Most of us are aware of the much referenced “Wall of Separation” alluded to by those who wish to obfuscate its origin to be within the Constitution and additionally to be a humanist commandment from that document that, like Caesar to Moses striking the name Moses from every obelisk and building, strikes the very mention or reference to God from every public place.

How many of We The People have sought out the actual source of the fist allusion to a “Wall of Separation” between church and state?

That source or origin would be President Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists from January 1, 1802. The paragraph, as sent and received by the Danbury Baptists, which gave birth to the “Wall of Separation” reads as follows:

http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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 & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

Note that he does not separate the most applicable complementary clauses from the First Amendment. Those clauses placed restrictions on the legislators that they shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Note that in full context Jefferson envisioned such “building a wall of separation between Church and State,” such that it “restores to man all his natural rights,” and that he was convinced that none of these “natural rights” were in opposition to his “social duties.”

One must therefore conclude that this “Wall,” protecting religion from the whims of government, nevertheless had a door through which those of any faith or no faith may freely pass to conduct their social duties such as the business of governing.

Those of faith need not abandon their belief at the door, thus denying that faith, for they are yet endowed with the unalienable right to freely exercise that faith, even as they govern, for the complementary proscription to Congress, that they shall make no law “respecting the establishment of religion,” cannot be abridged merely by “the free exercise thereof.”

Note that President Jefferson demonstrated this very fact with the closing paragraph of this very letter to the Danbury Baptists as he offered this prayer:

“I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.”

And so President Thomas Jefferson immediately set an example and prayed from the very wall he envisioned.

Which Presidential candidate will best serve the Constitution?

The Watchman