Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State

Abstract

Thomas Jefferson and Wall of Separation Between Church and By Daniel L. Dreisbach. (New York: New York University Press, 2002. Pp. 1,283. Appendices. Cloth, illustrated, $42.00.)Writing for majority in case of Everson v. Board of Education (1947), justice Hugo Black quoted from Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association, in which third president wrote that First Amendment to U. S. Constitution had created of between Church & State. Furthermore, Black opined, That must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve slightest breach (4). Jefferson's wall of separation, as cited by Black, became a defining metaphor over ensuing decades in judicial decisions about role of religion in public life.Daniel L. Dreisbach aims to correct what he regards as misuse of Jefferson's metaphor by setting it in its historical context and scrutinizing its role in twentieth-century jurisprudence. he hopes thereby to create sourcebook for jurists and scholars (6). This is important, he argues, because the prevailing metaphors of a culture and those who successfully impose their metaphors on culture, in many respects, define society's perceptions, beliefs, and even behaviors (110). Thus, Thomas Jefferson and Wall of Separation Between Church and State treats both history of early republic and that of postwar era.Dreisbach's examination of origins of Jefferson's famous phrase relies on an in-depth analysis of a series of events that took place during a five-day period surrounding January 1, 1802. On December 30, 1801, Jefferson received a letter from Danbury Baptists in which they congratulated president on his election and compared Connecticut's Congregational establishment unfavorably with their own Jeffersonian principles of religious liberty. Jefferson drafted his reply on January 1, but before sending it out, he asked for feedback of two New Englanders in his cabinet, Postmaster General Gideon Granger and Attorney General Levi Lincoln. Following latter's recommendation, Jefferson deleted that portion of letter in which he had explained his constitutional scruples about proclaiming days of fasting or thanksgiving as president and then dispatched revised text. The passage about a wall of separation, however, remained in final draft. Dreisbach provides transcripts of all this correspondence, including both drafts of Jefferson's reply. The same day, Jefferson also received from another New England Baptist, John Leland, mammoth cheese (9) manufactured by farmers of Cheshire, Massachusetts, as a large and odiferous token of their admiration for him. Two days later, on January 3, Jefferson attended a church service held in House of Representatives, at which Leland preached. Dreisbach's point in recounting these events is to show that Jefferson's statement about of separation was not some absolute and authoritative pronouncement, but rather product of a specific, highly politicized context, in which Jefferson was seeking to curry favor with his allies among New England dissenters and counter Federalist accusations of his purported religious infidelity.In addition, Dreisbach argues convincingly that federalism constituted a key aspect of Jefferson's reply to Danbury Baptists. …