Thomas Jefferson Quotes
[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.
Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. J. Stockdale, 1787, p. 261.
Congress had passed the Edmunds Act prohibiting plural marriage. Taylor, who himself had 7 wives and 35 children, went “underground” and secretly operated the church from exile.
This appears to be one of the first religious groups to withdraw and separate from a state church.
Backus was the first of the American clerics to espouse the position that in order for there to be a Christian nation, the state must be separate from the Church.
Falwell was supporting the efforts of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice to defy the Federal Courts and his own court. See {607945}
See John Leland for opposition to this clause: {608955}
Prior to Vatican II, freedom of conscience was not explicit in Catholic Doctrine. The controlling view had been that of Pope Pius IX a hundred years earlier. See {612299}.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
