Separation of Church and State in the United States – A Primer

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” First Amendment to the US Constitution, Part a, ratified effective Dec 15, 1791, also known as the “Establishment Clause”. Emphasis added.


In our Salem Sojourners meeting of Tuesday May 23, 2006, we discussed the importance of education and the failing public school system at length. The progressive banning of any form of Christian religious education or expression from the public school system, the growing lack of discipline, the rise in violence and the withdrawal of parents’ rights to opt their children out of objectionable course content have produced a political movement that calls for the issuance of vouchers to parents to send their children to the private schools of their choice. We did a cursory treatment of the history of Christian religious exercises in public schools and the current banning thereof when the question arose, “Doesn’t the Constitution call for the separation of Church and State?” This post will lay out a fuller answer to that question.

To set the record straight, the phrase “separation of church and state does not appear in any of the United States’ founding documents. The phrase a “wall of separation” referring to church and state originated with Roger Williams (1603-1684), an Anglo-American theologian, co-founder of Rhode Island and founder of the town of Providence. In Williams' day, church and state were intertwined throughout England and New England. Williams carried out a series of published exchanges with John Cotton, the chief spokesman for Massachusetts orthodoxy, in which his most consistent metaphor was the church as a garden in the wilderness of the world. In 1644, he used the garden metaphor as a way of describing the importance of separating the church from the state and attributed the problems of his own time to their being commingled. Williams said, "When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made His garden a wilderness, as at this day." [1] Williams had himself been persecuted and banished from Massachusetts for disputing church doctrine. While he was president of the Colony of Rhode Island it became a haven of religious liberty and in 1658 Newport became home to the first Jewish synagogue in America – the Touro Synagogue.

In 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, fearing persecution as a religious minority, wrote the newly elected President Thomas Jefferson a letter dated October 7. It said, in part, “Our Sentiments are uniformly on the side of Religious Liberty - That religion is at all times and places a matter between God and Individuals - That no man ought to suffer in Name, person or effects on account of his religious Opinions - That the legitimate Power of Civil Government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor. But, Sir our constitution of government is not specific. Our infant charter, together with the Laws made coincident therewith, were adopted as the Basis of our government at the time of our revolution; and such had been our Laws and usages, and such still are; that religion is considered as the first object of Legislation; and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favor granted, and not as inalienable rights: And these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgements, as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen.“

Jefferson’s reply, dated January 1, 1802, stated in part, “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 legitimate 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.”

The “act of the whole American people” to which Jefferson was referring is the ratification of the First Amendment. Jefferson used a phrase coined by a Baptist pastor in corresponding with a group of Baptists who would have understood it in a particular way. It is important to note that the context of Jefferson’s application of the phrase “wall of separation between Church and State” referred only to the federal government and was not absolute.

Further Reading:

1. Baptists in the history of separation of church and state.
2. Danbury Baptist Correspondence.
3. Cobin, David M. (1990), “Creches, Christmas Trees and Menorahs: Weeds Growing in Roger Williams’ Garden.”
4. Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, 1802.

[1] “Mr. Cotton's Letter lately Printed, Examined and Answered." (London, 1644; reprinted, with Cotton's letter, which it answered, in Publications of the Narragansett Club, vol. ii.).