Just after Thomas Jefferson was elected President in late 1801, he received a congratulatory letter from Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. The letter was more than just a simple note of congratulations. It was meant to convey to Jefferson the Baptist concern over state-supported religious favoritism. The Baptists wrote "Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions..."
Even in 1801, there was controversy as to the implications of the First Amendment's stricture that Congress shall "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting, the full exercise thereof." Specifically, Republican (the precursor of the current Democrats) sentiment was offended by the practice of Federalist presidents of declaring days of national fasts and thanksgiving.
Jefferson's response was essentially a political action indicating solidarity with the Danbury Baptists. In his now famous reply, Jefferson emphasized the distance between the functions of religion and the state with the metaphor of a "wall of separation between church and state."
Of course, this situation represented more than a dry discourse on the political philosophy. At the time Jefferson's political adversaries were trying to paint Jefferson as anti-religious for his reticence to proclaim national fasts and days of thanksgiving. Similarly, Jefferson was willing to suggest that Federalists where closet monarchists trying to have the President play the role of a king.
The political context of the famous Danbury response has now been resurrected with a exhibit at the Library of Congress on "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic." One part of the exhibit is Jefferson's original handwritten letter to the Danbury Baptists.
In Jefferson's drafts, he crossed out and rewrote much of the letter. The entire, unedited manuscript was recently reconstructed by FBI laboratory analysis. If anything, Jefferson's unedited manuscript suggested even greater hostility to church and state entanglement. In the unedited manuscript, Jefferson calls not just for a "wall of separation," but an "eternal wall." After consulting his Attorney General, Jefferson moderated the tone of the letter. In any case, James Hutton the Chief of the Library of Congress Manuscripts Collections suggests that:
"It will be of considerable interest in assessing the credibility of Danbury Baptist letter as a tool of constitutional interpretation to know, as we now do, that is was written as a partisan political counterpunch, aimed by Jefferson below the belt of enemies who were tormenting him more than a decade after the First Amendment was composed."
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Frank Monaldo's Conservative Politics topic, please visit the Discussions page.