The right of religion freedom, is the right to have no preference or not to support one religion more than another. There are many types of religions in the U.S and they all have the same right to worship what they believe in. There are religious conflicts all around the world because there are still people who think that they have the authority to tell others  what they should or should not believe.

Not everyone respects others people beliefs; sometimes, there are people that might even  dare to  say that people will go to hell if they do not convert into their religion. Religion has been always  an important issue or a guiding solution to many people’s lives. Back to 400 hundred years ago people did not have the right to decide whether to be religious or not; this was very true of the Puritan colony in Massachusetts.   Everything was based on the church because the church was the head of the state. In the new land of Virginia the colonists came for business and this was the first State to separate the church from the government of the country.

Thomas Jefferson believed that people should not pay taxes to support the church.  Since the beginning, America was settled by people who wanted religious freedom . Jefferson believed that the church needed to be separated from the state and had the support of Virginia’s  Quakers, Presbyterians and Baptists in expressing this idea.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Around 1779 Jefferson wrote the bill for Establishing religious freedom. Which says “ that no man shall be forced to support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever. ” This bill was sent to the Virginia assembly in 1779  but the people were not ready for it yet. Although it did not become a law, it brought together Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who supported Jefferson’s idea. In 1784 Jefferson flew into Paris because he was  the US foreign minister to France. So it was in Madison’s hands to make the bill become a law. In 1786 the bill became a law with only a few changes.  When the bill passed Virginia became the first state to separate church and state. This worked as a model for the others states in the union and  for the 1st amendment of the US constitution.

 

http://classroom.monticello.org/kids/resources/profile/262/Virginia-Statute-for-Religious-Freedom/