On June 26, 2026, President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission delivered a 224-page draft report claiming that an “originalist understanding” of the Constitution supports eliminating the concept of church-state separation. Commission Chair Dan Patrick declared that “separation of church and state” is “the biggest lie that’s been told in America since our founding.” The report recommended that the Department of Justice issue guidance to promote “an originalist understanding” of how the Constitution sees the relationship between religion and government.

This article examines what the 39 men who actually signed the Constitution believed about religion and its proper role in government — drawing on their own words, their documented actions, and the scholarly consensus across ideological traditions.

The findings are more complex than either partisan camp acknowledges. But they are far more damaging to the Commission’s thesis than the report lets on.

A Note on Method

Three pitfalls complicate any honest account of the founders’ religious views:

1. Church affiliation is not belief. Most signatories were nominally Episcopalian — but 18th-century Episcopalianism encompassed everything from orthodox Trinitarianism to functional Deism. Membership tells us where a man sat on Sunday, not what he thought about God.

2. Public statements are not private convictions. Many founders spoke piously in public while expressing skepticism in private correspondence. Washington systematically avoided Christian doctrinal language in official communications while attending church regularly.

3. Lambert’s “Planting Fathers” vs. “Founding Fathers.” The Puritan settlers who came to build a theocratic “City upon a Hill” are a different group than the men who drafted the Constitution 150 years later. The RLC report repeatedly conflates these two groups, quoting the Planting Fathers to characterize the Founding Fathers.

Gregg Frazer’s rigorous study argues that the most influential framers — Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Washington — were neither orthodox Christians nor strict Deists but adherents of what he calls “theistic rationalism”: a hybrid belief system combining natural religion, Protestantism, and reason, with reason as the decisive element when sources conflicted (The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders, Kansas, 2012).

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The 39 Signatories: Religious Affiliations

The table below lists every man who signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787, with his formal religious affiliation and, where documented, a scholarly assessment of his actual beliefs. Data sources: usconstitution.net demographic table; modernrepublic.org signer data; Frazer (2012); Hall (2014); Gaustad (2004).

#	Name	State	Formal Affiliation	Scholarly Assessment
1	George Washington	Virginia	Episcopalian	Theistic rationalist / Christian Deist; avoided specifically Christian language in all official documents
2	John Langdon	New Hampshire	Congregationalist	Devout; active in church governance
3	Nicholas Gilman	New Hampshire	Congregationalist	Limited documentation of personal views
4	Nathaniel Gorham	Massachusetts	Congregationalist	Limited documentation
5	Rufus King	Massachusetts	Episcopalian / Congregationalist	Became more devout later in life
6	William Samuel Johnson	Connecticut	Episcopalian / Presbyterian	Son of first Anglican president of King’s College; active churchman
7	Roger Sherman	Connecticut	Congregationalist	Most devoutly orthodox Christian among all signatories; published theological works; believed government should support Christianity
8	Alexander Hamilton	New York	Episcopalian (Huguenot / Presbyterian background)	Religiously indifferent during Convention period; devout at end of life
9	William Livingston	New Jersey	Presbyterian	Skeptical of religious dogma; strong advocate for toleration
10	David Brearley	New Jersey	Episcopalian	Limited documentation
11	William Paterson	New Jersey	Presbyterian	Limited documentation
12	Jonathan Dayton	New Jersey	Episcopalian / Presbyterian	Limited documentation
13	Benjamin Franklin	Pennsylvania	Episcopalian (self-described Deist)	Self-described “thorough deist” in youth; evolved toward belief in an active Providence
14	Thomas Mifflin	Pennsylvania	Quaker / Lutheran	Disowned by Quakers for military service
15	Robert Morris	Pennsylvania	Episcopalian	Limited documentation of theological views
16	George Clymer	Pennsylvania	Quaker / Episcopalian	Limited documentation
17	Thomas FitzSimons	Pennsylvania	Roman Catholic	One of two Catholic signers
18	Jared Ingersoll	Pennsylvania	Presbyterian	Limited documentation
19	James Wilson	Pennsylvania	Episcopalian / Presbyterian	Natural law theorist; grounded rights in divine law accessed through reason and conscience
20	Gouverneur Morris	Pennsylvania	Episcopalian	Theistic rationalist; personally irreligious (“sacrilegious in his speech” — Roger Sherman) but believed religion essential for social order
21	George Read	Delaware	Episcopalian	Active churchman
22	Gunning Bedford Jr.	Delaware	Presbyterian	Limited documentation
23	John Dickinson	Delaware	Quaker-influenced / Episcopalian	Deeply shaped by Quaker theology; never formally joined the Friends
24	Richard Bassett	Delaware	Methodist	Evangelical convert; one of the most devoutly religious signers
25	Jacob Broom	Delaware	Lutheran	Limited documentation
26	James McHenry	Maryland	Presbyterian	Devout; later became president of the Baltimore Bible Society
27	Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer	Maryland	Episcopalian	Limited documentation
28	Daniel Carroll	Maryland	Roman Catholic	One of two Catholic signers; Jesuit-educated; supported separation to protect Catholic minority
29	John Blair	Virginia	Episcopalian	Limited documentation
30	James Madison	Virginia	Episcopalian	Theistic rationalist; strongest separationist among all signatories; architect of the First Amendment
31	William Blount	North Carolina	Presbyterian / Episcopalian	Limited documentation of theological views
32	Richard Dobbs Spaight	North Carolina	Episcopalian	Limited documentation
33	Hugh Williamson	North Carolina	Presbyterian / Deist	Former minister turned physician and scientist; hybrid views
34	John Rutledge	South Carolina	Episcopalian	Limited documentation
35	Charles Cotesworth Pinckney	South Carolina	Episcopalian	Active churchman; later president of the Bible Society of Charleston
36	Charles Pinckney	South Carolina	Episcopalian	Proposed the no-religious-test clause; Enlightenment rationalist
37	Pierce Butler	South Carolina	Episcopalian	Limited documentation
38	William Few	Georgia	Methodist	Converted to Methodism; active in church
39	Abraham Baldwin	Georgia	Congregationalist	Ordained minister who moved toward liberal theology

