was always angry
about British assaults
on American liberty.
He would soon form an alliance
with another like-minded lawyer,
Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.
The young Jefferson
was brilliant
in everything
from archaeology to zoology,
with architecture, music,
and paleontology in between,
but was less good
at making and handling money.
He was romantic
and idealistic.
Among his ideals were
an abiding belief
in individual rights,
a dislike
for centralized government,
and a faith in the need
for religious freedom.
Wood: Adams would have been
very doubtful
about the virtue
of the people,
and Jefferson,
who had a very magnanimous
view of human nature,
believed that people
were essentially virtuous,
and that's what separates
one founder from another,
their view of human nature.
Mitchell: Yet Jefferson
and John Adams became
close friends.
"Adams is so amiable,"
Jefferson told a friend,
"that I pronounce
you will love him
if you ever become
acquaintedith him."
The two were an odd couple.
Adams was short,
stout, northern, blunt,
and much attached
to tradition;
Jefferson, tall,
elegant, Southern, thoughtful,
and sweepingly revolutionary.
Both men were unconventional
in their faith,
but here, too,
they were different.
Adams was a devout Christian,
but he was a unitarian
and flatly rejected
standard Christian doctrines
of the trinity
and predestination.
Jefferson was
even more unorthodox.
Holland: Jefferson
was born and raised an anglican
and sometime
in his teenage years experienced
a kind of religious crisis,
became more rationalist,
more skeptical.
He did have great doubts about--
well, not just doubts.
He just denied
the divinity of Jesus,
and he was accused
of being un-Christian.
Well, he said to himself,
"I am a real Christian
because I believe
in Jesus' morality."
Fenster: Jefferson did
maintain an attachment
to the anglican church,
also known
as the episcopal church,
but mainly for the sake
of his daughters
and their activities.
He did make two
statements publicly,
one in his "notes of Virginia"
where he said,
"what does it matter
whether my neighbor believes
"in 20 gods or no God?
What does it hurt me?"
Well, that did hurt him,
that statement,
and then he said in his preamble
to the bill
for religious freedom,
a very important document,
"well, religion is
no more important
"to our civic rights
than our beliefs
in geometry and physics."
Mitchell: "I am a sect
by myself, as far as I know,"
Jefferson once wrote.
He clearly was someone
who disliked
ecclesiastical authority.
He saw it, I think,
as an unnecessary layer.
In his own mind,
he was a deeply
religious man
because his faith
and his knowledge
were all of a piece.
Mitchell: Jefferson knew
how controversial
his own version
of faith would be
if revealed in public,
so he kept it very private.
Man as Jefferson:
Our particular principles
of religion are a subject
of accountability
to our God alone.
I inquire after no man's
and trouble none with mine.
Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell: Adams very
deeply believed that
government and religion
should be separate.
He later wrote how pleased
he was that the United States
were "founded
on the natural authority
yet Adams also believed
that religion played
a crucial role
in public life.
Only a religious people
with God-fearing leaders
could guide an orderly
and rational popular government.
He had, he said,
"a veneration for the religion
of a people who profess
and call themselves christians."
Man as John Adams:
Without religion,
this world would be
something not fit to be
mentioned in polite company.
I mean hell.
John Adams.
Mitchell:
For the next 50 years,
these two men at the forefront
of American politics
would be friends, rivals,
enemies, and friends again.
Their agreements
and differences alike
would shape the nation.
Mitchell: Almost 50 years
after the events,
ex-president John Adams wrote
about the history he'd seen.
Man as John Adams: They thought
themselves bound to pray
for the king and queen
and all the royal family
and all in authority
under them as ministers ordained
of God for their good,
but when they saw
those powers bent
upon the destruction
of all the securities
of their lives,
liberties, and properties,
they thought
it their duty to pray
for the continental congress.
John Adams.
Mitchell: By the autumn of 1774,
British policies like
the stamp act
and the coercive acts
had incensed many Americans.
Revolution was in the air.
Every colony except
Georgia sent a delegation
to Philadelphia to discuss
what measures to take,
how far to go.
This first continental congress
was the first time
that the separate colonies
had met in a single assembly.
Could they act together?
A crowd milling
around outside the meeting hall
expected news and wanted action.
Yet on the first day
of the first American congress,
with the overpowering issue
of rebellion hanging
in the balance, the first issue
discussed was faith.
A delegate
from Massachusetts proposed
that they open
the meeting with a prayer,
but as delegate John Adams
wrote his wife Abigail...
Man as John Adams:
The motion was opposed
because we were so divided
in religious sentiments--
some were episcopalians,
some quakers,
some anabaptists,
some presbyterians,
and some congregationalists--
so that we could not join
in the same act of worship.
John Adams.
Brinkley: Well, in 1774,
everything almost went
to a crashing halt
at the continental congress
over the issue of a prayer.
What would be appropriate,
what Bible to use,
would you say something
that would alienate
an episcopalian
or a presbyterian?
And it became just
a hot button issue.
Mitchell:
Suddenly religion stood like
an immediate roadblock
to the entire idea of America.
Among the most prominent
delegates was
the uncompromising Samuel Adams.
The firebrand
congregationalist was
well-known for his
harsh condemnation
of both Roman catholics
and other protestant sects.
Samuel Adams was possibly
the most devout
of all the delegates
to the congress.
Man as John Adams:
Mr. Samuel Adams arose and said
he was no bigot.
I am no bigot.
Now I can hear a prayer
from a gentleman
of piety and virtue,
who is at the same time
a friend of my country.
Man as John Adams:
He moved that Mr. duche,
an episcopal clergyman,
might be desired
to read prayers
to the congress
tomorrow morning.
