For instance, a petition by citizens of Chesterfield County, Virginia to their state assembly argued in 1785, “It is mens [sic] labour in our Manufactories, their services by sea and land that aggrandize our Country and not their creeds…Let Jews, Mehometans, and Christians of every denomination find their advantage in living under your laws.” More famously, Thomas Jefferson rejected an effort to insert “Jesus Christ” into a Virginia bill for religious freedom. He noted, “The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” … In it he promoted the inclusion in public life of all Protestants – whatever their sect – before going a step further: “Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither pagan, nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth, because of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing.”

XREF: Connects to the author's broader argument about the intended scope of American religious liberty in founding-era documents.

Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon F…, loc. 46