Nine Years From Draft to Enactment

Thomas Jefferson drafted the bill in 1777 and it was introduced in 1779. It did not pass for seven more years, and what happened in between is the substance of the story.

Virginia had an established church. Anglican clergy were paid from a general levy, dissenting preachers had been jailed for preaching without a licence within living memory, and the Revolution had suspended the levy without settling the question. The compromise proposed in 1784 was a general assessment: a tax for the support of teachers of the Christian religion, with each taxpayer naming the denomination his share should go to. Patrick Henry led it and it very nearly passed.

James Madison answered in 1785 with the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, arguing that religion is a duty owed to the Creator that can be directed only by reason and conviction, that it lies outside the cognizance of civil society altogether, and that a legislature able to establish Christianity in preference to other religions may with the same ease establish one sect in preference to the rest. Petitions bearing thousands of signatures, many of them from Baptist and Presbyterian congregations that had felt the licensing laws, came in against the assessment. It died in committee, and Madison brought Jefferson's nine year old bill forward in its place. It passed on 16 January 1786.