This Day in Baptist History: February 19, 2023

Religious Liberty and Virginia Baptists

The first recorded imprisonment of Baptist preachers in Virginia occurred on June 4, 1768, in
Fredericksburg. On October 16, 1777, in a back room in that same city, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason,
Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, and Thomas Ludwell, deliberated for many hours and then emerged
from that room with the first draft of the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty.

These men knew of the convictions of Baptists concerning liberty of conscience and their
willingness to suffer persecution because of exercising these convictions. Jefferson had attended sone of
their small churches in Albemarle and Orange Counties, and Mason’s law office was located right across
the street from where Jeremiah Moore was imprisoned in Alexandria for preaching without state licensure
or state church ordination.

The struggle was so intense that it took nearly ten years of lobbying and petitioning the legislature
(the Baptists had three representing them at one time) before the statute was passed on January 19,
1776. Jefferson state that it was the most fiercely contested piece of legislation of his entire political
career. During the same period there was great contention relating to taxation for the support of state
church clergy. At one point Jerimiah Moore, Jeremiah Walker, and John Young delivered in a wheelbarrow,
to the Virginia legislature meeting in a warehouse in Richmond, a petition signed by ten thousand
Virginians opposing the general assessment plan for the support of religious teachers.

The statesmen spoke and wrote with eloquence; the Baptists preached, petitioned, and suffered
persecution. God used these humble people to have religious liberty as a fundamental principle of our
society set forth in two great documents: The Virginia Declaration of Rights and The Statute of Virginia for
Religious Freedom. From these were drawn the opening words of the Federal Bill of Rights, which states
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, of prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.” May we “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1)
and “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).