The "Wall of Separation" and Thomas Jefferson's Views on Religious Liberty

Abstract

I N the first Supreme Court case that dealt with the clause of the First Amendment that declares that Congress shall pass 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 I786 Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, and Jefferson's letter in i802 to the Danbury Baptists.1 This letter first suggested the euphonious and oftenquoted phrase wall of separation as a guide to the constitutional proximity of government and religion. In the half-century since that first decision, the Supreme Court has steadily refined and adapted the initial concepts and principles, creating different formulations of a constitutional test of nonestablishment. In the early years, long before the issue had reached the courts, the Establishment Clause could have been construed to mean no more than that the several surviving state-established churches were free of federal interference-giving some meaning to the curious language law respecting an Establishment of Religion. After the last state church was disestablished in the I830s, such an interpretation was no longer viable, if, indeed, it had ever been more than a theoretical possibility.