Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State

2. Address to the Inhabitants of the Parish of St. Anne, 1774

A p p e n d i x 2 Address to the Inhabitants of the Parish of St. Anne, 1774 NOTICE OF FAST [June, 1774] To the Inhabitants of the parish of Saint Anne. The members of the late house of Burgesses having taken into their consideration the dangers impending over British America from the hostile invasion of a sister colony, thought proper that it should be recommended to the several parishes in this colony that they set apart some convenient day for fasting, humiliation and prayer devoutly to implore the divine interposition in behalf of an injured and oppressed people; and that the minds of his majesty, his ministers, and parliament, might be inspired with wisdom from above, to avert from us the dangers which threaten our civil rights, and all the evils of civil war. We do therefore recommend to the inhabitants of the parish of Saint Anne that Saturday the 23d instant be by them set apart for the purpose aforesaid, on which day will be prayers and a sermon suited to the occasion by the reverend Mr. Clay at the new church on Hardware river, which place is thought the most centrical to the parishioners in General. JOHN WALKER1 THOMAS JEFFERSON Source: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, 12 vols., Federal Edition (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 2:41–42. 132 ...