[{"command":"add_css","data":[{"rel":"stylesheet","media":"all","href":"\/sites\/default\/files\/css\/css_aevC838rUFjc8gKZa3cOitkRW38myIz4AKZK3EOwqLs.css?delta=0\u0026language=en\u0026theme=heritage_theme\u0026include=eJwrTi1LzdNPzkksLq7Uy8tPSQUAPMsGtA"}]},{"command":"invoke","selector":null,"method":"openEssay","args":["10000134","\n\n\u003Carticle about=\u0022\/constitution\/articles\/6\/essays\/135\/religious-test\u0022 class=\u0022node node--type-constitution-essay node--promoted node--view-mode-embedded clearfix\u0022\u003E\n  \u003Ch1 class=\u0022title\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan\u003EReligious Test\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003C\/h1\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-location\u0022\u003E\n      Article VI, Clause 3\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-context\u0022\u003E\n      \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-body\u0022\u003E\n    \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Constitution contained one explicit reference to religion: the Article VI ban on religious tests for \u201cany office or public trust under the United States.\u201d Despite much constitutional litigation over the boundary between church and state in the years since\u2014most of it since World War II\u2014there are no judicial decisions construing the religious test ban. This is not to suggest that the clause has been ineffectual. On the contrary: no federal official has ever been subjected to a formal religious test for holding office. The Article VI religious test clause, because it is relatively clear, is a self-executing success.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EBy its plain terms, the ban extended only to federal officeholders. States were free at the time of the Founding to impose religious tests as they saw fit. And they did. State tests generally limited public offices to Christians or, in some states, only to Protestants. National offices were, on the other hand, open to everyone. While today this freedom from religious tests seems obvious, this clause was remarkably progressive for its time.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe surviving accounts of the Constitutional Convention indicate that the Article VI ban \u201cwas adopted by a great majority of the convention, and without much debate.\u201d Only North Carolina opposed the prohibition; the Connecticut and Maryland delegations were divided. All the other delegates were in favor. But even some \u201cnay\u201d voters did not favor religious tests for federal office. Connecticut\u2019s Roger Sherman, for example, thought the ban unnecessary, because \u201cthe prevailing liberality\u201d provided sufficient security against restrictive tests.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe \u201cprevailing liberality\u201d was not, however, as prevailing as Sherman believed. In fact, the clause was hotly disputed in some states during the 1788\u20131789 struggles over ratification of the Constitution. The main objection was that \u201cJews,\u201d \u201cTurks,\u201d \u201cinfidels,\u201d \u201cheathens,\u201d and even \u201cRoman Catholics\u201d might hold national office under the proposed Constitution. The times were such that the force of this objection was, for many, substantial and self-evident. Pennsylvania\u2019s Benjamin Rush expressed the more restrained view that \u201cmany pious people wish the name of the Supreme Being had been introduced somewhere in the new Constitution.\u201d The Religious Test Clause was thus a focal point for reservations about the Constitution\u2019s entirely secular language.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ESome defenders of the Constitution argued, in response, that a belief in God and a future state of reward and punishment could, notwithstanding the test ban, be required of public officers. On this interpretation, Article VI would rule out only sectarian tests, such as would exclude some Christians (but not others) from office. Others asserted that the constitutional requirement that officers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution necessarily implied that officers had to affirm at least some tenets of natural religion. See Oaths Clause, Article VI, Clause 3.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EDefenders of the Constitution put forward two reasons for the religious test ban. First, various Christian sects feared that, if any test were permitted, one might be designed to their disadvantage. No single sect could hope to dominate national councils. But any sect could imagine itself the victim of a combination of the others. Oliver Ellsworth noted that if a religious oath \u201cwere in favour of either congregationalists, presbyterians, episcopalions, baptists, or quakers, it would incapacitate more than three-fourths of the American citizens for any publick office; and thus degrade them from the rank of freemen.\u201d More importantly, they argued that the Constitution wisely declined to exclude some of the best minds and the least parochial personalities to serve in the national government. In his 1787 pamphlet, \u201cAn Examination of the Constitution,\u201d Tench Coxe said of the religious test ban: \u201cThe people may employ any wise or good citizen in the execution of the various duties of the government.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe limitation of Article VI, Clause 3, to \u003Cem\u003Efederal\u003C\/em\u003E officeholders was effectively eliminated by the Supreme Court in the 1961 case, \u003Cem\u003ETorcaso v. Watkins\u003C\/em\u003E. Relying upon the First Amendment religion clauses, the Court struck down religious tests for any public office in the United States. \u003Cem\u003ETorcaso\u003C\/em\u003E means that not even a simple profession of belief in God\u2014as was required of Roy Torcaso, an aspiring notary public\u2014may now be required.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe scope of anyone\u2019s immunity from disqualification from office on religious bases now depends upon the meaning of the Establishment and Free Exercise of Religion Clauses, not upon Article VI. At present, the central rule enunciated by the Supreme Court for Establishment Clause jurisprudence is the \u201cendorsement\u201d test. It stipulates all public authority\u2014from state and federal to the most local municipal body\u2014must never do or say anything that a reasonable person could understand to be an \u201cendorsement\u201d of religion, i.e., that favors adherents over non-adherents. Nothing in the neighborhood of a religious test for office could survive application of this norm.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe Establishment Clause thus totally eclipses the Religious Test Clause. Questions about the precise scope of the sort of \u201creligious test\u201d banned, and about whether \u201coffice[s] of public trust\u201d include members of Congress as well as the most junior postal worker, no longer matter\u2014save, perhaps, to historians.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--media\u0022\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--photo\u0022 style=\u0022background-image: url(\/sites\/default\/files\/Gerard_Bradley.jpg)\u0022\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--info\u0022\u003E\n              \u003Ch4 class=\u0022con-essay-author--name\u0022\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/law.nd.edu\/people\/faculty-and-administration\/teaching-and-research-faculty\/gerard-v-bradley\/\u0022\u003EGerard V. Bradley\u003C\/a\u003E\n                  \u003C\/h4\u003E\n                  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--job\u0022\u003E\n         Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-tabs\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cul data-tabs class=\u0022tabs\u0022\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000134-taba\u0022\u003EFurther Reading\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000134-tabb\u0022\u003ECase Law\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000134-tabc\u0022\u003ERelated Essays\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n      \u003C\/ul\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv data-tabs-content\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000134-taba\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMorton Borden, Jews, Turks, and Infidels (1984)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGerard Bradley, \u003Ci\u003EThe No Religious Test Clause and the Constitution of Religious Liberty: A Machine That Has Gone of Itself\u003C\/i\u003E, 37 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 674 (1987)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000134-tabb\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETorcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000134-tabc\u0022\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000128\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EAmendments\u003C\/a\u003E\n                  \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n\u003C\/article\u003E\n"]}]