Thursday, January 16, 2025

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 16th of January 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

As someone buried in calendars and almanacs, I can tell you that the “national [blank] day” is overdone. It’s a nice idea (perhaps influenced by the church and her celebration of days), but no one needs to know that today is National Fig Newton Day (kinda gross, at least the originals) and national “Appreciate A Dragon” Day…

[Dragon?/No scorch marks—usually they're linked/Manticore?/Imaginary/Griffin?/Extinct. My apologies]

It’s cliche- but every once in a while, there is a day that catches my attention- as today, the 16th of January, is National Religious Freedom Day here in the United States (not to be confused with International Religious Freedom Day in October). Still, it is the genesis of this particular day, and what it remembers is of note for us here at the Christian History Almanac. For, on the 16th of January in 1786, the Virginia General Assembly adopted the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom. Thomas Jefferson wrote it, and he asked that only it, his authoring of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the University of Virginia, be the things listed on the epitaph on his headstone.

It served as the foundation for the 1st Amendment’s religion clauses and as served as a modern example of a call for a fundamental right of conscience. But we should put it in its context. Baseball is an American invention. Chop Suey is an American invention- freedom of Religion? Not so much.

In fact we can go to the ancient world and find rulers from Cyrus of Persia and Emperor Ashoka in India who thought religious coercion would only cause strife.

The particular brand of “religious freedom” that Jefferson proposed was adopted on this day and then incorporated into the American constitution had a later crisis that it was responding to: the Reformation.

Late Medieval Europe was proudly, they perceived, the center of Christendom- an amalgamation first imagined as coming from Constantine and Charlemagne and the Pope and the Emperor were pleased to keep up appearances as the representatives of Christ on Earth. But a “Christian” empire can’t split on the issue as to what it means to be “Christian,” and thus the Reformation set off a series of religious wars from the 30 Years War to the English Civil War- and this was the context of the beginning of the so-called “American Experiment.” But even early on, there was no consensus in the colonies as to how “free” one might be to practice their religion according to their own consciences.

Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson learned early on that it could be “religious liberty for me, but not thee,” and they helped found the Rhode Island community. Even with the coming Revolution the Anglican church held sway in the Middle Colonies with the Congregationalists ensconced in New England. Presbyterians and Baptists could be arrested for unlicensed preaching even amidst the self-conscious freedom-loving colonists.

The twin energy of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison made what they believed to be real religious freedom- and general tolerance- an issue first in the Virginia State House and then in the Constitution. It begins with a Jeffersonian flair: “Whereas] Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it 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”

What’s interesting to me is that the Deist Jefferson (he saw Christ as only a great teacher) has this “Almighty” and rational God (the God of the Founding Documents) somehow deciding not to coerce or force as many other deities- but Jefferson is mimicking the Christian view of God in Christ- the patient and humble who wants to be called upon rather than force his will. Jefferson certainly knew his audience was of the particularly Baptist and Presbyterian type who sought freedom from the taxation and imposition of the Established church.

On its adoption on this day, Jefferson, who was in Paris at the time, had it translated into multiple European languages and disseminated- he rightly sensed this was the dating of a new age of religious tolerance in a Post Reformation West.

So, happy National Religious Freedom Day, with the international day later in the year, you can feel free to leave up your decorations.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Psalm 36:5-10 from the Scottish Metrical Psalter.

5 Thy mercy, Lord, is in the heav’ns;
thy truth doth reach the clouds:

6 Thy justice is like mountains great;

thy judgments deep as floods:

Lord, thou preservest man and beast.

7 How precious is thy grace!

Therefore in shadow of thy wings

men’s sons their trust shall place. 

8 They with the fatness of thy house

shall be well satisfy’d;

From rivers of thy pleasures thou

wilt drink to them provide. 

9 Because of life the fountain pure

remains alone with thee;

And in that purest light of thine

we clearly light shall see.

10 Thy loving-kindness unto them

continue that thee know;

And still on men upright in heart

thy righteousness bestow.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 16th of January 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who knows “Fig” was dropped from the Newton name in 2012… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose earlier reference was from Into the Woods, I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.