On Jan. 1, 1802, the people of Cheshire, Massachusetts, sent a giant block of cheese to President Thomas Jefferson, being presented by the famous Baptist preacher, John Leland.
John Leland was then invited to preach
On Jan. 1, 1802, the people of Cheshire, Massachusetts, sent a giant block of cheese to President Thomas Jefferson, being presented by the famous Baptist preacher, John Leland.
John Leland was then invited to preach to the president and Congress in the U.S. Capitol. The subject of his talk was "separation of church and state."
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Baptists had been particularly persecuted in colonial Virginia, as Francis L. Hawks wrote in Ecclesiastical History (1836): "No dissenters in Virginia experienced for a time harsher treatment than the Baptists. They were beaten and imprisoned.... Cruelty taxed ingenuity to devise new modes of punishment and annoyance."
So many Baptist ministers were harassed and their church services disrupted that James Madison introduced legislation in Virginia's Legislature on Oct. 31, 1785, titled "A Bill for Punishing Disturbers of Religious Worship," which passed in 1789.
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Colonial Virginia had an "establishment" of the Church of England, or "Anglican Church" from 1606 to 1786. Establishment meant mandatory membership, mandatory taxes to support it and no one could hold public office unless they were a member.
Over time, lax enforcement allowed "dissenting" religious groups to enter Virginia, the first being Presbyterians and Quakers, followed by German Lutherans, Mennonites and Moravian Brethren, then finally Baptists.
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John Leland, who considered running for Congress, wanted an amendment to the new United States Constitution that would protect religious liberty.
Leland reportedly met with James Madison near Orange, Virginia, and upon Madison's promise to introduce what would become the First Amendment, Leland persuaded Baptists to support him.
John Leland wrote in Rights of Conscience Inalienable, 1791, that they wanted no just toleration, but equality: "Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free."
Following George Whitefield's First Great Awakening Revival, a Second Great Awakening Revival took place in Jefferson's Albemarle County.
Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist revival meetings were held. Even Jefferson's daughter, Mary, attended a Baptist revival preached by Lorenzo Dow.
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Dolly Madison, wife of James Madison, reported that in 1774, Jefferson dined at Monticello along with another guest, the Baptist Pastor Andrew Tribble.
After questioning Pastor Tribble about how Baptist church government worked, Jefferson remarked: "(It) was the only form of pure democracy that exists in the world.... It would be the best plan of government for the American colonies."
During the Revolution, Anglican ministers had sided with King George III, who was head of the Anglican Church. As a result, patriotic parishioners began to migrate out of the "established" churches into "dissenting" churches.
Though Jefferson was baptized, married and buried in the Anglican Church, as recorded in his family Bible, he started a type of dissenting church in 1777 named the Calvinistical Reformed Church.
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Jefferson drew up the bylaws of the church, which met in the Albemarle County Courthouse. His idea was for it to be a "voluntary" church, supported only by the voluntary donations of those who attended, in contrast to the Anglican model of support from government taxes.
Jefferson's memorandum book shows he contributed to their evangelical pastor, the Rev. Charles Clay, as well as to missionaries and other churches: "I have subscribed to the building of an Episcopal church, 200 dollars, a Presbyterian, 60 dollars, and a Baptist, 25 dollars."
After the Revolution, the Virginia legislature rewrote its laws to remove references to the King. "Dissenting" churches lobbied Jefferson to "disestablish" the Anglican Church.
Jefferson responded by writing his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. In 1779, fellow member of Jefferson's Calvinistical Reformed Church, Col. John Harvie, introduced the bill in Virginia's Assembly.
After three of Jefferson's children died, his wife died in 1782. After her funeral, Jefferson suffered depression and withdrew from politics. In his grief, he burned every letter he had with his wife and sequestered himself in his room for three weeks, only venturing out to ride horseback through the hills of his estate.
Jefferson's daughter, Martha "Patsy" Jefferson, described how he wept for hours: "In those melancholy rambles I was his constant companion... a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief... the violence of his emotion... to this day I do not describe to myself."
Trying to help, Congress asked Jefferson in 1784 to go as ambassador to France. France was going through a period of "