973 - Declaring Truth, Part 4

Friends: Thomas Jefferson's wrote the Declaration of Independence but had no direct hand in writing the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights. Yet his brief words on religion and the First Amendment in 1803, taken out of context in 1947, have crippled public Christianity for nearly a century.  Column below.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #973

July 8, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Declaring Truth, Part 4   

By Bob Walters

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” – First Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution

No thanks to an out-of-context 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Everson v. Board of Education, American culture since has marched down the wrong road of what Thomas Jefferson was actually saying about government and religion in his January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury (Massachusetts) Baptist Association. He was for religion, not against it.

After he cites the First Amendment clause above, we all know the next line of Jefferson’s letter: “… thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Jefferson, then America’s third president, through his political career had been highly active in church affairs, education, and scriptural study. In my school years I remember learning that of all the geniuses and courageous folks who brought forth on this earth the United States of America, Jefferson was a safe bet as the smartest, the most widely read, a stalwart statesman, and a polymath of talent, wisdom, and philosophical depth.

But having grown up in these modern, secular times, we have lost an accurate translation of the religious issues confronting the American colonies and the nascent American state in the 1600s and 1700s. In fact, today we have it backwards.

In simplest terms, read what James L. Adams wrote in his 1989 book, Yankee Doodle Went to Church: “Jefferson’s reference to a ‘wall of separation’ between Church and State’ … was not formulating a secular principle to banish religion from the public arena. Rather he was trying to keep government from darkening the doors of Church.”

We do not today have an appreciation for what a mess religion was early in America when politics was directly involved. And we are not talking about a modern Right to Life march or evangelical political action. We’re talking about the days when churches were established by the state; when Christian denominations fought each other and a majority denomination in a state could sanction other churches and persecute their members.

The Roman Catholic church largely controlled the politics of Europe until the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Continental kings and princes then fought wars over which sect would dominate. England flipped back and forth in the 1500s between monarchs favoring Rome, then its own Anglican church, then Rome again, and back to Anglican.

The non-Anglican Bible believers – think, the Pilgrims – were chased out of England by government sanctioned oppression, as were the Catholics. Freedom of religion was something the American colonies offered, and people emigrated in droves from the religious persecutions and wars across the Atlantic.  As early American local and regional governments formed, “religion” was corrupted. Massachusetts was for the Puritans who chased out the Baptists; Virginia was Anglican, that hated the Calvinists.  Each colony had a favored Christian sect that harassed other Christians in a tyranny of the majority.

That is the issue Jefferson and early America faced and sought to overcome. That is what the “establishment” of religion clause means, as Jefferson in fact led the charge as Virginia’s governor (1779-1781) to dis-establish the Anglican Church from Virginia law.

The “free exercise” of religion was not to be prohibited: we’ve had that backwards for the better part of a century. After the 1947 ruling, the 1960s saw the removal of the Bible and prayer from schools, and fathers from low income homes.  How’s that working out?

Jefferson’s Christian faith evolved in his later years – some say downward – but he wasn’t an atheist or a deist, and never wavered in his belief in Jesus’s teachings. He also never wavered in his certainty that Christian ethics were required to nurture freedom and virtue in a new nation of people solemnly endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) read and recommends The Jefferson Lies by David Barton. Also, for a little more background on the Supreme Court machinations of the 1960s, see columns #860 (5-8-23), Responsible Faith and #930 (9-9-24), No Time for Sheep.