Williamsburg Charter

The Williamsburg Charter is a document that was drafted in 1986 to reaffirm the Religious Liberty clauses of the US Bill of Rights.

The lead drafter was Os Guinness. At the time he was the Executive Director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation.

The Charter was signed by almost 100 nationally prominent figures on June 22, 1988. This was in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Virginia's call for a Bill of Rights.[citation needed] Among the signatories were Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter; the late Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court William Rehnquist; the late activist Coretta Scott King (wife of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.) and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

The document affirms the need for a lively and reasoned debate on the role of religion in the public life of the United States.[editorializing][citation needed]

Its primary focus is on the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause, contained within the first amendment of the United States Constitution. The goal of the writers is to "affirm both their cardinal assumptions and the reasons for their crucial national importance".[better source needed]

The writers believe that the problems surrounding the religion clauses can only be solved by first understanding the nature of the clauses.[according to whom?] Among the points raised in the charter is that non-religious hostility towards religion is just as dangerous to a democracy as religious hostility towards non-religion or to other religions.[original research?][citation needed]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "The Williamsburg Charter". Jstor. Journal of Law and Religion, vol. 8, no. 1/2, pp. 5–22. 1990. Retrieved 24 March 2026.
  2. ↑ "Honorary Degrees". King University. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  3. ↑ "Os Guinness". Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  4. ↑ "Grove City welcomes Christian thought leader Os Guinness". Grove City College. 6 September 2016. Retrieved 24 March 2026.
  5. ↑ "Guinness, Starr chat about religious freedom". Baylor News. 11 September 2013. Retrieved 24 March 2026.
  6. ↑ Dart, John (25 June 1988). "Leaders of Differing Views Agree on Religion Charter". LA Times. Retrieved 24 March 2026.
  7. ↑ "The Williamsburg Charter on the 1st Amendment (1988)". ReligiousTolerance.org. 2022-01-25 [1988]. Archived from the original on 2022-01-25. Retrieved 26 May 2025.[non-primary source needed] Note, this is a web cover page to the full document, which is available from it, via links. This website itself contains neither the full text, nor the list of signatories.
  8. ↑ Flynn, W. J. (1990). "The Williamsburg Charter: A Golden Rule for Preserving Religious Freedom". Cambridge University Press. Journal of Law and Religion. 8(1-2):221-222. doi:10.2307/1051273. Retrieved 24 March 2026.
  9. ↑ "The Williamsburg Charter, 1988". CLCLibrary-org-works.angelfire.com. 1988. Retrieved 26 May 2025.[non-primary source needed] Note, web page presents the full document and list of signatories, but it does not appear to be supported by the usual bona fides associated with quality publications. (The publishing organisation and its location, etc., are unknown, so the accurate rendering of the document is presently a matter of faith.)