First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty Page #3

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the hometown of a small, frail,

and sickly 17 year-old

named James Madison,

a shy boy whose father

was a prosperous

tobacco planter.

One day in 1768,

the two were out walking

and happened by the local jail.

Fenster:
A baptist minister

named Elijah Craig

was arrested in Virginia

for being a baptist minister.

He began to preach

a sermon through the window

of his cell,

and a crowd gathered,

awed by what was happening.

Mitchell:
The moment made

a lasting impression

on the sensitive

young Madison.

His response was a lifelong

pursuit of religious freedom

by the man who would was perhaps

the most influential

founder of all.

"That diabolical,

hell-conceived principle

of persecution rages

here in Virginia,"

Madison wrote.

"There are 5 or 6

well-meaning men

"in close jail for publishing

their religious sentiments,

so I must beg you to pray for

liberty of conscience for all."

Liberty of conscience was

no fact of life

in the American colonies

in the decade

before the revolution.

If Virginia persecuted

its baptists,

the northern colonies

had their own heretics,

Roman catholics.

In overwhelmingly

protestant New York City,

catholics practiced

their religion in secret.

Bonomi:
There were

no catholic churches

in New York

or in Massachusetts.

You couldn't enter

New York as a catholic.

It was against the law.

They weren't even seen

by some as christians.

They were called heathens,

but then, the catholics called

the protestants heathens.

This is the way

they spoke to each other.

Opposition to catholicism

had actually been

a uniting force

within england itself.

England defined itself

as a protestant nation

over against catholic France,

and America inherited

that anti-catholicism

from their English parents.

Holmes:
The Spanish

and the French empires

as far as they stretched

were on the whole intolerant

of protestants.

They put them to death

as heretics.

Protestants were afraid that

if they gave equal treatment

to Roman catholics and they grew

and multiplied

that they would again be

under Roman catholic authority.

Mitchell:
Yet britain had

a problem called Canada.

By winning

the French and Indian war,

britain had taken over

what is now quebec in 1763.

Its denizens

were still French

and still catholic.

To mollify their new citizens,

the British parliament passed

the quebec act in 1774.

It granted Canadian catholics

complete freedom of worship.

Anti-catholic Americans

were furious.

Engraver Paul revere drew

a cartoon showing

Roman catholic bishops

dancing in glee.

Some of the loudest protests

came from an unsuccessful

businessman and tax collector

in Boston named Samuel Adams.

Adams was 51, an established

and vocal leader

of popular resistance

to the crown.

He was volatile,

bellicose, God-fearing,

and deeply prejudiced.

He came from Massachusetts

and the puritan background

that was known

for its ferocity

in favor of its own

particular religious beliefs.

There were suspicions

that catholics owed allegiance

to a foreign prince,

that being of course the pope.

Man as Samuel Adams:

Much more is to be dreaded

from the growth

of popery in America

than from stamp acts

or any other acts destructive

of men's civil rights.

Samuel Adams.

Children:
if gallic papists

have a right

to worship their own way

Mitchell:
In Philadelphia,

the outrage was put into verse.

of poor americans

there were enough

examples of raw friction

and even violence to give

the founding generation

first-hand knowledge

of the power of religion

and how it could shatter

a society or unite it.

Mitchell:

One of the greatest members

of the founding generation

was born in Quincy

near Boston in 1735.

John Adams, cousin of Sam,

was part of the fifth

generation of adamses

in puritan Massachusetts.

John studied for the ministry

but gave it up in disgust.

He found the local clergymen

were dogmatic and back-biting.

Man as John Adams:

The study of theology

and the pursuit of it as

a profession would involve me

in endless altercations

and make my life miserable.

John Adams.

Mitchell:
Adams switched

to the law but proudly boasted

that when healthy

he never once missed

Sunday services

during his entire life.

Man as John Adams:

Ask me not, then,

whether I am a catholic

or a protestant,

calvinist or Armenian.

As far as they are

christians,

I wish to be a fellow disciple

with them all.

John Adams.

Mitchell:
Yet John Adams

would never be loved by all.

He was a prominent, skillful,

and deeply knowledgeable lawyer.

His ideas on government

would help shape the nation,

but John Adams was simply

too contentious to be loved.

Wood:
Wore his heart

on his sleeve,

a very passionate man,

full of ideas,

honest to the core,

politically incorrect.

Church:
In Lewis carroll terms,

Adams is the red queen--

everything was

"off with their heads."

He was a great fulminator,

tremendously energetic,

always angry.

Mitchell:
By the 1770s,

Adams was always angry

about British assaults

on American liberty.

He would soon form an alliance

with another like-minded lawyer,

Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.

The young Jefferson

was brilliant

in everything

from archaeology to zoology,

with architecture, music,

and paleontology in between,

but was less good

at making and handling money.

He was romantic

and idealistic.

Among his ideals were

an abiding belief

in individual rights,

a dislike

for centralized government,

and a faith in the need

for religious freedom.

Wood:
Adams would have been

very doubtful

about the virtue

of the people,

and Jefferson,

who had a very magnanimous

view of human nature,

believed that people

were essentially virtuous,

and that's what separates

one founder from another,

their view of human nature.

Mitchell:
Yet Jefferson

and John Adams became

close friends.

"Adams is so amiable,"

Jefferson told a friend,

"that I pronounce

you will love him

if you ever become

acquaintedith him."

The two were an odd couple.

Adams was short,

stout, northern, blunt,

and much attached

to tradition;

Jefferson, tall,

elegant, Southern, thoughtful,

and sweepingly revolutionary.

Both men were unconventional

in their faith,

but here, too,

they were different.

Adams was a devout Christian,

but he was a unitarian

and flatly rejected

standard Christian doctrines

of the trinity

and predestination.

Jefferson was

even more unorthodox.

Holland:
Jefferson

was born and raised an anglican

and sometime

in his teenage years experienced

a kind of religious crisis,

became more rationalist,

more skeptical.

He did have great doubts about--

well, not just doubts.

He just denied

the divinity of Jesus,

and he was accused

of being un-Christian.

Well, he said to himself,

"I am a real Christian

because I believe

in Jesus' morality."

Fenster:
Jefferson did

maintain an attachment

to the anglican church,

also known

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