The motion was
seconded and passed
in the affirmative.
John Adams.
Man as duche: Therefore,
for thy name's sake,
lead me and guide me.
Mitchell:
An episcopal clergyman.
It was, as one delegate
said, "a masterly stroke."
If a notoriously stubborn
congregationalist like Adams
could accept
an episcopalian,
the other sects could, too.
Man as John Adams:
We must remember this was
the next morning after
we heard the horrible rumor
of the cannonade of Boston.
I never saw a greater effect
upon an audience.
It seemed as if heaven had
ordained that psalm
to be read on that morning.
John Adams.
Constrain them to drop
the weapons of war
from their unnerved hands
in the day of battle.
Amen.
[Delegates murmuring]
George: Certainly there was
a need for some sort of unity
in the great project
of building America.
There was a need for some
sort of, one might call it,
spiritual unity,
that did not implicate
the great divisions that
the founders had theologically.
I think Samuel Adams
understood this.
Mitchell: Despite
their partitions,
the 56 delegates of the first
continental congress
were all one thing--
English protestants
and anti-French.
An anti-catholic rancor
was rampant at the congress,
yet as America prepared
to separate from britain,
the congress hoped
to make Canada an ally.
The assembly composed
an open letter to Canadians.
Man as John Dickinson:
What is offered to you
by the late act of parliament?
Liberty of conscience
in your religion?
No. God gave it to you.
John Dickinson.
Mitchell: That single
sentence was a watershed.
Religious freedom,
America's founders were saying,
came from God,
not from government,
and if the two could be
separated at all,
they could eventually
be separated for good.
The revolution did not begin
with the founders
declaring independence.
Paul revere made
his celebrated midnight ride,
preceding the impromptu battles
of Lexington and Concord,
on the 18th of April in 1775.
Though not everyone knew it,
war had begun.
A few weeks later,
a second continental congress
gathered in Philadelphia.
This time, they voted to create
a continental army
with a 43 year-old
virginian as commander.
George Washington was tall,
athletic, and sickly.
He'd already suffered
from diphtheria, dysentery,
malaria, smallpox
and tuberculosis
and hadn't a single tooth
left in his mouth.
He was a supremely
successful planter,
quite probably the richest man
in colonial America,
yet he was known
for his reserve,
a public figure's sense
of eternal caution.
Roberts: George Washington was
the most cautious man that,
I think, I have
ever read about.
He was so aware of how
everything he did was watched
and would be followed
or commented upon,
seem to have
some significance.
Mitchell: He was reserved
but not unfeeling.
Washington hoped, as he said,
to promote
"the happiness of mankind."
Man as George Washington:
I trust the people
of every denomination
will be convinced that I shall
always strive to prove
a faithful and impartial patron
of genuine, vital religion.
No one would be
more zealous than myself
to establish effectual barriers
against the horrors
of spiritual tyranny
and every species
of religious persecution.
George Washington.
Mitchell: Washington
even showed respect
toward the religious freedom
of his enemies.
In 1775, he ordered
colonel Benedict Arnold
to invade Canada, hoping
the French Canadians there
would jump into the war
on the American side
and take up arms against
their old enemies, the British,
but Washington gave
the invaders
very particular instructions.
Man as Washington:
As far as lays in your power,
you are to protect
and support
the free exercise
of the religion of the country
and the undisturbed
enjoyment of conscience
in religious matters
with your utmost
influence and authority,
so forth and so on...
Mitchell: Washington's
orders to colonel Arnold
on the army's conduct
in the Canadian provinces
were explicit.
I would ask you to avoid
all disrespect
to or contempt
of the religion of this country
and its ceremonies.
That is clear?
Fenster: The campaign in quebec
was a military disaster.
The American army was
turned away from Canada,
which was more than happy
to turn away
from the American rebellion.
Mitchell:
With the invasion a failure,
Canada would remain British,
but a precedent
had been set.
George Washington had made
it clear that the cause
of American liberty would
include freedom of religion.
Mitchell:
On the face of it,
the American revolution was
nothing less than blasphemy.
The king of england was
chosen by God
and aligned with God,
yet virtually every
founder felt that religion
was a keystone
of his very being.
How could the founders
rationalize their
rebellious actions?
Meacham:
What I do think religion did
for the founding generation is
it gave them a confidence
and a way of seeing the world
in which the individual became
the primary organizing element
of the society.
It was no longer
the king and the aristocracy.
It was the citizen,
and the citizen drew
its authority,
drew its being
from being a creature of God.
Mitchell: The emphasis
on individual rights came
directly from John Locke,
the 17th century
English philosopher.
Everyone, said Locke,
had a natural right
to defend his "life, health,
liberty, or possessions."
Meacham: It was his thinking
that helped them see
that we needed to move
from the divine right of kings
to the idea that
we were all created equal
and that, in fact, divinity
resided in every person.
Rights that came from a king,
or even from a mob,
were rights that could be taken
away by a king or by a mob.
Rights that came
from God were permanent.
Mitchell: Not only did
individuals have rights,
America's founders were
willing to claim those rights
in the face of the armed might
of the English crown.
In the summer of 1776,
a committee of 5,
including Jefferson,
Adams, and Franklin,
submitted their work.
56 members of congress
then signed
the declaration of independence.
Brinkley: You were putting your
life on the line for liberty
by signing that document.
Mitchell: The declaration
of independence was
a secular document based
on implicit faith.
It mentioned God 4 times,
twice in the first
two sentences.
Fenster: Even as it ticked off
a list of reasons
for the rebellion,
some of which may seem
quite petty today,
it raised the dimension
of the demand
for independence and made
it a spiritual thing.
