One of the landmarks of religious freedom in the history of the world is under assault by Republican state legislators in Virginia. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson and eventually pushed through the Virginia legislature by James Madison in 1786, extended religious equality to all citizens.

According to an Associated Press story “With only four dissenting votes, the House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced a proposed change to religious-freedom guarantees rooted in the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.” The amendment would allow religious proselytizing on all public property including schools. The same bill, which would also insert a ban on same sex marriage into the state constitution, is expected to pass easily the Republican dominated House. But the battle is far from over.

“Constitutional amendments in Virginia,” the AP reports, “must win House and Senate passage in two sessions with a legislative election in between, then be submitted to voters in a statewide referendum. The earliest vote on the constitutional changes would be November 2006.

“The religious-freedom resolution found wide support for remedying what its sponsor, Del. Charles W. Carrico Sr., contends is a growing bias against Christians.”

“He said other nations upheld their founding religious tenets and compelled respect for them, specifically noting the Muslim culture of Arab countries as an example. Then, he quoted Patrick Henry in appealing for greater leeway for Christianity.”

“I want to quote this phrase… [Henry] was a five-term governor of Virginia (who) once said, ‘It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was not founded by religionists but by Christians,’ Carrico said.”

“He also recalled that before he retired as a Virginia state trooper, he was rebuked for recounting the Old Testament story of David vs. Goliath in an address to high school students.”

“Opponents warned that the measure not only would violate the U.S. Constitution, but also open any public forum to radical, even violent exhortations in the name of religion.”

Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax County, said Carrico’s resolution could give someone who advocates ‘a legitimate jihad to wipe out all Christians on the face of the Earth’ the same right to speak to schoolchildren as someone leading a Christian devotional.”

“What, Carrico asked Albo, prevents violent speech from religious extremists now?”

“‘I guess my quick response would be one of the reasons why you’re not allowed to give your David-and-Goliath speech to kids is because we don’t want the jihad speech to be given to kids,’ Albo replied.”

Anna Avital, a Jewish mother of four Richmond public school students, said she shared frustration with Christians that public schools and popular culture were distancing themselves from the mention of Christmas or Hanukkah during the holiday season. But Carrico’s resolution, she said, goes too far.

“‘I’m made to feel unwelcome. I don’t feel Christianity is being shoved down my throat. I’m made to feel that other religions are unwelcome, and that’s not what this country is about,’ said Avital, an executive with the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond.”

“Aimee Perron Seibert, legislative director for the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said backers of Carrico’s measure scared up support for such legislation by wrongly implying that voluntary religious expression was banned.”

“‘Certainly children can wear ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ bracelets or ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ T-shirts, and we at the ACLU would protect their right to do that,’ Seibert said.”

This latest outrage is part of a widening assault on foundational ideas of religous equality and religious freedom, coming primarily from Republicans who are part of, or pandering to the Christian Right. Thier attack is premised in part on a crafty mix of selected quotations from leaders of the founding generation, and outright crackpot history. But their efforts are not going unchallanged. For example, Dr. Bruce Prescott, wrote a devatasting expose of U.S. Senator James Inhofe’s (R-OK) recent claim that global warming is “the second largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state.”

“Despite what theocrats like Inhofe and David Barton say,” Prescott explained, “the idea to separate church and state came neither from the constitution of the Soviet Union nor from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Danbury Baptists, it came from Baptists like Roger Williamsand John Leland. James Madison, the chief author of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment, knew that well. Before the constitution was ratified, he wrote a letter to James Monroe discussing opinions about Patrick Henry’s bill to provide government funding for religion in Virginia. Here’s what he said:

‘The Episcopal clergy are generally for it. . . . The Presbyterians seem as ready to set up an establishment which would take them in as they were to pull one down which shut them out. The Baptists, however, standing firm by their avowed principle of the complete separation of church and state, declared it to be ‘repugnant to the spirit of the Gospel for the Legislature thus to proceed in matters of religion, that no human laws ought to be established for the purpose.’”

Henry’s bill failed in the face of ideas that were incorporated into Article Six of the Constitution, as well as the First Amendment. But it now appears that Virginia Republicans want to refight that battle in a not-so-covert attack on the, historical, legal and constitutional foundations of separation of church and state.

It is also worth noting that constitutional amendments to ban marriage equality also include an implicit attack on religious equality. Unitarian Universalism, Reform Judaism, and growing numbers of protestant churches, among others, recognize and perform same sex marriage ceremonies. Are the religious beliefs and practices of these historic and mainstream religious traditions invalid in the eyes of the law and the Constitution? And if so, what other religious views and traditions will be targeted by the Christian theocratic movement in the United States?