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Thomas Jefferson, Religious Freedom and The Bill of Rights.
In a letter to the D
anbury Baptist Association in 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with solemn 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 these sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
The “wall of separation” metaphor can be traced to Roger Williams, who said in 1644 that to protect the church from worldly corruption there should be: “a hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world.”
Jefferson's views on the importance of religion, and religious freedom, are written on the walls inside the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.:
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secured when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
In 1803, Jefferson wrote a letter to Benjamin Rush:
“My views are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.”
