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In it, Jefferson declared that when the American people adopted the establishment clause they built a “wall of separation between the church and state.” Jefferson had earlier witnessed the turmoil of the American colonists as they struggled to combine governance with religious expression.
Thomas Jefferson famously shaped this metaphor in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, writing about a “wall of separation between church and state.” Jefferson and James Madison fought to disestablish the Anglican Church in Virginia, arguing that taxpayer support for religion infringed on individual rights.
"Separation of church and state" is a metaphor paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson and used by others in discussions of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
Jefferson’s reply did not address their concerns about problems with state establishment of religion — only of establishment on the national level. The letter contains the phrase “wall of separation between church and state,” which led to the short-hand for the Establishment Clause that we use today: “Separation of church and state.”
Sen. James Lankford and Russell Moore write about Thomas Jefferson's intent behind the separation of church and state for Religious Freedom Day.
The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state.
The principle of the separation of church and state is a cornerstone of American democracy, enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and championed by one of the nation‘s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson.