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The Williamsburg Charter is a document that was drafted in 1986 to reaffirm the Religious Liberty clauses of the US Bill of Rights.^[1]

The lead drafter was Os Guinness.^[2][3] At the time he was the Executive Director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation.^[4][5]

The Charter was signed by almost 100 nationally prominent figures on June 22, 1988.^[6] 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.^[7]

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.^[8] The goal of the writers is to "affirm both their cardinal assumptions and the reasons for their crucial national importance".^{[9][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

• "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. 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.

References