The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, signed into law in 1786, was derived from a bill Thomas Jefferson had drafted and submitted some years earlier to the state legislature in Virginia. The purpose of the bill was to guarantee religious freedom in Virginia in the political flux created by the Revolutionary War and American independence. This meant both that Virginians could not be coerced in their religious opinions or practices and that they could not be taxed to support a church whether or not they believed in its doctrines. The bill does not put Virginia in the position of a modern secular state; the act endorses Christianity, which it identifies as the religion of Virginia. However, it defines religious opinions as irrelevant to participation in the state. Religious intolerance or compulsory participation in religion is viewed as leading to bad consequences for the state and for religion. Religious liberty is also a natural right. Although the act could not have legal consequences outside of Virginia, it rests on a theory about humanity as a whole and not a particular interpretation of the history or institutions of Virginia. It also rests on an idea that truth is best pursued under conditions of liberty, an idea that would later influence the American Bill of Rights and, through that, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.