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Yes, Jefferson and Washington were against a religious test. Jefferson copied Locke: don’t kick a Pagan, a Muslim, or a Jew out of civil rights because of his religion. Washington told the synagogue in Newport the government gives “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” If a Muslim keeps the peace, follows the same laws as everybody else, and isn’t trying to replace the Constitution with a religious code, he has the same rights as anyone. That’s the easy part. Nobody serious is arguing with that.
But that is not the whole story. It’s just a half truth.
Washington’s next sentence: if you live under that protection, you have to act like a good citizen and actually support the government. Not undermine it.
Jefferson’s notes on Locke go further. Locke said you don’t have to tolerate people whose beliefs wreck a free country. Examples: you don’t have to keep your word with people of another religion; your right to rule comes from God; you owe loyalty to a foreign ruler; you refuse to tolerate anyone else. Jefferson wrote those down. Then he added his own thought: if someone claims a foreign power has authority here, treat that as a crime. He even said maybe the one thing you ask first is an oath that they will tolerate other people too.
His other famous line is easy to understand. Government should only step in when someone actually hurts other people. “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Think what you want. The second you start picking pockets, breaking legs, or trying to replace the law of the land, that’s a different story.
Belief is not the problem. A political project to take over the civil order is.
Jefferson drew a line between worship and rule. Pray how you want. That is none of the government’s business. Try to put your religious law over the rest of us, treat the Constitution as temporary, or say your real loyalty is to another authority, and that is not religious liberty. That is a political project. Jefferson protected the peaceable worshiper. He did not treat a movement that wants control as just another church social. He made the same distinction with the Barbary states: faith is free, tribute and conquest are not.
Two corrections to Teaching Tuesday:
Jefferson never called Muslims “intelligent and thoughtful people” who had the same claim on America as any European. That sentence is not his. What he actually wrote is the civil-rights rule. He also sat with Adams in 1786 while the ambassador from Tripoli explained that war and slavery were justified by the Koran, because nations that hadn’t “acknowledged their authority” were sinners. Jefferson’s answer was a navy, not a check. Same man.
And Washington’s “Mahometans, Jews, or Christians… or Atheists” line? Real letter. He was asking someone to hire him a carpenter and a bricklayer. Good workmen with good character. That is not a blank check for a political takeover.
Every culture produces tyrants. That is true. It is also a dodge.
Some people come here to live free and leave their neighbors alone. And we love them for that. But some people come here and say their religious law should replace ours. Jefferson would not treat those two groups as the same. He cared what you did and what system you were trying to put over on other people, not what box you check on a form.
Don’t hide behind Jefferson and Washington. They were for freedom of worship. They were also clear that if you live under this government, you act like a citizen of it. You follow the same laws as everyone else. You don’t use “religious liberty” to put your law above the Constitution.
References
- Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Locke and Shaftesbury,” Oct. 11–Dec. 9, 1776, Founders Online, National Archives. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0222-0007
- John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), esp. the passages on civil rights of pagans, “Mahumetans,” and Jews, and the denial of toleration to doctrines that destroy civil society.
- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography (1821), on the rejected “Jesus Christ” amendment and the Statute’s intended scope (“Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan…”).
- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (drafted 1777; enacted 1786): “our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.”
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII (Religion): government extends only to acts injurious to others; “twenty gods, or no god.”
- George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, Aug. 18, 1790, Founders Online. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135
- George Washington to Tench Tilghman, March 24, 1784 (joiner/bricklayer; “Mahometans, Jews, or Christian of any Sect—or they may be Athiests”), Founders Online. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-01-02-0174
- Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to John Jay, March 28, 1786 (conference with the ambassador of Tripoli; Koran / “Laws of their Prophet”), Founders Online. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-09-02-0319
- Jefferson to John Adams, July 11, 1786, and Jefferson to James Monroe, Aug. 18, 1786 (peace “thro’ the medium of war”; navy rather than tribute). Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Papers, “America and the Barbary Pirates.”
- Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders (Knopf, 2013) — useful on the 1776 Locke note and the 1786 meeting; does not supply a Jefferson quote that Muslims were “intelligent and thoughtful people.”