ABSTRACT
Accommodationists argue that in the late eighteenth-century an "establishment of religion" existed wherever a polity endorsed a single state church to the exclusion of other churches and where it attached civil disabilities to those dissenting from the recognized church. The most widely read book in eighteenth-century America, the King James version of the Bible, used a variant of "establish" some eight score times. The second, "A Bill Concerning Religion" was introduced on October 25, 1779. Thus, under the 1779 Virginia proposal, it was possible to understand "establishment" to entail an honorary designation of Christianity, or to mean that any particular Christian church had been incorporated by law, or to denote a religious body entitled to receipt of state-collected funds. He remonstrated against the bill: These declarations that the assessment bill sought to create an "establishment of religion" do not necessarily mean that Madison was using the term correctly.
