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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."

These words, which are the first words to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, are the most misinterpreted words in our Bill of Rights. Our founding fathers placed these words in the Constitution in order to keep the government from preventing us "free exercise" in our worship to God, and yet the government uses a phrase from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to do the exact opposite.

The phrase "separation of church and state" was used by Jefferson in a letter that he wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, CT in 1802. This group of Baptists, a minority in the state, were being persecuted because they did not conform to the views of the Congregationalists, who were not only the religious majority in the state, but also held the elective offices in the state. The Baptists were afraid that their freedom to worship God in their own way was endangered.

In Jefferson's response, he writes, "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."

If there is any doubt as to what was in the mind of Jefferson as he wrote these words, or for that matter, what was in the minds of our founding fathers when they wrote the Bill of Rights, all one needs to do is to look at their actions.

Thomas Jefferson, for example, while President of the United States, regularly attended worship services. These services were held in the United States Capital, and the worship music was performed by the Marine Band.

In his second inaugural address, Jefferson stated, "In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General Government."

Not long after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, while the true meaning of these words were still fresh on the minds of those who wrote them, President George Washington called for a National Day of Prayer. There is no record that the founding fathers were offended by this, nor that they saw this as a violation of the First Amendment.

During this time, Congress decided to begin each day with prayer, a practice that still exists today.

And, it was during this time that many churches were also used as school houses where the main text book used to educate students was the Holy Bible. Again, there seems to be no fear that this was a violation of the First Amendment from those who wrote the Bill of Rights.

Then in 1947, nearly 150 years after the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and long after the death of our great patriots, things drastically changed. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black took the phrase from Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, and used it to make his own interpretation of what religious freedom meant. Suddenly, this interpretation became the law of the land.

Ever since, we have had laws made on the basis of "separation of church and state", while continually ignoring what our founding fathers meant when they wrote that in matters of religion, the government should not prohibit "the free exercise thereof".

Learn more about this author, Bobby Keith.
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