History: Web Resources

The Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom was drafted by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the General Assembly on January 16, 1786, before being signed into law three days later. The statute affirms the rights of Virginians to choose their faiths without coercion; separates church and state; and, while acknowledging the right of future assemblies to change the law, concludes that doing so would “be an infringement of a natural right.”

Encyclopedia Virginia’s mission is to provide a free, reliable, multimedia resource that tells the inclusive story of Virginia for students, teachers, and communities who seek to understand how the past informs the present and the future.

“An Act for establishing religious Freedom” was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, introduced into the House of Delegates in 1779, reintroduced in 1785, and finally adopted by the full General Assembly on January 16, 1786. This manuscript version of what has come to be known as the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom was signed alongside three other laws on January 19. Some spelling has been modernized.

A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, was introduced to the House of Delegates on June 12, 1779, but eventually tabled. James Madison reintroduced a slightly different version in 1785, which was passed by the General Assembly on January 16, 1786.

From May 25 to September 17, 1787, the Federal Convention met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to draft the Constitution of the United States. The Bill of Rights, ten amendments that detail individuals’ rights and immunities against the central government, was presented to the First Congress of the United States and ratified on September 25, 1789. From 1795 to 1992, seventeen additional amendments were ratified, all of which appear below.

In this letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, a group of twenty-six churches in western Connecticut and eastern New York, United States president Thomas Jefferson argues for “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Its first known publication was in the New York newspaper American Citizen (January 18, 1802).