Summary Of Memorial And Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments

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The “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” was a pamphlet that was written by James Madison on June 20, 1785. After getting his heart broken due to a private affair that he had with a young woman and completing a meeting with Congress, James Madison left to go home to Virginia where he was elected into the Virginia House of Delegates. Before he decided to officially attend to his legal affairs, Madison took a tour alongside Marquis de Lafayette of the north side of the country. When Madison did finally return home to work, he found himself in a dispute with Patrick Henry, a governor in Virginia at the time. Governor Patrick Henry believed that taxes should be given to support those who took their time to teach the message …show more content…

He also wanted for people to join along with him in supporting the Jefferson’s bill which would have allowed for people to be able to have religious freedom in the state of Virginia. Madison’s pamphlet had made a total of fifteen well stated arguments stating why it should be necessary for us to have religious freedom and why it is an essential part of our society. Madison starts his arguments by stating how it is not the government we answer to but it is to God himself that we are to look to and to take direction from. He even says that people who actually tries to go by laws that dictates religion are pretty much slaves due to the fact of them being governed on how they should worship and what steps they should take as far as their religion goes. Madison had also stated in his arguments that if we give the government the power and authority to make Christianity as the main source of religion, then it would also have the power to change the religion and make it into something else. Now even though the government doesn’t have complete power over the choice of state religion, he believes that it is up to the people to protect their religious right from being snatched away from them. This means that it would be simpler to stop the government in its rough tracks from accessing power that it does not have in the first place, and stopping that power from being established so that the government will not abuse it, and do harm to the