Mitchell: Where did
their right to rebel come from?
From God.
It was not a king, pope,
preacher, or politician
who bestowed freedom
on human beings but God.
"The laws of nature
and nature's God,"
the declaration said,
entitled the American people
to be both equal to the British
and separate from them,
and all men "are endowed
by their creator
with certain
inalienable rights,"
including "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness."
Mitchell: The third
reference to God was
an appeal to "the supreme judge
of the world."
The fourth acknowledged
"the protection
of divine Providence."
God was there 4 times
in just 1,337 words,
yet more important
were things that
the declaration
did not talk about.
Meacham: Christianity
was not mentioned,
Jesus was not mentioned,
the trinity was not invoked.
The founders understood
that it was going to become
a country of many
different faiths,
of many different tongues,
and they wanted to preserve
the right of everyone
to pursue that part
of their lives in as free
a context as possible.
Mitchell: With so many
different faiths,
religion could have broken
the new country apart,
but diversity could also
bind Americans together.
Difference, paradoxically
enough, was something
we all had in common.
We were all part
of a diverse whole.
As Madison would later argue,
the fact that there were
so many different groups
could act as the best guarantee
of religious freedom.
No single powerful group
could bully the rest.
Holland: There's such
a rich legacy that comes
to us from the founding
of America,
a rich culture of faith
and morality that teaches us
that other
human beings matter,
that we should
care for them,
that there is something like
transcendent truth out there.
They've held us accountable
for justice and equity.
Alexis de tocqueville in his
classic work
"democracy in America"
asked the question,
"what has been responsible
for America's
Democratic greatness?"
He argued, that the difference
was America's mores,
its character, its national
sense of values and ideals.
To be an American is to believe
in some things,
and those things are
equality, liberty,
constitutionalism.
And those founders created
this basis for nationhood.
There was no nation in 1776.
No one has ever come up
with better principles.
No one has come up
with a better principle
than the equality
of human beings,
the basic equality
of human beings
as children of God.
No one's ever come up
with a better principle
than the idea that
we are endowed
by our creator
with certain unalienable rights,
rights that
the government didn't give us
and therefore the government has
no right to take away.
Those are principles
that are perennial.
They'll live forever.
Mitchell:
For all the soaring grandeur
of the declaration
and the greatness
of the American character,
the new country
had a tragic flaw,
one that would
ruin millions of lives.
I see a paradox that is
so extraordinary
that it does not submit itself
to honest reasoning.
They were fighting
for their freedom.
At the same time,
they held large numbers
of people in slavery
with no intention,
with no intention
of setting them free,
and spending their
time rationalizing
why they should not be free.
Mitchell: Thomas Jefferson was
among dozens of founders
who owned slaves, including
Washington and Franklin,
yet he was also the author
of the immortal words,
"all men are created equal,"
and he hated slavery.
Man as Jefferson:
The rights of human nature
deeply wounded by this
infamous practice of slavery.
Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell: But would
all 13 colonies agree to unite
if slavery were outlawed
in the new nation?
Jefferson didn't
think they would.
Without allowing
the "infamous practice,"
there would be no America.
In his own life, too,
Jefferson felt trapped.
His plantations needed
slave labor to compete,
and survive.
Man as Jefferson: As it is,
we have the wolf by the ear,
and we can neither hold him
nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale
and self-preservation
in the other.
Thomas Jefferson.
Church: Part of him
that was trying to survive
was saying, "there's nothing
we can do about this,"
or "it's up to
another generation."
He turned his eye away
while recognizing,
"there is no way that the notion
all men are created equal
does not include
our black brothers and sisters."
He was divided
right down the middle.
You can call that
hypocrisy if you want.
This is a manifestation
of the fact
that the founders were human,
just like we're human today.
They fell short
of their ideals
just like we fall short
of our ideals today.
What rescues the founders
for me, though in this,
is that they put into place
the principles that
would over time
repudiate slavery.
Mitchell: In the declaration
of independence,
the founders did not mention
slavery at all.
Meacham: We do justice
to them not by deifying them
but by taking them
all and all and realizing
that if human beings
as flawed as Washington
and Jefferson and Adams
and Madison were
can do great things,
then potentially we can, too.
Mitchell: By may of 1778,
Washington's army had survived
a killing winter
at valley forge,
but how could the tattered
remnants of an army win a war?
The powerful British forces
took control
of America's major cities,
sat back, and waited
for the rebel army
to disintegrate.
The colonials were
poorly paid, badly fed,
and sometimes overwhelmed by
the formidable army they faced.
What could hold these troops
from entirely different
colonies together?
For Washington,
the challenge lay
in establishing unity
in an army and a country
with disparate beliefs.
Church: Those differences
were never clearer
than on Sunday.
The sabbath was a day
of rest in new england,
and it was day
of recreation in Virginia,
and so when Washington
would declare these days
of Thanksgiving,
which were to celebrate
a great victory,
he made sure everyone went
to church in the morning,
and then he invoked play
and recreation
as the agenda
for the afternoon.
So everyone was
100% half satisfied.
Mitchell: Washington himself was
a kind of religious amalgam.
By his mid-30s he'd
served as a vestryman
in his local
episcopal church.
Church: Even though
he was a vestryman,
he never joined the church,
never took communion,
was very, very mum
on Christian matters.
Mitchell: Yet Washington
authorized the appointment
of army chaplains,
something not common
in European armies.
It would be a good thing,
he thought,
if his men were devout.
To the distinguished
character of patriot,
it should be
our highest glory
to add the more
distinguished character
of Christian.
