“Liberty Preserved”: The Foundation of Our Freedom 

This essay is the winner of the 2026 Fidelity Month high school essay contest. Students were asked to reflect on a quotation or story that ties together the themes of Fidelity Month and love of country on the occasion of our nation’s semiquincentennial.

In December 1784, Governor Patrick Henry presented “A Bill Establishing Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion” to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The bill proposed using tax monies to hire Christian teachers. In response, James Madison wrote his “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.” Henry’s bill had argued that establishing religious teaching in schools would encourage piety. Madison argued that state-funded religious instruction was incompatible with civil liberty, writing, “it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.” If a state began by stripping its citizens of religious freedom, Madison reasoned, would it not continue to rob its people of even more rights until it denied citizens “the very right of suffrage?” In other words, a government that interfered with religion was a government likely to deny its citizens other fundamental civil liberties.  

When Madison was writing, the role of religion in the new republic was far from settled. The Founding Fathers themselves formed a religiously diverse group that included devout Episcopalians such as Henry, deists such as Thomas Jefferson, and those who fell somewhere in between like Madison. In 1776, the Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon had grappled with the place of religion in democracy. As he argued from the pulpit, “If … we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage,” thereby linking civil rights, such as the right to hold property, with religious freedom. For Witherspoon, conscience was at the heart of the matter. The right to speak, to believe, and to vote as conscience demanded was essential to democracy. In his view, “There is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.” The Founders ultimately opposed the establishment of a state religion. However, they also held that civil and religious liberties were established on the common basis of man’s need to be faithful to God and an acknowledgment of human depravity. The shared foundation of these liberties renders futile any attempt to separate them—they stand or fall together. 

In opposing Henry, Madison was not arguing for secularism. Rather, he believed that both religious and civil liberties depended upon loyalty to the Creator. Madison stated, “Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe.” He also affirmed that it was “the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.” Men are primarily citizens of a heavenly kingdom and secondarily citizens of an earthly one.  

This framework rests upon the assumptions that God is greater than man and that man is inherently sinful. In Federalist No. 51 Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” thereby attributing the very necessity of government to humanity’s fallenness. Witherspoon similarly preached, “There can be no true religion, till there be a discovery of your lost state by nature.” Even though Madison and Witherspoon disagreed in their practice of religion, they agreed that a proper understanding of human fallibility was crucial to the success of the young republic. In fact, governments existed precisely because citizens had a sinful tendency to encroach on the civil liberties of others.  

In practice, religious liberties and civil liberties—such as free speech, trial by jury, and free suffrage—are difficult to separate. Governments cannot curtail religious liberties without curtailing civil liberties. After all, it is impossible to observe religious liberties without the ability to openly discuss theological beliefs. It is also impossible to observe freedom of speech if the government prohibits citizens from speaking of religion. Indeed, James Madison regarded undue governmental interference in religion as akin to despotism. The fact that Madison chose to protect religious liberties in the same constitutional amendment that also protects the rights to free speech, assembly, and press reveals the depth of his commitment to ensuring that both religious and civil liberties be upheld. Religious liberties and civil liberties are interdependent. We cannot have one without the other, because both rest on the same foundation of obedience to God. 

For leaders in the early American republic, the French Revolution offered an illustration of what could happen when this moral foundation collapsed. Converting churches, such as the famous Notre-Dame de Paris, into so-called “Temples of Reason,” revolutionaries worshiped feminine personifications of Liberty and Equality. This measure effectively eradicated the religious freedom that was already dwindling for the majority of Catholics in France. Radicals attempted to separate civil and religious liberties, confident that they could uphold civil liberties without granting their people freedom of religion—to disastrous effect.  

Our modern political trials do not quite add up to a Reign of Terror. But American citizens of this century are no more “angels” than they were at the founding and are just as likely to infringe on the civil rights of their neighbors. Before Madison drafted his “Remonstrance,” Patrick Henry’s bill was popular with members of the Virginia state legislature and enjoyed support from such luminaries as George Washington and John Marshall. But once Madison published his arguments against it, opposition to the bill ran high, and it died easily in committee in 1785. The Founders were right in their rejection of Henry’s bill, which could have eventually paved the way to establishing a state religion, thereby depriving citizens of religious freedom. Yet the Founders understood humanity’s inherent corruption and recognized that both civil and religious liberties rest on the common principle of faithfulness to God. If we lose sight of fidelity to God, we risk losing the moral foundation on which our liberties are built.  

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