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Patterns in the Data

By denomination: Approximately 54% were Episcopalian (21 signers), 21% Presbyterian (8), 13% Congregationalist (5), 5% Roman Catholic (2), with Methodist, Quaker, Lutheran, and Deist minorities.

The Episcopalian problem: The single largest group — Episcopalians — encompassed the widest range of actual belief. Washington (avoided all Christian doctrine in official writing), Hamilton (joked about the Constitution’s omission of God), Madison (vetoed church incorporation bills as unconstitutional), and Morris (mocked religion openly) were all nominally Episcopalian. So were devout men like Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who led a Bible society. The label tells us almost nothing about a man’s actual views.

The theistic rationalism thesis: Frazer argues persuasively that the most influential figures at the Convention — Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Wilson, and Morris — held beliefs that were neither orthodox Christianity nor strict Deism, but a rationalist hybrid that privileged reason over revelation when the two conflicted. These men dominate the historical record precisely because they left voluminous written documentation.

Gaustad’s seven perspectives: The founders held at least seven distinct and sometimes contradictory views on the proper relationship between religion and government. The RLC report acknowledges none of this diversity, presenting a false consensus where genuine disagreement existed.

The key scholarly distinction: The founders agreed that no one should be harmed for their religion. They disagreed — genuinely, sharply, and documentably — on whether government should actively support religion. That disagreement is the historical reality. Any account that presents a single “originalist understanding” on this subordinate question is not doing history; it is doing politics.

Notable absences from the signing: Thomas Jefferson (author of the “wall of separation” letter) and John Adams were not delegates to the Philadelphia Convention and did not sign the Constitution. However, James Madison — the First Amendment’s architect and the most influential voice on religion and government among the founders — was present and signed.

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Key Framers: Their Own Words on Religion and Government

James Madison (Virginia) — Architect of the First Amendment

Madison is the single most consequential figure for understanding the Constitution’s religion clauses. He drafted the First Amendment. He championed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He authored the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785), which remains the most important American document on the proper boundary between church and civil power.

On religion’s exemption from government authority (Memorial and Remonstrance, Point 1, 1785):

“We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.”

On the danger of legislative competence in religion (Memorial and Remonstrance, Point 2):

“If Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former… Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?”

On the separation as a constitutional principle (Detached Memoranda, c. 1817–1832):

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.”

Madison’s presidential vetoes (1811) provide the clearest evidence of how he understood the First Amendment in practice. He vetoed a bill merely incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church in Alexandria, D.C. — not establishing it, simply giving it a corporate charter — on the grounds that it “exceeds the rightful authority to which governments are limited by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates in particular the article of the Constitution… which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.'”

He also vetoed a bill reserving a parcel of federal land for the use of a Baptist church in Mississippi: “Because the bill in reserving a certain parcel of land of the United States for the use of said Baptist Church comprises a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.'”

He also pocket-vetoed a bill encouraging the importation of Bible stereotype plates.

What this means for the RLC report: The report cites Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance but quotes only his premise — that religion is a duty to the Creator — while suppressing his conclusion: that because religion is so important, the civil government has absolutely no authority over it. His presidential vetoes show how he applied that principle in practice. The report’s version of Madison is historically inverted.

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George Washington (Virginia) — Pragmatic Civic Religion

Washington is the RLC report’s most-cited founder. The Farewell Address passage on religion appears on page 35 of the report. The full picture is considerably more nuanced.

Farewell Address (1796):

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness… reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport (1790):

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

What the report omits: Washington systematically edited out references to “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Lord,” “Father,” “Redeemer,” and “Savior” from his official documents whenever subordinates tried to insert them. He used exclusively deistic language — “Providence,” “Supreme Being,” “the Deity,” “the Great Author” — in all official communications. Historian Geoffrey Stone documents this pattern in detail (The World of the Framers, University of Chicago Law Review). Washington also ceased participating in communion from the Revolution until his death; his minister described him leaving services before the sacrament and sending the carriage back for Martha.

On religious pluralism, Washington wrote: “Being no bigot myself to any mode of worship, I am disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church, that road to Heaven, which to them shall seem the most direct plainest easiest and least liable to exception.”

What this means: Washington believed religion served a useful civic function — producing moral citizens capable of self-government. But he appears to have held no specifically Christian doctrinal commitments in his official role, and he nowhere argued that government should favor any particular faith. His position was pragmatic: religion is valuable for the republic; the republic should leave all religions free to practice it.

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Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania) — The Deist Who Believed in Providence

Franklin is the only signer formally identified as a Deist in historical sources. His Convention prayer speech is frequently cited by those arguing the founders intended a religious government. The full story is more instructive.

Self-description (Autobiography):

“I began to suspect that this doctrine [deism], tho’ it might be true, was not very useful.”

Convention prayer speech (June 28, 1787):

“I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.'”

What happened next: The Convention did not adopt Franklin’s prayer proposal. Franklin later noted that “The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.” The most religiously expressive moment at the Convention failed — because the delegates, collectively, didn’t think it was needed.

On Jesus, writing to Ezra Stiles weeks before his death (1790): Franklin affirmed many traditional Christian moral teachings but wrote that he had “some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.”

What this means: Even the most devout-sounding moment at the Convention — Franklin’s speech — was delivered by a self-described deist and rejected by the delegates. The Convention’s actual response was to proceed without divine invocation. Franklin himself represents the pragmatic middle: skeptical of Christian dogma, but convinced that belief in an active God served social utility.

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Alexander Hamilton (New York) — “We Forgot”

Hamilton’s religious biography traces a distinctive arc: pious youth, irreverent ambition, pragmatic later defense, late-life devotion.

On the Constitution’s omission of God: When the Reverend Dr. John Rodgers said to Hamilton, “I am grieved to see that you have neglected to acknowledge God in the Constitution,” Hamilton replied: “My dear sir, we forgot to do it.”

The Farewell Address: Hamilton drafted Washington’s Farewell Address, including its famous passage on religion. His framing was explicitly instrumental — religion matters because it produces moral citizens, not because it is theologically true. “The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.” Even as the author of the most prominent founding-era argument for religion’s civic value, Hamilton grounded it entirely in pragmatic utility.

During and after the Convention: Hamilton’s college roommate recalled him praying morning and evening in his youth. As a public figure during the founding era, his references to religion were rare and largely perfunctory. In 1802, alarmed by Jeffersonian radicalism and the anti-Christianity of the French Revolution, he proposed a “Christian Constitutional Society” — though scholars debate whether this reflected genuine faith or political strategy. On his deathbed in 1804, he requested and received Communion from Bishop Benjamin Moore of the Episcopal Church.

What this means: During the period when the Constitution was drafted and ratified, Hamilton was religiously indifferent — his own account of why God was omitted being that they forgot. His late religious turn came fifteen years after the signing, in a very different political context.

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Roger Sherman (Connecticut) — The Orthodox Christian Counter-Argument

Sherman represents the strongest counter-argument to a strictly secular reading of the founding, and his views deserve honest, full representation. He was the most devoutly orthodox Christian among all 39 signatories — and the only Founding Father to sign all four major documents of the era (Articles of Association, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution).

Personal creed (drafted for his congregation, White Haven Church, 1788):

“I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. That the Scriptures of the old and new testaments are a revelation from God and a complete rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.”

On government support of religion (Connecticut religious liberty statute, authored by Sherman, 1783):

“As the happiness of a People, and the good Order of Civil Society, essentially depend upon Piety, Religion and Morality, it is the Duty of the Civil Authority to provide for the Support and Encouragement thereof.”

Sherman published theological works including A Short Sermon on the Duty of Self-Examination Preparatory to Receiving the Lord’s Supper (1789). He seconded Franklin’s prayer motion at the Convention. He opposed Gouverneur Morris’s appointment as minister to France because of Morris’s “irreligious nature.” John Adams described him as “that old Puritan, as honest as an angel and as firm in the cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas.”

On the no-religious-test clause: Sherman said it was “unnecessary, the prevailing liberality being a sufficient security against such tests.” He did not oppose it — he thought it redundant, because he believed the culture would naturally protect religion without needing a prohibition.

The critical observation about Sherman: Mark David Hall argues Sherman represents 50–75% of Americans of the time who were Calvinist and favored some government support of Christianity. Connecticut maintained an established church until 1819. Sherman’s position was legitimate and widely held.

But — and this is the essential point — Sherman’s position did not prevail in the Constitution itself. The document the delegates produced contains no acknowledgment of God, no preference for Christianity, and an explicit prohibition on religious tests for office. Sherman signed it anyway. The Constitution represents the compromise between Sherman’s maximalist position and Madison’s strict separationist position, and that compromise produced a deliberately secular governing document.

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Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania) — The Constitution’s Irreverent Penman

Morris wrote the final language of the Constitution, including the Preamble (“We the People”). He spoke more than any other delegate at the Convention — 173 times. His religious views illuminate the gap between the drafters’ personal convictions and the document they produced.

Roger Sherman on Morris:

“He is not a hypocrite. He never professed religious principles. He makes religion a subject for jokes and he is sacrilegious in his speech.”

Morris on religion’s social necessity:

“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God… But each one has a right to entire liberty as to religious opinions, for religion is the relation between God and man; therefore it is not within the reach of human authority.”

Morris’s biographer Daniel Walther noted he “had only sarcasms for hypocrites and fakers and was equally stern with those who do not believe in God and who wish to found a state without religion.” Morris used exclusively generic “God-words” — Providence, the Almighty, the Omnipotent — and studiously avoided “Jesus” or “Christ.” At the Convention he “vigorously defended the right of anyone to practice his chosen religion without interference.”

What this means: The man who put the Constitution into its final form was personally irreverent about religion while philosophically convinced of its social necessity. He kept religion OUT of the document’s language by deliberate choice. Morris illustrates a position common among Enlightenment statesmen: religion is socially indispensable but government has no business directing it — which is why the document he crafted contains none.

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James Wilson (Pennsylvania) — Natural Law Without Theocracy

Wilson was the most important legal theorist at the Convention and became one of the first Supreme Court justices. His jurisprudence is central to understanding the Constitution’s philosophical grounding.

Lectures on Law (1790–91):

“Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both.”

“The law of nature and the law of revelation are both divine: they flow, though in different channels, from the same adorable source.”

Wilson grounded natural rights in divine law — but divine law as accessed through reason and individual conscience, not through institutional churches or government-directed religious instruction. His jurisprudence locates God’s authority in the individual human capacity for reason, not in ecclesiastical power. Scholars debate whether Wilson represents the “Christian natural law tradition” or broke from it toward modern rationalism; either way, his framework is fully compatible with a government that neither establishes nor suppresses religion.

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John Dickinson (Delaware) — Quaker Constitutionalism

Dickinson was raised Quaker, married into the most prominent Quaker family in Pennsylvania, and was deeply shaped by Quaker theology — though he never formally joined the Society of Friends (he disagreed with their pacifism and believed defensive war was lawful).

The Quaker principle at the core of his constitutionalism: Quakers held that God’s Light could shine in any properly prepared soul regardless of race, sex, or social status — therefore religious liberty was not a concession to secularism but a theological imperative. You cannot coerce the conscience because God works through individual souls freely.

“In government, as well as in religion, ‘The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.'”

In 1764, Dickinson defended Pennsylvania’s religious liberty protections against Benjamin Franklin’s attempt to change the colony’s charter, arguing that if the Quakers gave up the constitution, religious liberty would go away and might not be recoverable. He championed religious liberty for all, including women’s right to public religious speech — a radical position at the time.

What this means: Dickinson championed separation not from skepticism but from deep theological conviction. Interfering with the conscience through government power is not merely bad policy — on the Quaker view he held, it is a violation of the divine process by which God communicates with human souls.

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Daniel Carroll (Maryland) — The Catholic Minority Voice

Carroll was one of only two Catholics to sign the Constitution. His brother John became the first Catholic bishop in the United States. He was Jesuit-educated at St. Omer’s in Flanders.

Before 1776, Maryland law excluded Catholics from holding public office. The Revolution and the Constitution’s drafting enabled Carroll’s political career. He understood separation from the minority position: Catholics needed church-state separation to protect themselves from Protestant establishment. In the First Congress, Carroll explicitly supported the First Amendment, viewing it as essential for protecting conscience rights across all denominations.

Carroll demonstrates that support for separation was not anti-religious — for a Catholic in 1787, it was a matter of civic survival and equal citizenship.

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Charles Pinckney (South Carolina) — Author of the No-Religious-Test Clause

Pinckney proposed the only religion-related provision in the original Constitution: Article VI, Clause 3.

On August 20, 1787, he introduced: “No religious test or qualification shall ever be annexed to any oath of office under the authority of the United States.”

His rationale: “The prevention of Religious Tests [is] a provision the world will expect from you, in the establishment of a System founded on Republican Principles, and in an age so liberal and enlightened as the present.”

The provision passed almost unanimously. It explicitly opened all federal offices to people of any religion or no religion — a deliberate break from most state constitutions of the era, which still imposed Protestant or Christian requirements for officeholders.

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Hugh Williamson (North Carolina) — The Minister Who Became a Scientist

Williamson is listed in historical sources under both Presbyterian and Deist — a former ordained Presbyterian minister who abandoned the ministry for medicine and natural science. His trajectory from ministerial training to scientific Deism mirrors the broader intellectual movement of the Enlightenment that shaped so many of his fellow signatories.

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What the Convention Actually Did

Before evaluating the RLC report’s specific claims, five documented facts about what the 39 signatories collectively chose to do must be established:

1. The Constitution contains zero references to God, Jesus, Christianity, or religion — except to prohibit religious tests for office (Article VI). This was deliberate and debated. The Library of Congress documents: “The Constitution was reticent about religion for two reasons: first, many delegates were committed federalists who believed that the power to legislate on religion lay within the domain of the state, not the national, governments; second, the delegates believed that it would be a tactical mistake to introduce such a politically controversial issue as religion into the Constitution.”

2. Franklin’s prayer proposal was rejected. Franklin explicitly called on the Convention to open each daily session with prayer. According to Franklin’s own later notation, “The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.” Madison’s notes confirm no vote was taken — the motion simply died without support. The most religiously invocative moment at the Convention failed.

3. The no-religious-test clause passed almost unanimously. Charles Pinckney framed it as an Enlightenment expectation for a republic. Only Roger Sherman questioned its necessity (not its substance). North Carolina was the lone “no” vote on the article as a whole.

4. The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) stated, in Article 11: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” This treaty was negotiated under Washington, submitted to the Senate by Adams, ratified unanimously without debate, and signed into law. Many signers of the Constitution were still serving in government at the time. Not one objected. Scholar Morton Borden summarized: “What is significant about the Tripoli treaty is its ready acceptance by the government. Not a word of protest was raised against Article 11 in 1797.”

