SOURCE: “The ‘Wall of Separation’ and Thomas Jefferson's Views on Religious Liberty,” in William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4, October, 1999, pp. 791-94.

In the following essay, O'Neil discusses the importance of Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists and his consistent view on the separation of church and state throughout his career.

In the first Supreme Court case that dealt with the clause of the First Amendment that declares that Congress shall pass “no law respecting an establishment of religion,” the justices recognized the central importance of the framers' views in defining the proper relationship between church and state. Those views merge from several sources—Thomas Jefferson's 1786 Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, and Jefferson's letter in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists.¹ This letter first suggested the euphonious and often-quoted phrase “a wall of separation” as a guide to the constitutional proximity of government and...