The “Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom” was a law passed by the Virginia General Assembly in 1786 that protected the rights of its citizens to worship as they chose.

The bill was originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1779. Some years after the passage of the Statute, Jefferson wrote that during the earlier debate in the General Assembly there had been an effort to limit the protection to Christians. However, this effort was defeated, showing that, as Jefferson noted, “it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal.” He wrote:

Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s [sic] protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.

-- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1790 (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s and Sons, 1914), p. 71,