# Thomas Jefferson — "a wall of separation between Church & State" > [!quote] "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." > — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802 ## Context Written as president to a Baptist congregation in Connecticut — a religious minority in a state with an established church — who feared for their liberty. Jefferson, author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, used his reply to gloss the [[First Amendment]] with the metaphor that has defined the debate ever since. The Supreme Court later adopted "wall of separation" as the governing image of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. ## Why this matters The most consequential six words in the American church-state tradition. Jefferson reads the First Amendment not as a mild accommodation but as a structural barrier — a "wall" — between religion and government, erected by "the whole American people." The phrase is the conceptual core that [[Ulysses S. Grant - keep church and state forever separate]] and [[John F. Kennedy - separation of church and state is absolute]] make explicit, and the precise target of the modern movement that insists the "wall" is a myth and the Establishment Clause merely bars a single national denomination. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Library of Congress, "A Wall of Separation" (with the restored final text)](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danbury.html); transcription at [Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letter_to_the_Danbury_Baptists_-_January_1,_1802). Manuscript also at Founders Online (National Archives). - **Status:** Verbatim from the sent letter. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[James Madison - total separation of church and state]] — the Constitution's principal architect on the same principle. - [[John F. Kennedy - separation of church and state is absolute]] — the metaphor turned into a 20th-century campaign pledge. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Separation of Church and State]].