# James A. Garfield — "The Constitution guarantees absolute religious freedom" > [!quote] "The Constitution guarantees absolute religious freedom. Congress is prohibited from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." > — James A. Garfield, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1881 ## Context Garfield placed religious liberty among the constitutional guarantees he affirmed from the inaugural platform — alongside the rights of newly freed Black citizens. A former lay preacher himself, he nonetheless drew the church-state line firmly: the government may neither establish religion nor restrict its free exercise. In his 1880 nomination letter he had added that "the separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute." ## Why this matters A Republican president restating the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses as "absolute religious freedom" — government neutrality, not government endorsement. Garfield's pairing of the two clauses is the whole secular bargain in one sentence: no establishment, no prohibition. That a devout nineteenth-century Republican stated it so plainly is part of the case that church-state separation was, until recently, a cross-ideological American baseline rather than a partisan or secular-liberal position. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Miller Center, Garfield Inaugural Address, March 4, 1881](https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-4-1881-inaugural-address); [National Park Service](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/president-james-a-garfield-s-inaugural-address-march-4-1881.htm). Also in the American Presidency Project. - **Status:** Verbatim from the official text. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Ulysses S. Grant - keep church and state forever separate]] — the Republican predecessor who made the same case. - [[Theodore Roosevelt - no religious test]] — the next Republican to defend it, against a religious test for office. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Separation of Church and State]].