BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Having witnessed the tendency of government to encroach upon the free exercise of religion, Mr. Jefferson had written to Noah Webster in 1790 stating that he had no intention of allowing the government to limit, restrict, regulate or interfere with public religious practices. He believed, along with the other founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal establishment of a national denomination. In his reply to the Danbury Baptists on Jan. 1, 1802, he assured them that the free exercise of religion would never be interfered with by the federal government. Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. The president’s reference to “natural rights” reaffirmed his belief that religious liberties were inalienable rights. “Natural rights” included “that which the Books of the Law and the Gospel do contain.” That is, what God Himself had guaranteed to man in the Scriptures. When the president assured the Baptists that by following their “natural rights” they would violate no social duty, he was affirming to them that the free exercise of religion was their inalienable, God-given right and therefore was protected from federal regulation or interference. Doubting whether America could survive if we ever lost knowledge of the source of our inalienable rights, he asked: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have lost the only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” The Meaning of Separation Thomas Jefferson believed that God, not government, was the author and source of our rights and that government was to be prevented from interference with those rights. The “wall” of the Danbury letter was not to limit religious activities in public. It was to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with those expressions. Earlier courts long understood President Jefferson’s intent. When his Danbury letter was invoked by the Supreme Court in 1878, unlike today’s courts which publish only his eight-word separation phrase, that earlier court published a large segment of his letter and concluded: Coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it [Mr. Jefferson’s letter] may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the Amendment thus secured. Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere [religious] opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order. The court then summarized Thomas Jefferson’s intent for “separation of church and state”: “[T]he rightful purposes of civil government are for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order. In th[is]…is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the State.” 24 : BVOV

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