THE FACTS ON CHURCH AND STATE SEPERATION FROM PEOPLE FOR THE WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE.

THE FIRST TIME THE STATEMENT "SEPARTATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE" WAS USED

On January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, calming their fears that Congress was not in the process of choosing any one single Christian denomination in order to make it the "state" denomination, as was the case with the Anglican Church in England and Virgina. In his letter to the Baptists, who had experienced severe persecution for their faith, Jefferson borrowed phraseology from the famous Baptist minister, Roger Williams, who said, "...the hedge or wall of separtation between the garden of the church and the wildersness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall..".

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with solemn 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 therof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State".

Thomas Jefferson's personal letter ensured that the governments's hands were tied from interfering with, or in any way controlling, the affairs or decisions of the churches in America.

Used from America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations.

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
on July 20, 1956 by joint resolution, adopted rep. Charles E. Bennett's (Florida) bill providing that the official national motto of the United States of America be: