The Grass-Roots News is the official publication of The Chapter Assembly--the organization of AHA chapters. This article is extracted from the March 1995 edition of GRN

James Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution. In large part we owe our religious freedom under the Constitution to Madison. He was born March 16, 1751 in Virginia and grew up in the Piedmont areas as did his friend of later years, Thomas Jefferson. A diligent student, he completed his college education in less than three years at the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton University.

The religious persecution prevalent in Colonial America profoundly disturbed Madison. At the age of 23, he wrote to his friend William Bradford, "The diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages among some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their quota of Imps for such business. This vexes me the most of anything whatever." Three months later he again wrote Bradford, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."

James Madison came to the fore during the drafting of Virginia's Constitution when his own wording making freedom of religion a right was substituted for George Mason's which merely guaranteed toleration of religious differences.

Madison, while serving in the Virginia House of Delegates, wrote A Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments in reply to Patrick Henry's proposal for an assessment to support religious ministers or teachers. This document formed the intellectual basis for the First Amendment's ban on the establishment of religion.

In urging the adoption of the Federal Constitution, Madison stated, "Freedom arises from a multiplicity of sects, which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society." He wanted authority to stem from the general legislature rather than from the states individually because one religion could predominate and oppress within a state but America as a whole was too diverse in religious belief to allow one to become dominant.

In his later years Madison wrote, "The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by Ecclesiastical Bodies have not sufficiently engaged attention in the US." He disliked the establishment of the chaplainship to Congress as well as to the military as "a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles."

Madison deserves our admiration and much credit for the religious safeguards we enjoy today. We must keep ever vigilant against those who wish to tear down the Wall of Separation between Church and State that Madison helped to establish.