Butler: Washington encouraged
religion among his troops
during the revolutionary war.
He encouraged it
for purposes of troop morale.
He wasn't cynical in that.
He knew that many soldiers
were themselves religious.
Washington saw
a military usefulness in that.
I think he also saw
a moral usefulness in that.
The founders, all of them were
believers in God.
There's not
an atheist among them.
They were not emotionally
religious people, most of them,
but faith in that sense
was important to them,
but it was important
as an inculcator
of virtue, of morality.
Society needed
religion to survive.
Mitchell: Yet Washington
was more comfortable
talking about Providence
ratherhan God.
His letters are full
of statements
about the hand
of Providence intervening
and assertions that
the revolution
could not possibly
have succeeded
without God's intervention.
His work overflows
with references
about Providence,
but his exact nature
of his private religious beliefs
is hard to discern.
Mitchell: In 1779,
Washington gave Benedict Arnold
command of the vital
west point stronghold
on the Hudson river north
of New York City.
Arnold was a traitor.
He devised a plot to turn
west point over to the British
and gave the papers
detailing his plan
to a spy named John Andre.
Andre disguised himself
in an American uniform
and rushed with the plans
toward British headquarters
in New York.
The next morning,
a wandering group
of American soldiers,
absent without leave
from the continental army,
stopped Andre
for no reason at all.
They searched him
and discovered the papers,
ending Benedict Arnold's
treasonous plot.
Man as Washington:
In no instance
since the commencement
of the war,
has the interposition
of Providence appeared
more remarkably conspicuous than
in the rescue of the post
and Garrison of west point from
Arnold's villainous perfidy.
Your humble servant,
George Washington.
Mitchell: The word
"Providence"was used often
by many of the founders.
It meant the benign
intervention of God,
but what God?
Brinkley: There's become
a tradition of great Americans
of invoking God,
but it's God not
of a particular sect.
It's a universal God,
an American creator.
Providence meant that he was
moving forward the good causes.
So when the revolution occurs,
it's very important to them
to know that God is
on their side
because he was
active in history.
Washington thought
God was looking after
the Republic.
He thought he was looking
after him personally
because he survived
the revolutionary war.
So I think faith
in that sense was
important to them.
Mitchell: In 1630,
John winthrop had hoped
that Boston would be
the city on the hill,
the perfect model
for the world.
Almost 150 years later,
many of the founders hoped
and believed that America
would be the nation on the hill,
a model for the world.
In 1776, we were fighting
for independence,
and even then, it was
already clear that we were
fighting for much more,
a new kind of nation.
For almost 170 years,
the government of Virginia
had been closely intertwined
with the anglican church,
but as the war went on,
Virginia began to take
the first steps
toward another kind
of revolution,
religious freedom.
George Mason drafted
the Virginia declaration
of rights in June, 1776.
It would deeply influence
both the declaration
of independence
and the bill of rights.
Mason's first
draft included a clause
that guaranteed toleration
of all religious creeds.
Man as George Mason:
All men should enjoy
the fullest toleration
in the exercise of religion,
unpunished and unrestrained.
George Mason.
Mitchell:
It was a giant step forward,
but for James Madison
not enough.
The small, frail boy who'd been
moved by a sermon from jail
was now a small, frail man
with weak nerves
and a squeaky voice.
He was once described as
a man "no bigger than
a half piece of soap,"
but Madison was
an incisive thinker
who prepared
with incredible thoroughness
and a voracious student
who was passionate
about religious freedom.
Brinkley: What he got
out of his readings was
a firm belief that he
carried through life
that it was
the individual's pursuit
of religion,
that it was not doctrine
that had to be spoon-fed you,
that you needed to read
scripture and come up
with your own interpretations
and be a church unto yourself.
Mitchell: As a young lawyer,
he defended baptist preachers
arrested for preaching
without a license
from the anglican church.
For Madison, the idea that
the government could tolerate
various beliefs
was not sufficient.
Nor was the idea new.
In 1689, the English
parliament had passed
the act of toleration,
granting freedom of worship
to protestants alone,
and dissenters like
the puritans
had to register with the church.
Toleration presupposed that
there was a dominant church
willing to let the others exist.
Toleration was a very different
thing from religious liberty.
It took a long time
for a true understanding
of liberty to develop.
Holmes: It was goethe
who said that toleration
is an insult because
when toleration is granted
it can always be withdrawn.
Mitchell: So the quiet
Madison helped Mason rewrite
Virginia's declaration
of rights.
It was now quite different.
Man as James Madison:
Religion can be directed
only by reason
and conviction,
not by force or violence,
and therefore,
all men are equally entitled
to the free exercise
of religion,
according to the dictates
of conscience.
James Madison.
George: The great challenge
to the American founders--
the great experiment
that they undertook--
was to see if it would
be possible,
as the first
federalist papers said,
"to create a government
based on reflection and choice
rather than
on accident and force."
Mitchell: Toleration
had become freedom.
Yet the amended
declaration of rights
also suggested
that the government depended
on Christian virtues.
Man as Madison:
It is the mutual duty of all
to practice
Christian forbearance, love,
and charity towards each other.
James Madison.
Mitchell: Madison's friend
and fellow virginian
Thomas Jefferson
still wasn't satisfied.
Fenster: He was
a legislator in Virginia
when he authored
a bill for establishing
religious freedom.
Its main point
was quite simple,
"all men shall be free
to profess and by argument
to maintain their opinions
in matters of religion."
Mitchell: When Jefferson was
appointed minister to France,
he took care
to pack ample copies
of his bill
for religious freedom.
