No Religious Test Clause

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See also: Test Act

A variety of Test Acts were instituted in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. Their main purpose was to exclude anyone not a member of the Church of England from holding government office, notably Catholics and "nonconforming" Protestants. Government officials were required to swear oaths, such as the Oath of Supremacy, that the monarch of England was the head of the Church and that they possessed no other foreign loyalties, such as to the Pope. Later acts required officials to disavow transubstantiation and the veneration of saints.

Many colonists of the Thirteen Colonies had left England in part to gain a measure of religious freedom. With the royal government's religious favoritism fresh in their memory, the Founders sought to prevent the return of the Test Acts by adding this clause to the Constitution. Specifically, Charles Pinckney, delegate from South Carolina where a Protestant denomination was the established state religion, introduced the clause to Article VI and it passed with little opposition.[1][2]

Forced oaths[edit]

The Supreme Court has interpreted this provision broadly, saying that any required oath to serve anything other than the Constitution is invalid. In the case of Ex parte Garland, the Court overturned a loyalty oath that the government had tried to apply to pardoned Confederate officials. As the officials had already received full presidential pardons (negating an argument based on their potential status as criminals), the Court ruled that forcing officials and judges to swear loyalty oaths was unconstitutional.

State law[edit]

  States that have religious qualifications for public office written in their constitutions
  States that do not have religious qualifications for public office written in their constitutions

Earlier in U.S. history, the doctrine of states' rights allowed individual states complete discretion regarding the inclusion of a religious test in their state constitutions. Such religious tests have in recent decades been deemed to be unconstitutional by the extension of the First Amendment provisions to the states (via the incorporation of the 14th Amendment).

Eight states do include language in their constitutions either requiring state officeholders to have particular religious beliefs or specifically protecting those who do:

  1. Arkansas (Article 19 Section 1)
  2. Maryland (Article 37)
  3. Mississippi (Article 14, Section 265)
  4. North Carolina (Article 6 Section 8)
  5. Pennsylvania (Article 1 Section 4)
  6. South Carolina (Article 17 Section 4)
  7. Tennessee (Article 9 Section 2)
  8. Texas (Article 1 Section 4)

Pennsylvania specifically protects officeholders with religious belief but is silent on whether those without such beliefs are also protected.[3] The required beliefs include belief in a Supreme Being, and belief in a future state of rewards and punishments. Some of these same states specify that the oath of office include the words "so help me God".

In some cases, these beliefs (or oaths) were historically required also of jurors, witnesses in court, notaries public, and state employees. In the 1961 case Torcaso v. Watkins, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that such language in state constitutions was in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Citing the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Establishment Clause in Everson v. Board of Education and linking this to Torcaso v. Watkins Justice Hugo Black stated for the Court:


The Supreme Court however did not rule on the applicability of Article VI, stating that "Because we are reversing the judgment on other grounds, we find it unnecessary to consider appellant's contention that this provision applies to state as well as federal offices."

In the 1997 case of Silverman v. Campbell[4] the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution requiring an oath to God for employment in the public sector violated Article VI of the federal constitution, as well as the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and therefore could not be enforced.[5] The other seven states still have similar provisions in their constitutions, but they are not enforced in modern times because it is taken for granted they would be held to be unconstitutional if challenged.


  1. ^ Emphasis added.


  1. ^ Drawn from original source: Charles C. Haynes (1991). "overview: history of religious liberty in America". A Framework for Civic Education. Council for the Advancement of Citizenship and the Center for Civic Education. 
  2. ^ Drawn from original source: "The Individual Liberties within the Body of the Constitution: A Symposium: The No Religious Test Clause and the Constitution of Religious Liberty: A Machine That Has Gone of Itself." Case Western Reserve Law Review 37: 674–747. Dreisbach, Daniel L. 1999. "The Bill of Rights: Almost an Afterthought?". ABC-CLIO. 2011. 
  3. ^ "Religious discrimination in state constitutions". Retrieved 2008-09-06. 
  4. ^ 486 SE.2d 1, 326 S.C. 208 (1997)
  5. ^ "Coverage of the Inevitable Apocalypso". Retrieved 2008-09-06.