The Right of Conscience

June 8, 2026 On June 8, 1789, Representative James Madison of Virginia stood up to address the House of Representatives in order to introduce a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Initially, Madison had been opposed to the idea of spelling out the rights on which the new government couldn't intrude, because he thought the document itself limited what the government could do. But he had come around to the idea of specifying the areas in which the new government could not intrude, after voters opposed ratifying the Constitution until it included protections from government interference in their rights. When Madison rose to introduce his amendments to the Constitution, ten of which would eventually be adopted and become the Bill of Rights, the Constitution had been ratified, but ratification had stalled. Two states of the original 13, North Carolina and Rhode Island, had not yet ratified the Constitution. Others had done so only with the promise that a list of rights would be forthcoming. One of the amendments Madison proposed was especially dear to him. It was, as he told his colleagues, that the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed. That proposal was the basis for what became the first part of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. With the wounds of religious persecution both in Europe and in the colonies still fresh, Madison cared deeply about keeping the government away from religion. In 1772, when he was 21, Madison watched as the government of Virginia had itinerant preachers arrested for preaching against the established church in the state. By the next year he had begun to question whether established religion, which was common in the colonies, was good for society. By 1776, many of his broad thinking neighbors had come to believe that society should tolerate different religious practices. He had moved past tolerance to the belief that men had a right of conscience. In that year he was instrumental in putting Section 16 into the Virginia Declaration of Rights. It reads, that religion, or the duty which we owe to our creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. And therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other. In 1785, in a memorial in Remonstrance against religious assessments, he explained that what was at stake was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right, an unalienable right, of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants. The concerns about inequality behind the First Amendment are being illustrated right now in the 21st century United States. Those concerns come from an unlikely direction. On Thursday, June 4, 2026, Nick Mordewanek of military.com reported that under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense had removed about 180 faith traditions from its number of recognized religious faiths and belief systems. As John Ismay, Alexander E. Petrie, and Amy Ortiz of the New York Times note, of the 31 religions still recognized by the Defense Department, 22 of them are Christian denominations. Left off the new list of Christian faiths was the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, whose members are commonly known as Mormons. MAGA has worked to impose the ideology of evangelical religion on America. In the military, Mordewanek notes, Hegseth has pushed Christian theocracy through extremist Christian-based prayers service with a Christian nationalist preacher who has said women's suffrage was a bad idea and has defended slavery, and has described Trump's war on Iran as a holy war. Michelle Borstein and Sammy Westfall of the Washington Post add that Hegseth has urged chaplains to focus on scripture rather than psychology, and has said those who disagree with him are God's enemies. Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, is a Mormon and represents Mormons in Utah. Lee has been a staunch MAGA supporter to the point that he was a key figure in urging President Donald J. Trump to stay in office in 2021, despite the fact he had lost the election. But on Friday, Lee, the ultimate MAGA insider, found his religion excluded from the Christian category that the Trump administration embraces, turning him abruptly into an outsider. Lee spent the weekend posting angrily about the slight that suggested Mormons aren't only to have other posters deride his faith. He posted 37 times on social media insisting that the Defense Department's classification be expanded to include Mormons under the Christian category, recording and reposting a video saying, As of two days ago, the Pentagon recognizes every Christian faith in America as Christian, except one. That's not okay, and it needs to change now. Finally, yesterday, he posted that he had just got off the phone with President Trump. We discussed the Pentagon's Christian list. I won't speak for him, but I'm thrilled about where this is heading. They're most fortunate that President Trump, one, loves Latter-day Saints, and two, is our commander-in-chief. Stay tuned. Today, the Defense Department edited its list of religions so that no group is labeled Christian. Lee posted that he was grateful to Hegzeth for correcting the error and said he agreed with Hegzeth's statement that the Pentagon's job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks. Madison and those who wrote, debated, passed, and ratified the Bill of Rights believed that making people's religion their right of conscience depend on the approval of the President would destroy self-government. A former U.S. Army chaplain told Mordewanek that the Defense Department's limit to the religions it recognized was horrible. When I raised my hand to become an Army chaplain, I swore that I would support and defend the Constitution. The First Amendment is the free exercise of religion for everybody. That's what I was buying into. Referring to the revised list, the former chaplain added, as far as I'm concerned, that's a violation of the United States Constitution. On June 8, 1789, Madison urged his colleagues to pass the new amendments to demonstrate that those who had pushed the adoption of the Constitution were as sincerely devoted to liberty and Republican government as those who opposed it, and that those who wanted a strong new government were not, in fact, trying to lay the foundation of an aristocracy or despotism. It would be a good thing, he said, to cement support for the government by reassuring Americans that those in favor of the new government had no wish to deprive them of the liberty for which they valiantly fought and honorably bled.