Religious Liberty

From a meeting in Fredericksburg from January 3-17, 1777, of a Committee of Revisors appointed by the General Assembly of Virginia and composed of Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, and Thomas Ludwell Lee to settle the plan of operation and distribute the work, there evolved the Statute of Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson, in which the United States of America made probably its greatest contribution to government recognition of religious freedom. Fredericksburg was also the site of a celebration on October 16, 1932, by representatives of the leading religious faiths in America honoring the religious character of George Washington, whose boyhood home was Fredericksburg, and the separation of church and state, as the Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom was outlined there by the same committee, which met in the city on January 13, 1777.

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States