Jeferson's wall: two hundred years ago, on January 1, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson penned a letter destined to be ranked with the Declaration of Independence, James Madison's 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and George Washington's 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.

Addressed to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association, Jefferson's letter stated, in part:

   Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man
   and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his
   worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and
   not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole
   American people [the First Amendment] 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 and State.

The importance of this letter can only be grasped in its historical context, in its influence on the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings from then through the bicentennial we now commemorate, and on what the present Supreme Court will make of it between now and Independence Day, 2002.

Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor was employed by the Supreme Court in 1879 in its first religious liberty case, Reynolds v. United States. Citing the Jefferson quote above, the Court held that "coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured."

The next time the High Court utilized "the wall" was in the landmark 1947 case, Everson v. Board of Education. The Court stated, in Justice Hugo Black's ringing words:

   The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at
   least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church.
   Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer
   one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go
   to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a
   belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for
   entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church
   attendance or nonattendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be
   levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they
   may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice
   religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or
   secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or
   groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against
   establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of
   separation between church and state." ... That wall must be kept high and
   impregnable.

The Everson passage was approved by every member of the 1947 Court, was cited favorably in three subsequent rulings, and its spirit has informed many more. However, thanks to several conservative appointments, the Supreme Court has been drifting slowly away from the position of the Everson justices and such subsequent "separationists" as the late, highly regarded Justices William J. Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and Harry Blackmun and toward the "accommodationist" stance of Justices William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. The latter have made it quite clear that they don't agree with Jefferson, the Everson Court, and the earlier Court majorities. Before the end of the present Court's current term this coming July, we will find out whether the serving justices will uphold Jefferson's wall or consign it to the rubbish heap. The crucial test will be a case involving a thus far successful challenge to an Ohio law that provides subsidies through vouchers to sectarian schools in Cleveland--a case scheduled for hearing within weeks.

It cannot be denied that if Jefferson's wall is allowed to crumble, religious freedom in the United States will be in serious trouble. The door will be open for sectarian religion to invade public education; for women to be chained to medieval sectarian medical codes; and for government to compel taxpayers to support sectarian schools and other institutions that commonly practice forms of discrimination and indoctrination the vast majority of Americans would find intolerable.

To understand our present predicament we must return to Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, which latter-day "accommodationists"--heirs of Virginia Governor Patrick Henry, who was defeated by Jefferson and James Madison in 1785-1786--will do anything to discredit. Typical of accommodationist attacks is the one made twenty years ago at a Senate hearing on then- President Ronald Reagan's school prayer amendment by televangelist Pat Robertson--the same Pat Robertson who joined with Jerry Falwell shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in suggesting that God allowed the tragedy to take place to punish Americans for their "liberal sins." Robertson has misrepresented the Jefferson letter and said that the "wall" metaphor "only appeared in the constitution of the Communist Soviet Union." (Details may be found in Robert S. Alley's 1996 book, Public Education and the Public Good.)

In reality, Jefferson's letter was a response to a letter from the Danbury Baptists praising him and voicing a complaint against Connecticut's establishment of the Congregational Church, an arrangement finally ended in 1818. Jefferson received the letter on December 30 and replied two days later. Although Chief Justice Rehnquist brushed off Jefferson's letter in a 1985 ruling as merely "a short note of courtesy," our third president took it a great deal more seriously.

Jefferson sent the Baptists' original letter along with a draft of his reply to Attorney General Levi Lincoln with this request:

   The Baptist address, now enclosed, admits of a condemnation of the alliance
   between Church and State, under the authority of the Constitution. It
   furnishes an occasion, too, which I have long wished to find, of saying why
   I do not proclaim fastings and thanksgivings, as my predecessor did. The
   address, to be sure, does not point at this, and its introduction is
   awkward. But I foresee no opportunity of doing it more pertinently. I know
   it will give great offense to the New England clergy; but the advocate of
   religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them.
   Will you be so good as to examine the answer and suggest any alterations
   which might prevent an ill effect, or promote a good one, among the people?

At Lincoln's suggestion, Jefferson omitted his comments about proclamations so as not to "give uneasiness to some of our republican friends in the eastern states where the proclamation of thanksgivings etc. by their Executive is an antient [sic] habit and is respected."

Another attack by accommodationists on Jefferson's "wall" is their insistence that the First Amendment's establishment clause was intended not to erect a wall but to permit nonpreferential aid to all religions. That, of course, was the Patrick Henry position, which Madison and Jefferson defeated in the Virginia legislature the year before the Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia. The nonpreferentialist, accommodationist position was considered by the First Congress in 1789 and rejected in favor of the present language of the First Amendment.

Nor was the establishment clause drafted simply to block a single religious "establishment," as some accommodationists claim. By 1789 the colonial, European-style single establishments were virtually a dead letter, having given way to church-state separation, as in Virginia, or some sort of broad multiple establishment.

No establishment of religion means what Jefferson and Madison intended, what Washington lauded in his 1,790 letter to the Touro Synagogue, what the Supreme Court held in 1947 and for decades afterward, and what far-sighted religious leaders, politicians, and ordinary people have always believed. The American experience has proven that separation of church and state is best for religion, for democratic government, and for the liberties of the people. The alternative is some greater or lesser form of Talibanization, the goofy agendas of Falwell and Robertson, or the dismal, disastrous dystopia sought by the sectarian special interests seeking school vouchers, tax support for faith-based initiatives, organized school prayer, and the imposition on women of narrow theologies of embryonic personhood.

If history teaches anything, it is that separation of religion and government is essential to religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and democratic values.

Edd Doerr is president of the American Humanist Association and Americans for Religious Liberty. He has authored and edited numerous books and articles and lectured widely on church-state issues.