5. Contemporaries noticed the Constitution’s secular character and complained about it. The Library of Congress records that “many pious people” protested the document had “slighted God, for it contained no recognition of his mercies to us… or even of his existence.” Benjamin Rush (a Pennsylvania signer of the Declaration, not the Constitution) expressed “the more restrained view that many pious people wish the name of the Supreme Being had been introduced somewhere in the new Constitution.” The absence was not invisible to people at the time — it was conspicuous and controversial.

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The Report’s Claims vs. the Historical Record

The following evaluates six specific historical claims from the Religious Liberty Commission’s June 2026 report, with page references to the 224-page draft PDF.

Claim 1 — “Religious liberty is the bridge between God and government” (Report pp. 34, 43–45)

Report’s argument: Government and religion should actively support each other. The report cites Washington’s Farewell Address and, via Commissioner Anderson, Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance, as evidence that the founders intended this mutual support.

The full record: Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance argues precisely the opposite conclusion from the one the report implies. Its central thesis is that “in matters of Religion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.” As president, Madison vetoed even a church incorporation bill and a land grant to a Baptist congregation as unconstitutional. His Detached Memoranda described separation as “strongly guarded” in the Constitution and criticized paid congressional chaplains and presidential religious proclamations as constitutional violations.

Assessment: The report selectively reads Madison, quoting his premise (religion is a pre-political duty to God) while omitting his conclusion (therefore government has no legitimate authority over it). Madison’s actual position was the inverse of the report’s: because religion is so important, government must not touch it.

Claim 2 — The “wall of separation” is “one belabored metaphor — often used out of context” from a single private letter (Report pp. 21, 41–43)

Report’s argument: Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists coined the phrase, which was then “repurposed” by Justice Hugo Black (whom the report identifies as “a former Ku Klux Klan member”) in the 1947 Everson decision to construct a constitutional principle that never existed.

The full record:

• Madison used equivalent language independently: “Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States” (Detached Memoranda, c. 1817–1832)
• Madison vetoed religion-related legislation as president on separation grounds (1811, 1816)
• The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), drafted by Jefferson and championed by Madison through the Virginia legislature, established full separation as state law five years before the First Amendment was ratified
• The Constitution’s own text is separationist in character: zero religious content, explicit prohibition of religious tests for office
• The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) declared the government “not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” — ratified unanimously by the Adams administration

Assessment: The separation principle was articulated by multiple founders, in multiple primary documents, across a span of decades. It was not one man’s metaphor from one private letter. The report’s characterization is not defensible as history.

Claim 3 — “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People” — John Adams (Report p. 30)

Report’s use: Cited to suggest the founders understood the Constitution to require a religious citizenry and, by implication, government support of religion.

The full record: Adams also submitted and signed the Treaty of Tripoli, which explicitly states the government “is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” The Senate he oversaw ratified it unanimously in 1797. Adams believed private religious conviction produced morally capable citizens fit for self-government — a position entirely compatible with formal government neutrality toward religion. He did not argue that government should promote or establish religion; he argued that citizens needed personal moral formation, which religion could provide.

Assessment: Adams held both positions simultaneously and without contradiction: religion is privately important for civic virtue, AND the government is not founded on Christianity. These are compatible positions. The report presents only half of Adams’s documented record, creating a misleading impression of his overall view.

Claim 4 — The First Amendment only prohibits “actual legal coercion that was a hallmark of historical establishments of religion” — i.e., a state church (Report pp. 42–43, citing Justice Thomas)

Report’s argument: The Establishment Clause is narrow — it prohibits only the establishment of an official state church or direct coercion of worship, not non-preferential government support for religion generally.

The full record: Madison, the First Amendment’s author, applied the clause far more broadly in practice:

• He vetoed a bill simply incorporating an Episcopal church — not establishing it as a state church, merely giving it corporate standing (1811)
• He vetoed a bill granting a parcel of land to a Baptist congregation (1811)
• He pocket-vetoed a bill encouraging Bible distribution (1816)
• He criticized paid congressional chaplains in the Detached Memoranda as unconstitutional violations of the religion clause
• He criticized presidential religious proclamations as unconstitutional

None of these actions involved coercion or establishment of a state church in any narrow sense. They were non-coercive government expressions of support for religion — and Madison found each of them unconstitutional under the First Amendment he wrote.

Assessment: The report’s narrow reading of the Establishment Clause is directly contradicted by the documented understanding of the clause’s own author. Madison’s understanding was substantially broader than mere prohibition of a state church.

Claim 5 — “No Founding document supports the conclusion” that the First Amendment exiles religion from public life (Report p. 21)

Report’s framing: The separation principle, if taken seriously, would exile religion from public life — a result no founder intended.

Assessment: This is a straw man. No serious constitutional scholar, and no Supreme Court decision, has argued that the First Amendment exiles religion from public life. The Free Exercise Clause affirmatively protects religious practice and religious speech. The actual question at issue is whether government should promote, fund, or favor religion — and on that question, the founders were genuinely divided. Sherman said yes; Madison said absolutely not; Washington said religion is useful but government should not prefer any sect. The report conflates “religious Americans participating in public life” — which the First Amendment unambiguously protects — with “government promoting religion” — which the First Amendment’s author believed the clause prohibited.

Claim 6 — The founders “recognized that religious liberty is not merely a private benefit for believers, but a public good for the nation” (Report p. 12)

Assessment: Broadly true as stated. Most founders did believe religious liberty, and the moral formation that religious communities provide, benefited the republic as a whole. But the report uses this true premise to justify a conclusion — that government should actively promote religion — that contradicts what many founders explicitly argued. Madison’s entire framework is that religion is so important that it must remain completely free from government, not supported by government. The report’s argument is analogous to saying: because the press is vitally important to a free society, the government should fund newspapers it approves of. Madison would have found that reasoning just as destructive of press freedom as of religious freedom.

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What Honest Originalism Reveals

Drawing on Muñoz (2022), Fea (2011), Gaustad (2004), and Lambert (2003):

The spectrum among the 39 signatories was wide. Roger Sherman believed government should sustain Christianity. James Madison believed government must never touch religion. Gouverneur Morris personally mocked religion but drafted the document that keeps it out of the governing framework. Benjamin Franklin self-identified as a deist but argued that God governs in the affairs of men. Daniel Carroll supported separation to protect the Catholic minority. Charles Pinckney removed religious tests in the name of Enlightenment republicanism.

The First Amendment’s author was the strongest separationist among them. If originalism means understanding the drafter’s intent, the evidence overwhelmingly favors a robust separation — not the maximalist position the RLC report claims. Madison’s vetoes are not peripheral evidence; they are his definitive statement of what he understood the clause he drafted to require.

The Constitution’s penman kept God out of the document deliberately. Gouverneur Morris, who had “only sarcasms” for religious hypocrites and was “sacrilegious in his speech” by Roger Sherman’s account, drafted the final language. The document’s secular character reflected the views of the man who wrote it.

The Declaration of Independence vs. the Constitution: The report relies heavily on the Declaration’s “Creator” and “Nature’s God” language. But the Declaration has no legal force. The Constitution, drafted eleven years later by many of the same men, deliberately omitted all theological language. This was not an oversight; contemporaries noticed and complained about it. The men who drafted the Declaration chose not to carry its theological framing into the governing document.

The Convention’s only religion-related vote went in the secular direction. The no-religious-test clause passed almost unanimously. Franklin’s prayer proposal failed. The delegates agreed that religion should have no bearing on fitness for federal office, and disagreed about whether to open sessions with prayer — eventually choosing not to.

Muñoz’s key finding (Religious Liberty and the American Founding, Chicago, 2022): Adherence to the founders’ actual political philosophy yields “a minimalist church-state jurisprudence that would return authority from the judiciary to the American people” — neither the RLC report’s maximalist pro-religion position nor a strict exclusion of religion from public life. The most intellectually honest scholarship, from scholars across the ideological spectrum (Gaustad, Lambert, Fea, Muñoz, Hall, Dreisbach), acknowledges the founders’ genuine disagreement rather than flattening it into partisan convenience.

The scholarly consensus across traditions: The most careful historians — whether evangelical (Fea), Catholic legal scholar (Muñoz), or secular (Gaustad, Lambert) — agree that the founders disagreed sharply on government support of religion while agreeing on free exercise. The RLC report does precisely what the best scholarship warns against: it resolves the founders’ real disagreement into a simple “Christian nation” verdict.

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Implications for the 2026 Report

The Religious Liberty Commission’s historical chapter (Chapter 2) engages selectively with the founding record:

• It cites Washington’s Farewell Address and Adams’s “moral and religious People” quote. It does not cite Madison’s presidential vetoes, the Treaty of Tripoli, the Constitution’s secular character, or the rejection of Franklin’s prayer motion.
• It cites Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance as supporting the Commission’s position. It does not quote Madison’s actual conclusion from that document, which states that religion is “wholly exempt” from civil government’s authority.
• The Commission’s composition — all conservative Christians and one Orthodox Jew — produced a report that would have appalled Madison, who argued that even non-preferential tax support for “Teachers of the Christian Religion” was “a dangerous abuse of power.”
• An honest originalist approach would acknowledge four things: (a) the founders were deeply divided on whether government should support religion; (b) the strongest separationist among them was the First Amendment’s own author; (c) the document they produced is deliberately, conspicuously secular; and (d) the only religion-related action they took at the Convention was to prohibit religious tests for office.

The report is not wrong that the founders valued religion, that many believed religious morality undergirded republican government, or that the Free Exercise Clause affirmatively protects religious practice. On these points the historical record supports the Commission. The report goes wrong when it claims this general valuation of religion implies that government should promote it — a conclusion the Constitution’s drafters explicitly rejected.

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The Commission: Composition and Process

The Religious Liberty Commission was established by Executive Order 14291 on May 1, 2025. It held seven public hearings between June 2025 and April 2026, hearing testimony from over 100 witnesses. All hearings except one took place at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

Membership: The commission consists of 12 Christians and one Orthodox Jewish rabbi. No members represent Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, or nonreligious Americans — nor Christians or Jewish people who do not share the commission’s ideological orientation. Key members include:

• Chair: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (Southern Baptist)
• Vice Chair: Ben Carson (Seventh-day Adventist)
• Bishop Robert Barron (Catholic, Diocese of Winona-Rochester)
• Ryan Anderson (President, Ethics and Public Policy Center)
• Phil McGraw (“Dr. Phil”)

The commission’s final hearing was held April 13, 2026, at the Museum of the Bible. The 224-page draft report was presented to President Trump in the Oval Office on June 26, 2026.

Public comment period: The report was open for public comment for 15 days following release, closing July 12, 2026.

