•
• Jefferson’s response was to
reassure them that the First Amendment was only meant “to restore to man all his
natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social
duties.”[46] By “natural rights” he refers to
God-given rights. He is assuring them that their religious rights are not
government-given but merely being restored by the government and that those rights
would not be in opposition to social duties. When he mentions “building a wall of
separation between Church and State,”[47] he is stating that the First
Amendment’s intent is to keep the state out of
churches’ affairs. Despite the fact that the phrase “separation of Church and State”
does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, it is today treated as law by many
courts. A hundred and fifty years after Jefferson wrote his letter, modern courts
turned that wall of separation into “an impregnable wall” in the Everson v. Board of
Education case.[48]
Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists