BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

2 2 : B V O V 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 o- cial government documents. It was taken from letters between President Thomas Jeƒ erson 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 Jeƒ erson 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 Miller, 1808 Having witnessed the tendency of government to encroach upon the free exercise of religion, Mr. Jeƒ erson 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 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 o- cial government documents. It was taken from letters between President Thomas Jeƒ erson 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

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