Arkansas Times

WWJMD (What Would James Madison Do)?

It was Madison who insisted that both the laws of his native Virginia and the Constitution of the United States protect individuals from government alliance with any church, with religion in general or against any religion. People of many faiths had to be free to believe as they chose or not to believe at all, without state coercion.

But that is not what the sudden champions of religious liberty believe. They would not mind if the government stepped in and did a little proselytizing for Christianity or the predominant form of it in their region, which Madison, himself a deeply religious man unlike some of the other founders, thought was a dangerous thing. He wrote in his famous 1785 treatise against Virginia's proposed tax to support Christian churches that Christianity flourished best before it became aligned with the state in European countries. The European religious wars, which flowed from the alliance, helped produce the French Revolution and the religious-liberty tenet of the U.S. Constitution.

Here's that treatise from Madison