Howard Schweber, University of Wisconsin-Madison, has posted "Pray Liberty of Conscience to Revive Us": James Madison's Understanding of Religious Liberty in the US Constitution:
Religious liberty was one of the centrally motivating concerns and one of the central models for Madison’s thinking about the Constitution. But opposing the imprisonment of Baptists in Virginia was the simplest possible starting point. What, in Madison's mind, should America’s Constitution say (and mean) about the relationship between religion/church and politics/the state writ large? Freedom to engage in worship might be a clear requirement, but how far should that freedom extend? To explore these questions, this paper is divided into four sections: (1) Madison’s view of religion generally; (2) Madison’s view of the Establishment Clause in relation to public support for religious actors and institutions; (3) Madison’s treatment of free exercise and the question of exemptions;; and (4) Madison’s view of the Establishment Clause with respect to what Justice O’Connor called the “endorsement” problem. Across all categories, the key driving concept in Madison's thought is that religion is a special case: specially precious and specially dangerous both, and therefore to be treated differently from other topics such as general principles of liberty of conscience. In the conclusion, I engage in speculating about what Madison would have thought of some recent developments in First Amendment religion clauses in light of his thinking on the subject.-- Dan Ernst
