On October 16, 1776, a petition for religious freedom arrived at the Virginia legislature. It had been circulated and signed primarily by Baptists, but also by people of other denominations so that “the oppressed may go free.”
The first page of the petition received Oct. 16, 1776, which included more than one hundred separate pages of signatures sewn together. Source: The UncommonWealth — Voices from the Library of Virginia
The Church of England (the Anglican Church) had been the only “official” religion of Virginia since the colony’s founding in 1607. Observers of other religions and Christian groups were often taxed, imprisoned, or otherwise attacked by the government.
Under threat of persecution, Baptists preached and petitioned for freedom of religion to be carved into law. Their campaigns had helped shape the June 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, which called for religious freedom and pronounced all men “born equally free and independent” with “certain inherent natural rights.” Weeks later, Thomas Jefferson lifted some of this language into the Declaration of Independence, though he ignored the issue of religious freedom.
Petitions similar to this October 1776 one piled into the legislature through the 1770s and ’80s. These efforts would eventually animate the Bill of Rights’ First Amendment, which begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Read more in the lesson “Founding” Documents We Don’t Learn About.
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