First Amendment 101

A New Order of Religious Freedom

Any time is a good time, but this election is a particularly good time, to review some basics about the free exercise of religion in this American constitutional order

More than he wanted to be remembered for having been president, Mr. Jefferson wanted to be remembered as the author of the Virginia "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom." In the text of the bill he underlined this sentence: "The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction." In a republic of free citizens, every opinion, every prejudice, every aspiration, every moral argument has access to the public square in which we deliberate the ordering of our life together.

"The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction." And yet civil government is ordered by, and derives its legitimacy from, the opinions of the citizenry. Precisely here do we discover the novelty of the American experiment, the unique contribution of what the Founders called this novus ordo seclorum, a new order for the ages. Never before in human history had any government denied itself jurisdiction, whether limited or total, over that on which it entirely depends, the opinion of its people.

Hat Tip: View From 1776