Liberty of Conscience

Separation of Church and State

Toleration

Immunities of Citizenship

Inherent Natural Rights

To Bigotry No Sanction

Demean Themselves as Good Citizens

Understanding the Letter:
Content, History & Relevance

First Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution

Toleration vs. Religious Freedom

Toleration

Washington assigned equal standing to all peaceable religions, placing Christian and non-Christian religions on the same plane. In a 1788 letter to F.A. Van der Kamp he wrote, “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.” But he looked beyond mere asylum, mere toleration, to a higher level of inclusion. In his Letter to the Hebrew Congregation, Washington rejects the notion of mere toleration as nothing more than a majority’s forbearance of the beliefs of a minority, rather than their full acceptance of the minority’s inherent right to hold its beliefs or opinions. Washington’s co-revolutionary Tom Paine wrote, “Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it.“