The great thinkers
of Europe had created
the theory of man's
natural rights of man,
but it took the new American
spirit to put those ideas
into the language of law,
but Jefferson's bill
was not yet a law.
In Virginia, the bill stalled
in the legislature.
Mitchell: In 1783,
the treaty of Paris ended
the revolutionary war.
Against all odds,
the Americans had won.
Man as Washington:
I was but the humble agent
of favoring heaven,
whose benign interference
was so often manifested
in our behalf
and to whom the praise
of victory alone is due.
Meacham: I think
at the end of the war
Washington's view
of divine intervention
was heartfelt,
and I think he was humbled
by what had happened,
almost crushed
in New York, valley forge,
all the great images
that we know.
No rational person would
have bet on us in 1776,
and so certainly,
it seemed like a miracle.
If anything, I think
Washington believed
that it was virtue rewarded
and that a great sense
of responsibility
came with that,
that this was a covenant.
This wasn't victory
without strings.
The strings were you
have to live up
to what you've been given--
fought for but also given.
Mitchell: A conquering general
had always taken
up the reins of authority.
Power was the usual reward
for victory,
but George Washington
went home to Virginia.
His home state was
in the midst
of a very different struggle.
Several states had passed
what was essentially
a religious tax,
government support
for churches
in the form
of a general assessment.
Thomas Jefferson was outraged.
Man as Jefferson:
To compel a man to furnish
contributions of money
for the propagation
of religious opinions
which he disbelieves
and deplores
is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell: The baptist church too
opposed the general assessment,
but the powerful
anglican church
strongly supported the tax,
led by the eminent
Patrick Henry.
The revolutionary orator famed
for "give me liberty,
or give me death"
had been raised as
an anglican,
but as a lawyer,
he'd defended both
baptists and quakers.
He'd even been known to pay
the fines of imprisoned baptists
out of his own pocket.
His bill would
eliminate the idea
of a single state-supported,
church but it would deliver
tax money to ministers
of various
Christian denominations,
linking government with church.
Holland: He thought
that religious morality
was absolutely critical
to sustaining liberty
and therefore government
had some role to play
to shore that up.
Mitchell: Jefferson
and Madison opposed
any state support
for religion,
earning themselves
a formidable political foe.
The fiery Henry
was universally
revered in Virginia
and had been
elected governor 4 times.
To a friend, Jefferson wrote...
Man as Jefferson:
What we have to do, I think,
is pray devoutly
for his death.
Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell: Instead of praying,
the scholarly Madison wrote
a persuasive
if anonymous argument
against Henry's bill.
"The state had no
authority to involve
itself in religion,"
Madison said.
True religious freedom
did not mean that all churches
would be linked
to the government
but that none of them would.
An effective argument.
Some 11,000 virginians signed
a petition opposing
the general assessment,
and the measure soon died.
Jefferson's act
for religious freedom,
instead, became
Virginia law in 1786.
Meacham: The legacy
of the Virginia act
is providing
the intellectual foundation,
underpinnings, and argument
for a culture and nation
in which religion is a matter
of choice and not coercion,
and almost every other country,
it had been an issue
of coercion.
Mitchell: Jefferson's act took
a simple but revolutionary step.
It entirely separated
the institutions
of government and religion.
Jefferson and Madison
had redefined the modern state.
Man as Madison:
We have in this country
extinguished forever
the ambitious hope
of making laws
for the human mind.
James Madison.
Mitchell: Within a few years
after it had begun,
the United States was
on the brink of failure.
The former colonies
were united only loosely
under the articles
of confederation.
The federal government could
neither pay its debts
nor protect its people.
Something had to be done.
In the summer of 1787,
delegates from 12
of the 13 states
gathered in Philadelphia.
James Madison came
from Virginia
11 days before the meeting
was supposed to begin.
He needed to be prepared,
for Madison wanted
his delegation
to present an ambitious plan
to the convention.
Instead of fixing
the broken government,
the assembly would create
an entirely new system,
a constitution.
The United States constitution
had a long, difficult nativity,
4 months of wrangling,
compromise, and distrust.
So much of Madison's
original plan
was discarded that he became
bitterly disappointed.
Before long, the assembly was
on the verge of breaking apart.
Sir, fairness demands
that each state
be represented equally
and not..
Mitchell: The only one who could
not be discouraged
was 81 year-old
Benjamin Franklin.
Not known for his
public speaking,
Franklin delivered
a perfectly timed
and delicately
articulate suggestion.
I have lived, sir,
a long time,
and the longer I live,
the more convincing proofs I see
of this truth,
that God governs
in the affairs of men.
Bushman: Benjamin Franklin
was virtually a second father
of this country.
George Washington
had attained his high standing
in the public mind
through his generalship.
Benjamin Franklin attained
it through diplomacy,
so though he said very little
in the constitutional
convention,
whenever he spoke,
everyone listened.
I therefore beg leave
to move
that henceforth prayers
imploring
the assistance of heaven
and blessings
on our deliberations
be held in this assembly
each morning
before we proceed
to our business.
For the people's sake
and for the country's sake,
they needed to invoke
God's blessing.
Your excellency.
Mitchell: But what
the founders did next
was astounding,
a kind of American revolution
all by itself.
Most of them thought
that a common religious belief
was necessary
for a moral society,
yet the venerable
Ben Franklin
was quickly voted down.
On the bottom of his speech,
Franklin scrawled,
"the convention,
except 3 or 4 persons,
thought prayers unnecessary!"
The impasse
over the representation
of states was eventually
circumvented,
and the constitution
was written during
the course of 1787.
Butler: The constitution is
an amazing document.
