Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 84:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: Eighteenth-Century Virginia Presbyterians And The Long Road To Religious Liberty
Author: P. C. Kemeny

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Eighteenth-Century Virginia Presbyterians And The Long Road To Religious Liberty

P. C. Kemeny

P. C. Kemeny is Professor of Religion and Humanities and Dean of the Calderwood School of Arts and Letters at Grove City College in Grove City, PA

Eighteenth-century Virginia Presbyterians came to support “liberty of conscience” (or “free exercise of religion”) gradually and for complex
reasons. Many of these Presbyterians, or their recent ancestors, had enjoyed the privileges of being part of an established national church, the Church of Scotland. In late eighteenth-century Virginia, however, they allied with fellow-dissenting Baptists and with more Enlightenment-influenced Anglicans, most notably James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, to bring about the disestablishment of any state church in Virginia. These Presbyterians eventually modified their doctrinal standard, the Westminster Confession of Faith, to reflect their new stance regarding the separation of church and state.

This article explores the history and evolution of these political and theological convictions through an examination of the five key “memorials,” or petitions, sent by Virginia Presbyterians to the General Assembly between 1776, when the Virginia Convention passed the Declaration of Rights, and 1786, when the Convention adopted Jefferson’s statute for establishing religious freedom. This study reveals that Virginia Presbyterians came to champion an Enlightenment-influenced conception of voluntary religion because they became convinced that only free individuals, without state coercion, could sincerely believe the gospel. They became persuaded, moreover, that an established church imperiled their liberty of conscience and that of other dissenting denominations. Like their forebears, Virginia Presbyterians were convinced that the welfare of society rested upon the virtue of the people, but they ultimately concluded that an established church was neither biblical nor necessary.

The story of how and why Virginia Presbyterians in the late eighteenth century gradually came to champion “liberty of conscience,” a term which was often used interchangeably with “free exercise of religion,” and its implications for church-state relations are complex. Virginia Presbyterians

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came to embrace liberty of conscience in a rather slow and halting manner.1 A number of fine historical studies accurately describe various ways that Presbyterians joined the efforts to disestablish the Anglican Church in Virginia, but they overlook the significant fact that the Presbyterians’ confessional standard at this time actually sanctioned a...