Our Christian Heritage – James Madison
James Madison is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. Known as the “Chief Architect of the Constitution”, he wrote 29 of the 85 Federalist Papers, authored the Bill of Rights, and at the Constitutional Convention, moved for prayer to be enacted in their assembly.
It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it[the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.
He was strong defender of religious freedom. The reason for this can be attributed to an incident in his youth. He was standing with his father outside in the village of Orange. At the jail nearby, there were Baptist ministers preaching through their cell windows. They were imprisoned because of their religious stances.
This, no doubt, contributed to him studying for the ministry later on in life before he went on to study law at Princeton. There he was under the tutelage of John Witherspoon, then one of the nations foremost theologians and legal scholars.
In 1772 in a letter to William Bradford, a close friend from college, he stated:
A watchful eye must be kept on ourselves lest while we are building ideal monuments of renown and bliss here, we neglect to have our names enrolled in the annals of Heaven.
Madison later went on to serve in the Virginia legislator and helped to write the Virginia Constitution from 1776 to 1779. Shortly thereafter, he became a member of the Continental Congress where he served from 1780 to 1783.
In 1801 he was appointed by Thomas Jefferson as the Secretary of State, whereby he helped engineer the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1808 he became the fourth President of the United States.
In a letter to Frederick Beasley on November 20, 1825, he said:
The belief in a God all powerful, wise, and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be withdrawn from too many sources, nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.
