John Leland and James Madison: Religious Influence on the Ratification of the Constitution and on the Proposal of the Bill of Rights

By Mark S. Scarberry.  113 Penn St. L. Rev. 733.

Leland’s self-written Epitaph: “Here lies the body of John Leland, who labored 67 years to promote piety and vindicate the civil and religious rights of all men.”  “He played a substantial part in molding [an] American tradition that is full of meaning to all of us today—the separation of church and state in the United States. . . . Much of Leland’s sixty-seven year career as a Baptist evangelist was expended in fighting to remove [religious] disabilities—not only for Baptists but for persons of all faiths, Christian and non-Christian, and even for those who held no recognized religious faith. . . . [H]e was as courageous and resourceful a champion of the rights of conscience as America has produced . . . [keep reading]