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The 12 Recommendations

The commission’s report proposes 12 specific policy actions:

1. DOJ Establishment Clause guidance — Direct the DOJ to issue guidance “clarifying the proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and separation of church and state”
2. DOJ Religious Liberty Task Force — Create a dedicated task force to track and prioritize First Amendment litigation defending religious liberty
3. “Know Your Rights” materials — Direct DOJ, HHS, and EEOC to create and distribute posters for schools, healthcare institutions, military installations, and workplaces
4. Religious liberty violation hotlines — Establish reporting portals for students, parents, teachers, healthcare workers, and service members
5. Repeal the Johnson Amendment — Eliminate the 1954 provision barring tax-exempt organizations (including churches) from endorsing political candidates
6. Written justification requirement — Any public official who claims an employee improperly engaged in religious expression must provide written justification within 30 days explaining the constitutional basis
7. Military religious accommodations — Direct the Department of Defense to streamline its accommodation process
8. COVID-19 vaccine mandate remediation — Restore retirement benefits and reenlistment eligibility for service members who left over religious objections to the vaccine
9. Combat antisemitism — Strengthen enforcement against antisemitic discrimination and violence
10. Judicial nominations — Nominate federal judges “who will decide religious liberty cases on their merits”
11. Presidential Medal of Religious Liberty — Create new awards recognizing defenders of religious freedom
12. Historic site recognition — Install exhibits and markers at historic sites honoring religion’s role in American history

Assessment against the historical record: Several of these recommendations are unobjectionable (combating antisemitism, streamlining bureaucratic processes). Others represent legitimate policy debates (the Johnson Amendment’s scope). But Recommendation 1 — DOJ guidance on the Establishment Clause — is the critical one: it would direct the executive branch to instruct courts and agencies on the meaning of the First Amendment based on the Commission’s selective historical reading. Madison would have regarded this as precisely the kind of government interference with religion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent.

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Legal Challenges

Interfaith Alliance et al. v. Trump (Southern District of New York)

A multifaith coalition filed suit in February 2026, alleging the commission violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) of 1972. FACA requires that federal advisory committees be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented” and maintain public transparency.

Plaintiffs: Interfaith Alliance, Muslims for Progressive Values, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Hindus for Human Rights.

Legal representation: Democracy Forward; Americans United for Separation of Church and State (co-counsel).

Claims:

• The commission’s membership is unlawfully biased toward a single ideological viewpoint
• The commission failed to provide advance notice of witness lists, agendas, or supporting documents for multiple hearings
• Complete transcripts were not made publicly available as required

Remedies sought:

• Declaration that the commission was created and administered in violation of federal law
• Requirement that any recommendations be identified as originating from an unlawfully constituted body
• Compelled disclosure of all records

Key developments:

• April 2, 2026: Plaintiffs moved for preliminary injunction to block the report’s publication pending FACA compliance
• April 2026: Government disclosed previously withheld records (transcripts, minutes, testimonies) in a late-night filing shortly before a court deadline — a significant procedural concession
• The court did not block the report’s release; the case on the merits (whether the commission is unlawfully biased) remains active

Legal significance: The VALOR Institute’s analysis notes that recommendations from a body later found FACA-noncompliant carry “diminished legal authority” — not because courts void the report, but because agencies invoking it as neutral factual support for subsequent action face challenge. Precedent from a 2021 law enforcement commission ruling suggests findings of procedural non-compliance constrain downstream reliance.

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The Broader Policy Context

The RLC report is one element in a coordinated administration effort on religious policy:

Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias (Executive Order 14202, February 2025)

• Released a 200-page report on April 30, 2026 — two months before the RLC report
• Alleged the Biden administration engaged in anti-Christian bias through FACE Act enforcement against anti-abortion activists, vaccine mandate policies, gender-identity regulations, and selective application of the Johnson Amendment
• The AP reported the task force “didn’t accuse the Biden administration of any large pattern of suppressing churches themselves or the right to worship” but focused on conservative policy advocacy conducted on religious grounds
• A second report with policy recommendations is expected in 2027; the task force dissolves February 2027 unless extended

The “God is dead” argument: The RLC report, citing Commissioner Bishop Robert Barron, traces strict church-state separation to “a ‘God is dead’ ideology that originated in Europe and saw traditional religion as an opponent to individual autonomy.” Barron has described this as Pope Benedict XVI’s “dictatorship of relativism” — a philosophical framework that prioritizes individual self-invention over objective moral truth. This framing positions the separation principle as an import from hostile European secularism rather than an indigenous American constitutional tradition — a claim that Madison’s 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance, predating any European “God is dead” philosophy by a century, directly contradicts.

Prebuttal coalition report: In early June 2026, the Center for American Progress, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Interfaith Alliance, and the American Humanist Association published “Religious Liberty for All: Celebrating This Founding Freedom at America 250” — a preemptive counter-report timed to the nation’s semiquincentennial, arguing that religious liberty “belongs to all people, not to any single tradition, political party, or administration.”

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Developments Timeline

This section tracks significant events in chronological order. New entries should be added at the bottom as events unfold.

