The Separation of the Church and the State

Thomas Jefferson was a big believer in equality and liberty.  He was one of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and strongly supported the ideas in it.  He said that religion and church should be completely separate, and so he ended up helping the Baptists by taking their petition into the court.  This petition said the Baptists should be free to preach without having a license.  Jefferson himself was a Deist who believed that God was not in control of daily life and believed in reason and science to explain things which used to be explained by the works of God.  He did not agree with the Baptists’ ideas at all but believed they should be able to practice whatever type of religion they wanted.  Though he had some problems passing the bill because another man on the Virginia Assembly thought religion being not a part of the government would make religion go away because people would stop practicing it since they didn't have to. Or, he thought it could also make too many religions and every person would have a different religion.  So he drafted a bill advocating for the government to fund all religions.  Jefferson believed the government would kill religion.  Eventually Jefferson's bill was passed but some of Henry's ideas came to play.  People started to question religion and stopped going to church.  Eventually though, they began to feel lost and weren't sure where or which religion to turn to.  This lead to a meetings held by preachers who believed the people needed to be saved from no religion.  They conducted large meetings and preached for hours.  The people that went there weeped, fainted and asked for forgiveness for their sins and for not practicing a religion.  This lead to more and more meetings spread throughout the colonies.