Chet Edwards For Congress

January 26, 2006
Champions of liberty
Chet Edwards, seven-term U.S. representative out of Waco, was in tall cotton on Jan. 19.

Fort Worth Star Telegram
By Editorial Staff | Star-Telegram

He was one of three people honored by the Council for America's First Freedom, which annually celebrates Jan. 16 as National Religious Freedom Day and, for 12 years, has honored distinguished advocates of religious freedom around the world at a banquet in Richmond, Va..

Edwards received the National First Freedom Award.

The international award went to Vaclav Havel, former Czech president, award-winning playwright and what the council described as "a global champion of interfaith dialogue and freedom of conscience."

The Virginia award went to Robert S. Alley, professor emeritus of humanities at the University of Richmond, whom the council described as a "noted author and scholarly authority on religion, government and education."

"These three honorees have dedicated much of their professional lives to the defense of religious liberty," Tommy Baer, president of the Council for America's First Freedom, said in a news release when the names were announced in December.

The quote at the beginning of this editorial is from the American law that first guaranteed religious liberty and eventually developed into the guarantee of religious freedom in the U.S. Constitution.

When the Virginia General Assembly acted, the issue was whether the state should levy taxes to support all recognized religions, says the Council for America's First Freedom Web site.

"Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both of whom would later be president of the United States, argued that religious beliefs should be solely matters of individual conscience and completely immune from any interference by the state," the Web side article says.

"Moreover, religious activity of any sort should be wholly voluntary. Not only did they oppose taxing people to support an established church, but they also objected to forcing people to pay taxes even for their own church."

The council reported in October that its most recent survey found Americans to be conflicted on church-state separation.

One in three Americans believe that freedom of religion ranks behind only freedom of speech as the single most important Constitutional guarantee, but half of those polled in a national survey are ambivalent about separation of church and state, the Council said in a news release. The survey also found that "a combined 50 percent of respondents said the separation between religion and government should either be less strictly interpreted (27 percent) or is not necessary at all (23 percent)," the council said.
Jefferson, Madison and others would disagree.

The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom noted what it called "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others."

The statute also observed that "truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."

Those words were 220 years old last week -- and as fresh as today's headlines.

Modern politicians tempted to use religion as a political tool or a weapon would do well to join Edwards -- and others -- in the effort to see that they do not mix improperly.

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Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted Jan. 16, 1786, by the Virginia General Assembly