Just before the outbreak of the War for Independence, Swearing Jack Waller was dragged from his pulpit, beaten by the local sheriff’s men and hauled off to jail.  Nor was this the only time Swearing Jack ran afoul of the law for it appears he served a total of some 113 plus days behind bars as a die hard criminal.

Swearing Jack’s crime was relatively simple; preaching without a license. For in those days the Church of England was the official state church in Jack’s home state of Virginia and was fully supported by a state religion tax. Other denominations were allowed as long as the minister applied for and received a Virginia license to preach a doctrine other than that espoused by the Anglican Church and even then, only Anglican ministers could legally perform marriages. The license was only to preach.

Northern colonies tended to be a wee bit more liberal in outlook. Places like New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire allowed each town to choose which protestant church it wanted to support. Thus in Boston Congregationalists may receive the benefit of tax dollars while in other towns Baptists may prevail. Only four colonies, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Deleware and New Jersey failed to have a system linking church and state.

Jack was not alone for across the colonial landscape people stepping up to preach a doctrine other than that established as the “official” one were routinely jailed, beaten, fined, and occasionally executed.

As luck would have it, the “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom”, a bill written by Thomas Jefferson, was passed in 1784. It was the first time in the world that a government had acted to legally separate church and state.

Twenty-first century advocates of linking church and state seem to conveniently forget folks like Jack.  They would have us believe that restoring a link between Christianity and government would solve all the country’s woes from social ills to global warming. Ironically the voices at the forefront of this movement represent denominations which would not have been tolerated the last time religion prevailed in public law.

It would be easy to say that these voices are ill informed, or that they simply have no regard for the established right of the individual to seek God on his or her own terms. Perhaps they are well meaning men who simply are so tortured by evangelistic fervor that they cannot see beyond their own mental illness. It is possible that they see linking church and state as a pathway to the rich harvest of tax revenues. However no matter what else may be true, we can say with certainty that they don’t know (or at least don’t remember) Jack.