ABSTRACT
In Virginia Colony, the established Church of England was firmly entrenched. Its mission included a requirement that individuals pay taxes to support local churches, a provision against which the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was directed. In Virginia as 2001, the US Supreme Court found itself in Brown v. Gilmore, 533 US 1301, dealing with the issue of a statute mandating time for a moment of silence in the state's public schools. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and pushed through the Virginia legislature by James Madison, outlawed the taxing of individuals to support local churches. The statute is considered a major milestone in the push for separation of church and state and has been called the inspiration for what eventually would become the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
