Madison and Jefferson, leading American revolutionaries, passed their ideas down to us via the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson), 1776, and the Constitution, 1787 (Madison et. al. in Philadelphia), and the Bill of Rights (Madison), 1791. Jefferson was busy during the Constitution and Bill of Rights-making period serving as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of Louis XVI, before he lost his head. Louis, not Tom.
Where did they get their ideas from?
From another revolutionary, of course, from a century before, John Locke.
During the middle and late 1600s, Britain experienced a series of upheavals in which a monarch lost HIS head, literally, Charles I, and was replaced by the Puritan Oliver Cromwell, one of history's truly awful people. He was the model for Puritan religious zealot intolerance and he was in the driver's seat, but not forever. This was the period when Parliament was struggling against a divine right monarch.
Locke, of Puritan descent, and Oxford educated, served as aide to a lord who was a Lord Proprietor to the Carolina Colonies. Locke's job was to collect information from the New World for use in running the colonies and making them pay. Why have colonies otherwise, right? He became familiar with governance and did some charter (constitution) writing himself. As the result of a failed plot against the monarch who succeeded Cromwell, Locke was forced to flee to Holland where he continued to plot, in a group that was infiltrated by Stuart spies. Eventually, however, in 1688, James II was forced to flee and to replace him, the British invited the Protestant William of Orange to serve as king, with Mary his wife as queen. To this day the Irish rue the day King Billy came to Britain and imposed the Protestant Ascendancy over Irish Catholics in Eire. Locke, however, arrived back home in England with William and Mary, after whom we have a college in Virginia which Thomas Jefferson attended.
Locke, while in exile, did some heavy thinking and we are in his debt for formulating the "social contract" theory of government by which Jefferson later wrote in the Declaration that legitimate government is derived from the consent of the governed.
Locke advocated religious toleration, having seen firsthand the reality of sectarian plotting and massacre. Across the Channel, Catholic France massacred Protestants (Huguenots) in the infamus St. Bartholomew's Day Riots following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes which had provided for religious tolerance. Huguenots who weren't killed fled to England, the Low Countries, and to the New World. The town of Huguenot is on the former Dutch Colony of Staten Island, part of Niew Amsterdam, today's New York, my home town.
Both Madison and Jefferson thought it right to provide for the separation of church and state, inspired by Locke's thinking.
Our constitution protects property. Locke thought a lot about property, and influenced our Founders.
Jefferson believed that the best thing he ever did was to provide for the separation of church and state in the colony of Virginia. He put that and the foundation of the University of Virginia on his tombstone. What about the Declaration? Did he put that there? Let me know, when you look it up.
Here's more on John Locke.
Glorious Revolution of 1688 removes James II (English, too Catholic) and replaces with William of Orange (Dutch,Holland, Protestant).
Lord Coke; Sir Edward Coke, Led Parliament against the king, Charles I who actually believed in the divine right of kings, the theory that God really did make him king, despite evidence to the contrary. Coke (pronounced 'cook') was the champion writer on the Common Law before Blackstone. Coke stood up to Charles and refused his requests for money from Parliament. Cook's writings on the common law (Coke's Institutes on Lyttleton) came to America on the Mayflower (1620) and influenced all American lawyers including John Adams. Catherine Drinker Bowen's biography of Coke, The Lion and the Throne, noted in this Wikipedia entry, is a book that I read either in high school or college and which helped attract me to law. I should read it again to see whether I was misled, perhaps.
Coke was a prosecutor, the attorney-general, which made him a tough bird indeed, which he would have to be to stand up to a monarch who could put you in the Tower at whim. Coke ran circles around the king using the law against him, the common law, which he used as a powerful weapon with the backing of Parliament. Parliament wins the struggle against the king. The Parliamentary faction, known as the Whigs, as opposed to the Tory, pro-king, country party of landed gentry, writes the history of England thereafter (Macauley) making it appear that the triumph of Parliament and the demise of the divine right of kings was fore-ordained. Hence the derisive term "whig history," meaning the fallacy of presuming that there is an entity called history which has a direction, an object, and a result, when, as we all know, history is the story we tell about the activity of man that we deem significant, and what we do is not guided by some force called history but a host of other things including which way the wind blows, on which battles have been won and lost.
Do read Bowen (and Macauley) someday (after finals and the bar exam) when you have a bit of time and you might be astonished, amazed, appalled, and informed concerning where we've been and how fraught the circumstances were. We're lucky to be here in the shape we're in, such as it is.
