On Feb 22, 2007, at 9:45 AM, Sam Treynor wrote:

> "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"  
> appears
> to prohibit Congress from interfering with the establishment of  
> religion by
> a State, most of which had established religions at the time the
> Constitution was adopted.
>

A number did, but Virginia very notably did not: the Statute for  
Religious Freedom  
(http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whatwedo/k12/bor/vsrftext.htm#trans),  
prohibiting any state establishment of religion, was passed more than a  
year before the U.S. Constitution was created and several years before  
the Bill of Rights.  Is this most historic of Virginia's laws no longer  
in effect?  And if it is in effect, shouldn't it be the reference point  
for this discussion, at least as much as is the First Amendment?

It should also perhaps be noted that the governing body of the  
University of Virginia was from the beginning (when it included both  
Jefferson and Madison) at great pains to avoid any hint of religious  
partiality at the University, as evinced by the following passage in  
one of Jefferson's letters:

"In the Rockfish report [which led to the founding of the University]  
it was stated as probable that a building larger than the Pavilions  
might be called for in time, in which might be rooms for a library, for  
public examinations, and for religious worship  <ital>under such  
impartial regulations as the Visitors should prescribe</ital>,  the  
legislature neither sanctioned nor rejected this proposition; and  
afterwards, in the Report of Oct 1822. the board suggested, as a  
substitute, that the different religious sects should be invited to  
establish their separate theological schools in the vicinity of the  
University, in which the Students might attend religious worship, each  
in the form of his respective sect, and thus avoid all jealousy of  
attempts on his religious tenets. among the enactments of the board is  
one looking to this object, and superseding the first idea of  
permitting a room in the Rotunda to be used for religious worship, and  
of undertaking to frame a set of regulations of equality and  
impartiality among the multiplied sects. I state these things as  
manifesting the caution which the board of Visitors thinks it a duty to  
observe on this delicate and jealous subject."  (Jefferson to Arthur  
Spicer Brockenbrough, April 21, 1825,  
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-singleauthor?specfile=/web/ 
data/jefferson/tex  [italics in original].)

It is really quite remarkable that--as some of the comments on this  
thread make clear--this approach to religion at a public university  
remains controversial in Virginia 182 years later.

--Jurretta J. Heckscher

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