Our Spiritual Heritage
The Misleading Metaphor--
Separation of Church and State
by David Barton
In 1947, the Supreme Court declared, “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.” Actually, the “separation of church and state” phrase which they invoked is not found in any of our official government documents. It was taken from letters between President Thomas Jefferson and the Baptist Association of Danbury, Conn.
On Oct. 7, 1801, the Danbury Baptists wrote the new president a letter in which they expressed concern over the First Amendment and its guarantee for the “free exercise” of religion. This suggested to them that the right of religious expression was government-given (thus alienable) rather than God-given (hence inalienable), and therefore the government might someday attempt to regulate religious expression. They strenuously objected to this possibility unless someone’s religious practice caused him to “work ill to his neighbor.”
Thomas Jefferson shared their concern. Here are several of the numerous declarations he made about the constitutional inability of the federal government to regulate, restrict or interfere with religious expression.
[N]o power over the freedom of religion…[is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
—Kentucky Resolution, 1798
In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general [federal] government.
—Second Inaugural Address, 1805
I consider the government of the United States as interdicted [prohibited] by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions…or exercises.
—Letter to Samuel Millar, 1808
BVOV : 23
