Correction: Thomas Jefferson wrote about religious tolerance in the context of a proposed Virigina law. An earlier version offered a different context. This item was updated at 4:40 p.m. Dec. 16, 2013, to reflect that change.
There’s nothing like the holidays to bring out the fault lines at the intersection of religion and the state. The New York-based Satanic Temple stirred things up in Oklahoma when it announced that it was submitting plans for a statehouse monument that speaks to its beliefs. This comes several years after Oklahoma lawmakers granted permission for a private group to put up a 10 commandments monument on the capitol lawn. The Satanists say if lawmakers are okay with the 10 commandments, they have to accept all religious representations.
Christian fundamentalist talk show host Bryan Fischer said Satanism enjoys no such protection.
"By the word religion in the First Amendment, the founders meant Christianity," Fischer said on an American Family Radio broadcast.
We thought we’d go to the historic record to see if that claim hews closely to the facts.
Fischer said in the second half of the 18th century, the overwhelming majority of the people were Christians. Jews accounted for less than 1 percent, Fischer estimated. The founders, he said, lived in a particular religion environment.
"They weren’t providing any cover or shelter for the free exercise of Islam or even Judaism or even atheism," he said. "They weren’t prohibiting that. They were just saying, that is not what we are talking about here."
Fischer told PunditFact that he relied on the 1833 writings of U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story. President James Madison nominated Story to the court in 1811. Story had a narrow view of the First Amendment.
"The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity," Story wrote, "but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects."
At least some of the actual founders voiced contrary views.
Thomas Kidd, professor of history at Baylor University and the author of God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, said "the founders were certainly aware of other religions besides Christianity, and discussed them at length in their writings."
Kidd pointed us to a 1818 letter from John Adams: "This country has done much. I wish it would do more; and annul every narrow idea in religion, government and commerce," Adams wrote. "It has pleased the providence of the first cause, the universal cause, that Abraham should give religion not only to Hebrews, but to Christians and Mohomitans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world."