We need a new Enlightenment. James Madison, a proponent of Enlightenment values, spoke for the rights of religious minorities in Virginia and in the new United States. Madison defended the rights of Baptists, Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites, who were dissenters from the sanctioned Anglican church of the Virginia commonwealth. Madison argued that they should be able to hold their beliefs independently of the state’s official religion.

Among Madison’s many political involvements, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates for two years, 1784-1786. Brethren and Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley sent a petition for exemption from militia duty to the Virginia delegates in 1784. Again, in 1785, a group of 71 Mennonites submitted another petition to the Virginia House of Delegates seeking exemption from militia duty because their faith did not allow them to carry or use weapons in military service.¹

During his years serving in the Virginia House of Delegates, Madison wrote a historic defense of religious freedom. He asked in the widely read essay whether the “Quakers and Menonists were the only sects that think it is unnecessary and unwarrantable to support their Religions compulsively?”² Madison argued that each Christian denomination in Virginia should be able to worship freely as they choose. Madison had been baptized into the Anglican church and was from the privileged class. Still, he heard and read about Baptist ministers whom the authorities jailed for preaching their doctrine in Virginia, which upset him. A sheriff near Luray, Virginia, chased Mennonite Jonas Blosser Jr. into hiding because Blosser’s nonresistant convictions prevented him from mustering (marching) with the local militia.

Madison’s determination to establish the new country on the principles of freedom and equal rights for all religious groups became woven into the fabric of the new United States. Madison persuaded the Virginia delegates in Richmond to approve a “Statute for Religious Freedom,” written years earlier by Thomas Jefferson.³ The Statute disestablished the Virginia state religion and supported tolerance for all believers, regardless of denomination.

Four years later, in 1789, Madison wrote the First Amendment for the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In the Second Amendment, Madison defended the right of all to bear arms, and he added a phrase in his original draft that “no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”⁴ The phrase that would compel no one to render military service if opposed on religious grounds passed in the U.S. House but not in the Senate.

The 1780s were an axial time in Virginia and U.S. history, a hinge era when minority beliefs came to be accepted. James Madison, an Enlightenment philosopher, articulated a defense of dissenting religions in Virginia and then again during the formative political moments of the United States.

Researching the origins of freedom of religion in the 1780s is why I’m starting to think we need another era of Enlightenment. We need a resurgence of the belief that we must respect all people for their beliefs, nationalities, convictions, and heritage. The Enlightenment ideas of James Madison inspire me, and it’s time for a new Enlightenment in the twenty-first century.

1. Richard K. MacMaster, Samuel L. Horst, and Robert F. Ulle, Conscience in Crisis (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1979), 331-334. ↩︎
2. “Founders Online: Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 1785,” National Archives and Records Administration, accessed February 15, 2026, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163. ↩︎
3. Contributor: John A. Ragosta, “Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786),” Encyclopedia Virginia, February 18, 2025, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-statute-for-establishing-religious-freedom-1786/. ↩︎
4. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt2-2/ALDE_00013262/ ↩︎