Founding Documents

Nourishing The Erroneous Idea Of A National Religion

Jefferson, Madison And Jackson On Prayer Proclamations

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed governmental proclamations for days of prayer and fasting. As president, Jefferson flatly refused to issue them. Madison issued such proclamations under pressure from Congress during the War of 1812 but later said he wished he hadn’t. Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, also refused to issue religious proclamations.

Here is what Jefferson, Madison and Jackson had to say on the subject:

Thomas Jefferson: On Jan. 23, 1808, Jefferson replied to a minister named Samuel Miller who had asked him to issue a religious proclamation. Denying the request, Jefferson wrote, “I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.…. I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it….[E]very one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the US. and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”

James Madison: In an undated essay historians believe was written between 1817 and 1832, Madison listed five reasons why presidents should not issue prayer proclamations. “The members of a Govt as such can in no sense, be regarded as possessing an advisory trust from their Constituents in their religious capacities,” Madison wrote. “They cannot form an ecclesiastical Assembly, Convocation, Council or Synod, and as such issue decrees or injunctions addressed to the faith or the Consciences of the people.” Madison also criticizes prayer proclamations because they “imply and certainly the erroneous idea of a national religion.” For more information, read the relevant passage from the full essay.

Andrew Jackson: Jackson considered religious proclamations a violation of the First Amendment. Asked to approve a proclamation setting aside an official day of fasting and prayer in response to a cholera epidemic, he refused and in 1832 wrote, “I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.”