Oliver Cromwell; Wikipedia.
Charles I; he lost his divine head.
The above entries concern England in the 1600s when our colonies were forming. Religious war between Catholic and Protestant, Protestant and Protestant Sects, such as Anglican-Episcopal vs. Puritan, set the stage for our important notion of separation of church and state to prevent further bloodshed. If you want to know why it may be important to continue this tradition, you'll need to know the story of why we have it in the first place, and why inroads against it arouse so much controversy, not only because of the history but because the feelings remain the same when someone tries to impose their religion on you, especially by manipulating government into endorsing their version to coerce you. Aside from that, however, it's fine and dandy. See the Taliban, Afghanistan, and women in burkas, kept out of school, forced to marry, and other benefits of male-domination in a patriarchial society.
English Civil War's, early to mid-1600s.
Protestant Reformation against the Catholic Church; Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, et. al. The people who brought you choice in religion, not to mention sectarian violence. Now you could speak to God yourself; no need for meddlesome priests; and God could talk to you the way he does our presidents. Every man a president! Think of the possibilities. What I'd like to know is why some people think God lives in the White House but not the IRS. Maybe the dining facilities are better there.
Puritans. When Henry VIII breaks with Rome over the failure to grant him a divorce so he could find a wife who would give him a son, the English church (Anglican, Episcopal, Church of England) continues the Catholic tradition without the Pope. Henry appoints his own archbishop and bishops, keeping the trappings of the former Catholic Church in England. Until now the default religion in England was Catholic. This change, not universally welcomed, results in constant plotting as the religion of the crown flip-flops repeatedly during the time of Elizabeth (and Shakespeare). Elizabeth remains unmarried to avoid having to choose a husband who is either Protestant or Catholic, either of which will result in even more suspicion and plotting against her head.
Many English are unhappy with Elizabeth's solution, which is "Don't ask, Don't tell" Engish style. She doesn't care what you believe as long as you support her. Critics of her and her father Henry's brand of Protestantism think it hasn't gone far enough to purify itself of Roman Catholic influences. They oppose catholic symbolism including crossing oneself at mention of the name of Jesus, fancy priestly garments, ornate statuary, singing hymns not found among the psalms, kneeling, Latin Mass, and on and on and on.
These more ardent purifiers of English Protestant religion are derided as "puritans," a name which has stuck. Civil war breaks out, early 1600s, between Puritan and the less pure Church of England. During a civil war people are forced to choose sides. Much plotting, conspiracies, accusations, spies, trials, beheadings, fleeing abroad, returning in disguise, engagements with foreign governments which take sides, occurs.
One group of Puritans flees to Holland, having become Separatists, unwilling to remain home and cooperate with local Protestants any longer. This group, after living in Leiden, Holland, find their children becoming too Dutch, when English is what they are and what their parents want them to continue to be. They flee to the New World on the Mayflower, daring to face savage Native Americans rather than civilized Dutch. 1620. These are the Pilgrims who pick up a ship in Plymouth, England and land south of the Cape Cod wrist at a place they called Plymouth and we call Plymouth Rock, to form a settlement. We trace our annual Thanksgiving holiday to this group.
Ten years later, 1630, another Puritan group arrives under John Winthrop, and arrives in Boston, to form the biblical "City on a Hill," the cynosure of all eyes, which Boston almost becomes, or did, but the tide has gone out since the Red Sox sold the Babe to the Yankees resulting in the biblical "curse of the Bambino" another biblical allusion to Babe Ruth, the man who built Yankee Stadium "the House that Ruth built." The Red Sox and Boston redeem themselves in the World Series of 2005. The Puritans regain some of their former stature. Their ideas live on in America despite the baseball. In fact, their "stool ball," a variant of cricket played with bats and balls, becomes a thorn in the side of the Pilgrims, who ban it on Sundays. Stool ball morphs into "Town Ball" and thence into Base Ball, and finally baseball, the World Series, Barry Bonds, and allegations of misuse of steroids.
All because the Puritans didn't like the ordinary Protestants who didn't like the Catholics who didn't like the Pagans or the Jews.
Think about that the next time you root, root, root for the home team, but remember, Yogi Berra said that you cannot think and hit at the same time. Of course Yogi said a lot of things. You could look it up. Casey Stengel, his manager on the N.Y. Yankees, God's team, said that. You could look it up.