‘We Are Teaching the World’: The Decline and Fall of James Madison’s Vision of the Secular State in the USA
Robert Boston, senior adviser
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Dec. 6, 2025
James Madison is one of the most important figures in American history – especially when it comes to separation of church and state and secular government.
Many people, when they think of separation of religion and government in America, conjure up the image of Thomas Jefferson – and that is appropriate. Jefferson, after all, wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which ended government support for the Anglican Church in Virginia and guaranteed freedom of worship for all. But we must remember that the Virginia Statute would have remained mere words on parchment had Madison not pushed it through the legislature and made it law in 1786.
Jefferson in 1802 spoke eloquently of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution creating a “wall of separation between church and state,” but it’s only due to Madison that we even have that First Amendment. Madison took the principles of the Virginia Statute – no official church and freedom of worship for all – and built them into the First Amendment. Madison was a primary author of the First Amendment and indeed the entire Constitution. In America, he is known as the “father of the Constitution.”
ROB BOSTON ANGLAIS