Date	Event
May 1, 2025	Executive Order 14291 establishes the Religious Liberty Commission
June 16, 2025	First hearing; Bishop Barron warns of “dictatorship of relativism”
Feb. 2026	Interfaith Alliance et al. file FACA lawsuit (SDNY)
April 2, 2026	Plaintiffs move for preliminary injunction to block report
April 13, 2026	Commission’s final (seventh) hearing at Museum of the Bible
April 2026	Government discloses previously withheld records in late-night filing
April 30, 2026	Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias releases 200-page report
Early June 2026	CAP/AU/Interfaith Alliance publish prebuttal “Religious Liberty for All” report
June 26, 2026	Commission presents 224-page draft report to President Trump in Oval Office
June 26, 2026	15-day public comment period opens
July 12, 2026	Public comment period closes

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What to Watch Next

The following developments will determine the report’s practical impact. This section should be updated as each resolves.

• DOJ guidance issuance: Will the Department of Justice issue formal Establishment Clause guidance as recommended? If so, when, and what will it say? Any such guidance would face immediate legal challenge.
• Interfaith Alliance v. Trump ruling: The FACA case remains active. A finding of unlawful bias would attach a procedural asterisk to all recommendations and constrain agencies from relying on the report as neutral authority.
• Johnson Amendment repeal: Requires congressional action. Legislative prospects and timing are uncertain.
• Judicial nominations: Whether the administration explicitly uses “religious liberty” as a litmus test for federal bench nominations, and how senators respond.
• State-level implementation: Whether state legislatures cite the report as authority for religion-in-schools legislation or religious exemption expansion.
• Final report vs. draft: The June 26 document is a draft. Whether changes are made after the public comment period — and what they are — will reveal the commission’s responsiveness to criticism.
• Second Anti-Christian Bias Task Force report: Expected 2027, with specific policy recommendations.

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Sources and Further Reading

Primary Sources

• Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785). Online Library of Liberty; Encyclopedia Virginia.
• Madison, Detached Memoranda (c. 1817–1832). University of Chicago Press, Founders’ Constitution project.
• Madison, Presidential Veto Messages (Feb. 21 and Feb. 28, 1811). American Presidency Project; Miller Center.
• Washington, Farewell Address (Sept. 19, 1796). Founders Online, National Archives.
• Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport (Aug. 18, 1790). Founders Online.
• Franklin, Convention prayer speech (June 28, 1787). Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 1, pp. 450–452.
• Franklin, Letter to Ezra Stiles (1790). Founders Online.
• Hamilton, exchange with Dr. John Rodgers (c. 1789). Hamilton Papers.
• Sherman, White Haven Church Creed (1788).
• Sherman, Connecticut religious liberty statute (1783 revision).
• Pinckney, “Observations on the Plan of Government” (May 28, 1787). ConSource.
• Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 (1796/1797). Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
• DOJ Religious Liberty Commission Draft Report (June 26, 2026). 224 pages.

Core Scholarly Canon

• Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of the Founders: Religion and the New Nation, 1776–1826 (Baylor University Press, 2004).
• Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton University Press, 2003).
• Vincent Phillip Muñoz, Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses (University of Chicago Press, 2022).
• John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).
• Gregg Frazer, The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders (University Press of Kansas, 2012).

Individual Founders

• Edwin Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Eerdmans, 1996).
• Daniel Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (NYU Press, 2002).
• Daniel Dreisbach, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers (Oxford University Press, 2017).

The Secularist Tradition

• Brooke Allen, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (Ivan R. Dee, 2006).
• Steven K. Green, Separating Church and State: A History (Columbia University Press, 2022).

The Christian Founders Tradition

• Daniel Dreisbach & Mark David Hall (eds.), Faith and the Founders of the American Republic (Oxford University Press, 2014).
• Mark David Hall, “Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, and the Formation of America’s Constitutional Order,” in Great Christian Jurists in American History (George Fox University Digital Commons).

Primary Source Collections

• Matthew Harris & Thomas Kidd (eds.), The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America: A History in Documents (Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Gaustad, Noll & Carter (eds.), A Documentary History of Religion in America (Eerdmans, updated edition).

Institutional and Scholarly Articles

• Geoffrey R. Stone, “The World of the Framers: A Christian Nation?” University of Chicago Law Review.
• Justin Buckley Dyer, “The Christian Natural Law Tradition and James Wilson’s Lectures on Law.” UC Berkeley Natural Law Workshop (2019).
• Library of Congress, “Religion and the Federal Government, Part 1.” Exhibition documentation.
• Cornell Legal Information Institute, “Historical Background on the Religious Test Clause.”
• Journal of the American Revolution, “America’s Revolution Against Toleration: The Rise of True Religious Liberty” (2019).
• American Humanist Association, “Trump Religious Liberty Commission Report Provides Pathway to Christian Nationalism” (June 29, 2026).
• VALOR Institute, “Who Speaks for Religious Liberty? The Commission’s Final Report” (April 10, 2026).
• Democracy Forward, “Challenging the Trump-Vance Administration’s Biased So-Called ‘Religious Liberty Commission'” (case page, updated 2026).
• Center for American Progress et al., “Religious Liberty for All: Celebrating This Founding Freedom at America 250” (June 2026).
• Bishop Robert Barron, “My Year with the Religious Liberty Commission: I Stand By It.” Fox News (June 2026).
• Baptist News Global, “Dan Patrick reiterates: ‘No separation of church and state'” (June 2026).

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Update Log

This article is designed for frequent updates as the RLC report moves through the policy process. Entry points for new information are marked with HTML comments in the source.

Date	Update
2026-06-30	Initial publication: historical analysis of 39 signatories, evaluation of 6 RLC claims, 12 recommendations, FACA lawsuit status, companion Anti-Christian Bias report, developments timeline