Itt's amazing
an amazing document
in a structural fashion.
It's an amazing document
as a political fact
because it was forged
in a sense from nothing.
It is amazing
in its inventiveness,
its creativeness.
Nothing like this
had existed before,
and it's frankly amazing
in its secularity,
that is, its power
isn't derived
from claims
about the divine.
Mitchell: The only mention
of religion
in the original
constitution was meant
to enforce the idea
of religious liberty.
It came from Charles pinckney,
an unlikely source.
Pinckney was an ambitious,
unrestrained South carolinian
from a powerful family.
He had no apparent interest
in religious freedom.
Against the inclinations
of many delegates,
pinckney eventually pushed
through a seminal line
in article vi.
And so I propose that
no religious test
should be required
as a qualification to serve
in public office
or the other public trusts.
Mitchell: Pinckney's
line distinguished
the United States
from the old world
and pointed the way
toward a secular conception
of the state.
In the finished constitution,
God was not mentioned at all.
Who was in charge?
"This constitution,"
the document says,
"shall be the supreme law
of the land."
Butler: The religion
question wasn't seen
as proper to a question
about the structure
of government.
It was also seen as dangerous.
In other words,
if you put the religion question
out in the structure
of government,
would that undermine
the chances
for the ratification
of a new federal government?
Mitchell: To an extent,
the constitution
displeased everyone.
Benjamin Franklin lamented
that it didn't abolish slavery.
Several delegates
lamented that the omission
of a bill of rights,
including religious freedom,
was an appalling mistake.
Near the end, Ben Franklin
offered the convention
his wisdom one more time
but decided it would be
more effectively delivered
by someone else.
He asked his friend
James Wilson to read it.
"Mr. president,
I doubt whether
"any other convention
we can obtain
"may be able to make
a better constitution,
"for when you assemble
a number of men to have
"the advantage
of their joint wisdom,
"you inevitably assemble
with those men
"all their prejudices,
"their passions,
their errors of opinion,
"their local interests,
and their selfish views.
"It therefore
astonishes me, sir,
"to find this system
approaching so near
to perfection as it does."
[Pounding and murmuring]
Hear, hear!
Mitchell: Moments later,
all but 3 of the delegates
signed the constitution.
After its passage,
even the disappointed
James Madison began
to look approvingly
on the document.
Many of the ideas
in the constitution
had been his work,
but he now pointed
toward a different author.
Man as Madison: It is impossible
for the man of pious reflection
not to perceive
in the constitution a finger
of that almighty hand
which had been extended
to our relief
in the revolution.
James Madison.
Mitchell: The constitution
was finished and signed.
The question was whether
it would be accepted
by the people.
For it to become law,
9 states would need
to ratify it
in special state conventions.
The debate was long
and contentious.
Finally the supporters
of the constitution,
called the federalists,
agreed to add a bill of rights.
With that concession,
the U.S. constitution
was ratified.
On April 30, 1789,
George Washington became
the first president
of the United States.
His was a job and a role
that was entirely undefined.
Fenster: Newly independent
Americans were acting
on centuries of tradition
in looking
to their leader for guidance
on religious matters,
but George Washington
was extremely careful
in that regard.
He was deeply aware
of his responsibility
to bring people together.
He did not want religion
to be a divisive force
in any way.
To use language of Jesus
and Jesus Christ often
could be seen as divisive
and unneeded.
If you appeared to speak in one
form of religious language,
you're going to alienate
people who spoke
another religious language,
and Washington knew well
that he had to rise
above that fray.
We can credit him
with laying the groundwork
for religious freedom
by leaving his own
position neutral.
Mitchell: In 1790,
when George Washington
was in the second year
of his presidency,
he received a letter
from the Jewish congregation
yeshuat Israel of Newport,
Rhode Island.
In reply, he wrote
a memorable response
about religion in America.
Man as Washington:
For happily the government
of the United States,
which gives to bigotry
no sanction,
to persecution no assistance,
requires only that they who live
under its protection
should demean themselves
as good citizens.
Mitchell: People still come
together at the synagogue
in Newport every August,
the anniversary
of Washington's letter.
The reading of the letter is
a very special occasion
because the words are
among the most important
in terms of American history.
"May the children
of the stock of Abraham,
who dwell in this land"...
Man as Washington:
Continue to merit
and enjoy the goodwill
of the other inhabitants,
while everyone shall sit
in safety
under his own vine and fig tree,
and there shall be none
to make him afraid.
Mitchell: "There shall be
none to make him afraid."
The president's biblical
reference was a poetic
and powerful assurance,
but Washington wasn't
going to be president forever.
Everybody knew that religion
would ultimately come
to affect politics,
and the question was
if the wrong group or groups
got power
with the federal government,
wouldn't they try to
establish their church
as the national church?
Couldn't some group just lop on
to the federal government
and say, "ok.
The presbyterian church
is going to be
the national church,"
or, "the congregational church
is going to be
the national church"?
And so there was a fear
about the religion question
if it wasn't handled.
Mitchell: What rights did
small religious groups
have in a new nation,
and what about individuals?
Perhaps a more
power-hungry president
than Washington would want
to tell the people
what they could say
or where they could pray?
Critics of the new constitution
clamored for changes,
the changes
that had been promised
during the struggle
for ratification
two years earlier.
I beg to differ
with you, Mr. Madison.
The people of Virginia
insist there be a list
of assured
individual liberties.
Holland: Patrick Henry,
George Mason,
these prominent anti-federalists
are the ones that
really put the heat
on James Madison and others
to say, "if you're
going to have our support,
"if we're going
to move forward,
"we really need to have
a bill of rights
as part of this,"
and one of the things that
is preeminent there
is a commitment
to religious liberty.
