SOURCE: Rutland, Robert A. “James Madison's Dream: A Secular Republic.” In James Madison on Religious Liberty, edited by Robert S. Alley, pp. 199-206. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1985.

In the following essay, originally published in 1983, Rutland examines Madison's advocacy of the separation of church and state, which led to the treatise, Memorial and Remonstrance.

Any clear-headed historian who reaches his ninetieth year in reasonably good health is going to be asked a lot of silly questions, as Dumas Malone found to be the case in 1982. But like all wise men, Malone was able to turn the tables when he rephrased a mindless query about American history into a sensible one. The question as it finally came out: “What is the most fortunate aspect of American history?” The biographer of Thomas Jefferson scarcely hesitated. “The fact that we became a nation and immediately separated church and state—it has...