Religion
Related: About this forumJanuary 16, 1786 – Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.
An Act for establishing religious Freedom.
Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;
That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,
That 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, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Statute_for_Religious_Freedom
rug
(82,333 posts)edhopper
(33,604 posts)given the time period and the author?
Seems trivial compared to the historical import of the document.
rug
(82,333 posts)And I wouldn't write the language off as an anachronistic artifact.
There is nothing contradictory between theism and a secular state.
I don't find that phrase interesting because it is very typical of Jefferson.
The document is an important milestone. But Jefferson invoking God is not surprising.
I am not sure why you think that phrase has any relevance.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)The Catholic Church, in the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae makes a similar argument for religious freedom on purely religious grounds.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)who disagree, your church finally and oh-so-graciously decided to let people believe what they want. Oh, and it was also 200 years after a certain country's SECULAR founding documents declared it to be a right.
Bravo! Hooray! Bully for the RCC!