V - Religious Liberty and the Republic

Summary

Historians have often complained about the lack of direct evidence of the thoughts about the meaning of the First Amendment religion clauses by the delegates of the ratification conventions of the Federal Constitution, the members of the First Congress, and state legislatures. In Pennsylvania politicians, clergymen, and ordinary citizens provided evidence of their beliefs about religious liberty and the relation of God to the state, but they did not discuss the meaning of the First Amendment. Rather, only rarely did they differentiate between the religious responsibilities of the Federal government and Pennsylvania. They also generally ignored the tax-supported churches in New England and wrote as if the Pennsylvania pattern were normative for all levels of government. Virtually all Pennsylvanians believed that Americans enjoyed a religious liberty that was essential for the purity of the church and the prosperity of the state. The separation of the state from the institutional church did not mean official neutrality toward religion. Religious belief was a private decision with public consequences. However, in the midst of Pennsylvania's generally self-congratulatory prose, there emerged tensions over different interpretations of separation of church and state, which continue to this day.

Many of the Pennsylvanians involved in Congress's preparation and the state legislature's ratification of the Bill of Rights in late 1789–90 were also active in writing and the struggle over the adoption of the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790.