Setting the Record Straight About Jefferson

Today is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, a man whom we honor most of all because he wrote the Declaration of Independence. However, Thomas Jefferson has in recent years become the favorite Founding Father for the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and other atheist groups because they like to quote him as the author of the phrase “wall of separation of church and state.” If there ever was an example of words being taken out of context, that is it. The atheists use that quote to misrepresent Thomas Jefferson and make us believe that he saw no role for religion in government; and that is completely untrue.

Here is where the famous quote came from. In 1801, the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, wrote to the newly elected President Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson wrote a brief response in which he used the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” in order to reassure the Baptists that the new federal government would not establish a national church or otherwise infringe on their religious liberties. In no way did Jefferson believe or ever say that religion should not play a role in our public life or government.

The words “wall of separation of church and state” do not appear in the United States Constitution, and they cannot be implied from any wording that is in the Constitution. At the time our Constitution was written, most of the 13 original states had established churches, and the purpose of the First Amendment was to assure the states that they could keep their established churches and the new federal government would never impose a national church on them. That’s why the First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist stated: “There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ [between church and state].”