James Madison on Religious Liberty

This long-overdue volume is the only one of its kind containing all of Madison’s religious writings, as well as new contributions by leading scholars.

Madison’s writings assume even more importance to thoughtful Americans as the Supreme Court continues to decide issues of school prayer, and as the Moral Majority tries to desecularize American public and private life.

Imagine an America without the Bill of Rights, without the Constitution. This image of our nation, existing without these two foundations of freedom, justice, and inquiry, assaults the imagination, for these two documents are the fuel that runs the republic.

What is even more remarkable is that their primary author was one man – James Madison.

James Madison On Religious Liberty is the definitive work of scholarship in its field, and will lay to rest any questioning of Madison’s enormous historical stature. The essays are exhaustive in scope – many appear here for the first time in published form – and they include all of the available scholarship on Madison’s religious writings.

Alley provides more than 65 pages of source material, including “Memorial and Remonstrance,” probably the single most important statement of religious liberty ever written; the Virginia Declaration of Rights; selections from his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson and William Bradford; and other writings.

Among the distinguished contributors are Daniel J. Boorstein, the late Sam Ervin, Jr., Robert A. Rutland, A.E. Dick Howard, Henry Steele Commager, Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., and Dumas Malone.

This volume makes clear the wisdom and courage Madison invested in his writings. He was fully aware that all our freedoms flow from religious liberty, as religious liberty is really the freedom of inquiry.