Mitchell: Baptists, too,
were strong supporters
of religious freedom
for a very good reason.
Church: The baptists'
experience had been,
"unless it is made explicit,
we are going to be burned,
"government
will turn against us,
"the established parties
will persecute us,
will tax us for the support of
other religious institutions,"
namely their own.
Bushman: Madison opposed
a bill of rights on principle.
Mitchell: For James Madison,
a list of certain
individual rights implied
that there couldn't be
other rights.
Whatever you didn't list
could be denied.
And changing the constitution
might be like
opening up pandora's box--
all kinds of bad laws
would follow.
Church: Madison was forced
by his baptist constituents
to deal with what he called,
"this nauseating business
of amendments."
Mitchell: If it had to be done,
it would be better
if Madison
just did it himself.
He took the lead in writing
the bill of rights,
10 amendments that guaranteed
what we now see
as the basic rights
of Americans.
The very
first amendment began...
Congress shall make
no law respecting
an establishment of religion
or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.
George: That, I think,
is rightly interpreted
as meaning that the founders
wanted to make sure
that the institution
of the church
and the institution of the state
were separate institutions.
Meacham: The first
amendment has two parts.
It bans the idea,
it bans the possibility
of an established church,
and it argues that everyone
should have the free
exercise of religion.
Wood: The first amendment
applied at the outset
only to the federal government
so that we have to keep
in mind that
that first amendment was saying
the federal government
cannot interfere
with certain rights,
but the states were still
free to put limits
on religious freedom and speech.
Mitchell: The first amendment
was a milestone
in world history.
For the first time,
a national government promised
to stay out of religion.
Roberts: The declaration
of independence,
the constitution,
the bill of rights,
our charters of freedom,
they're our glue.
They are what make us a country,
and once we have that
pulling us together,
then we have the freedom
and the ability
to be diverse
in all kinds of other ways.
Meacham: It is not
simply the freedom
to choose whether to be
a mormon or an episcopalian
or catholic or a Muslim.
It is the liberty
of those not to believe.
"I am going to pursue
my own destiny, my own code,
"my own vision
without being pressured by
or buffeted by larger forces."
The first real
life test for religious freedom
took place
in the election of 1800
between John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell: Adams was running
for a second term
against Jefferson,
his long-time friend
and by now
his political opposite.
Together they'd done much
of the work to create
the declaration
of independence,
but Adams had beaten Jefferson
in the last election.
Then as president,
he moved to suppress criticism
of his government.
He had made the government
a force in religious matters
to great discontent.
Church: Adams declared
a fast day,
a national day of fasting.
It was written
in very Christian language.
Adams himself believed
that the support of the church
was necessary if government
were going to stand.
The fast Eve,
there were riots in the streets.
That fast day led
the sectarian christians,
the baptists, the methodists,
and also Jews and others
to be very wary of Adams
as a religious president
who would impose
his religious views upon them.
Mitchell: Jefferson,
the vice president,
was outraged.
The election campaign
of 1800 was bitter.
George: The election
of 1800 was a crucial moment
in our national history.
People think our politics
today is polarized--and it is--
but, boy, if you wanted
to see polarization,
you should look
at the election of 1800--
bitterness, recriminations,
nasty campaigning.
Mitchell: Jefferson hired
James callender,
a writer who specialized
in political slander.
The Jefferson campaign called
Adams a fool, a hypocrite,
a criminal, a tyrant,
but Adams'
supporters retaliated.
Jefferson was branded
a weakling, a libertine,
and a coward.
Perhaps the worst
accusation of all--
this politician who said he was
"in a sect by myself,"
did he believe in God at all?
Man: "The only question to
be asked by every American,
"laying his hand
on his heart, is
"shall I continue
in allegiance to God
"and a religious president
or impiously declare
for Jefferson and no God?"
Wood: Jefferson was accused
of being an atheist,
and he felt he was
not an atheist.
He never was.
He learned his lesson,
which Franklin had voiced
several years earlier.
1784 he said, "look.
Anybody who speaks out
"against religion,
it's like spitting in the wind.
You just don't
do it in America."
Mitchell: The brutality
of the campaign severed
the old friendship.
It was a tragedy of spirit
that seemed to endanger
everything that
the two great men had worked
so hard to create--
the American system itself.
Brinkley: There was great fear
that America was going to be
destroyed because suddenly
this two-party system
had reared its head,
and the Adams crowd,
the federalists, were saying
that he was a pagan--
Thomas Jefferson--
a crazy deist,
and that he was going to
forever ban christianity
in the United States,
and it got very heated.
Mitchell: The partisan
maelstrom created genuine fear.
Citizens actually believed
that Jefferson
would banish the Bible.
Bushman: In 1800,
one of the questions was,
"are we going to go
the jeffersonian/baptist route
"with no established religions
of any kind
"and take the risk that
religion will diminish
in America and virtue
will go down with it?"
Mitchell: It was a close
and confused election.
In the end, Jefferson won.
Fenster: The election
proved a point that
reverberates to this day,
that the implementation
of religious freedom
and separation of church
and state were laws
laid down by the founders,
but the protection
of those ideas was
in the hands
of the people.
Man as Jefferson:
If the freedom for religion,
guaranteed to us
by law in theory,
can ever rise in practice under
the overbearing inquisition
of public opinion,
truth will prevail
over fanaticism.
Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell: Jefferson
and Madison both realized
that freedom is
a greater spur than force.
The absence of federal
government intervention
actually helped religion
to grow.
Hatch: There was
tremendous upsurge.
I was reading the diary
of William Bentley,
who kept talking about
how the common people
of the town were holding
night religious meetings,
and there would be
sailors preaching,
there would be women preaching,
there would be
African-Americans preaching.
I shout, "hallelujah,"
when I think of his life.
Butler: The first amendment
forbids an establishment
and also protects the right
of religious worship,
and both of them working
together have encouraged
religious groups to go out
and seek members.
In the old days,
in the days of an establishment,
you didn't need
to seek members
because the state paid
for religious services.
Hatch: Look at
the yellow pages of any town
in America, and you can
find forms of faith
that the founding fathers
would have found unimaginable
but would have given
free choice
to any individual to belong
to a wide variety of groups
or to no group,
and I think that
would have pleased them.
Butler: The state
of the United States
at the beginning
of the 21st century suggests
that they were
completely correct.
They couldn't have
been more correct.
We now live
in a society that has
far more religions,
far more religious
participation,
far more religion involved
in the nature of society
than happened to have
been true at the time
of the American revolution
and the creation
of the first amendment,
and that in part is
a testament
to their conviction
that religion would
flourish on its own.
Meacham: The great good news
about the country
is that religion has shaped us
without strangling us.
Mitchell: The American
revolution we all know
came with drums and guns,
with battle and bloodshed.
The quieter revolution
was less spectacular
and much slower,
coming only step by step,
but it was more
unique in human history.
This was the story
of an idea,
a government devoted
to maintaining liberty,
not uniformity.
Bushman: The story of liberty
is never a simple story.
It requires constant attention,
constant thought.
It requires argument and debate,
and only out of that process
can we achieve
the goal that we want,
which is religious freedom
for all.
Wood: The founding fathers
not only created
the institutions by which
we still govern ourselves,
but they infused
into the culture, our culture,
all of our highest aspirations,
our ideals,
our greatest values,
including religious liberty
being one of the most important.
The struggle
for religious liberty is
a perennial struggle.
There will always be
the temptation
to cut back
on religious freedom.
There will always be
some end in view,
some fear that people have
that will tempt us as a people
to dishonor
the fundamental right
to religious freedom
and the right to bring faith
into the public square.
It was a world historic
contribution to say that
"yes, religion matters
for the health
"of a society,
but government
"must leave people free
to pursue their beliefs
as they see fit."
It is a system that we should
change with great care,
if at all.
Mitchell: Ben Franklin
was the first to go.
By 1790, he was 84
and quite ill.
One day his daughter said,
"I hope, father,
that you will yet recover,
and live many years."
"I hope not,"
Ben Franklin said.
His wish was granted.
He died that April, 1790.
It was soon discovered
that he'd added a note
onto his will.
Man as Franklin:
My fine crab-tree walking stick
with a gold head
curiously wrought
in the form
of a cap of liberty
I give to my friend
and the friend of mankind
George Washington.
Mitchell: Washington
himself still had Miles to go
before he could rest
from his 8 years as president.
It was 1796 before
he would write
his farewell address
to the American people.
An advisor suggested
that Washington mention
"a generally received
and divinely authoritative
religion"in the address.
Washington refused,
but he believed that faith
needed to be a part
of the national character.
He was leaving
a nation that was,
as he said, "in command
of its own fortunes."
Man as Washington:
I anticipate with
pleasing expectation
that retreat
in which I promise myself
the sweet enjoyment
of good laws
under a free government.
Mitchell: Less than
3 years after leaving office,
George Washington died
and was buried at mount Vernon.
James Madison was
the last founding father to die.
In 1817, he retired
to Montpelier,
his tobacco plantation.
For his final 19 years,
he never left Virginia again.
Among his last works
was a protest
against the appointment
of chaplains for congress.
Even at the end,
James Madison was a watchdog
for the revolutionary
American concept
of separation
between church and state.
Man as Madison:
I am far from desponding
of the great
political experiment
in the hands
of the American people.
Much has already been gained.
Much may be expected.
Mitchell:
The bitter election of 1800
had severed the friendship
between Thomas Jefferson
and John Adams.
In time, the two
great men reconciled.
Man as John Adams:
Now, my friend Jefferson,
there is now, ever will be,
and never was
but one being who can
understand the universe
and that it is not
only vain but wicked
for insects to pretend
to comprehend it.
John Adams.
Man as Jefferson:
These are things
which you and I
may perhaps know ere long.
We have so lived
as to fear near neither horn
of the dilemma.
We have, willingly,
done injury to no man
and have done
for our country the good
which has fallen in our way.
Be our last as cordial
as were our first affections.
Thomas Jefferson.
Mitchell: John Adams died
on July 4, 1826,
exactly a half century
after the declaration
of independence.
Adams' last words were,
"Jefferson still survives."
He was wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
had died just hours before,
but what they had created
with the other founders
still survived.
The shocking and very basic
American principles
of a separate church
and state of a nation,
that guaranteed religious
liberty in these United States.
Religious freedom
has always been
a fundamental human right,
but freedom does not always
come easily.
America's first freedom
was freedom of faith.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote,
"almighty God hath created
the mind free.
"No man shall suffer on account
"of his religious opinions
or belief,
"but all men shall be free
to profess their opinions
"in matters of religion.
"Truth is great
and will prevail
if left to herself."
To learn more
about the founding
fathers
and the separation
of church and state,
visit
pbs. Org/first freedom.
"First freedom:
The fight for
religious liberty"
is available
on DVD.
The companion
book is also
available.
To order, visit
shoppbs.Org
or call
1-800-play-pbs.
Also available
on iTunes.
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