It's true that the term "wall of separation between church and state" does not appear in the Constitution. But the phrase, and its meaning, were very much in the thoughts of the leaders who drafted the country's legal charter.
In the debate over whether the wall should stand or be dismantled, much has been made of "original intent" — that is, what the country's Founders really meant when they drafted the Constitution. But original intent is, of course, an impossibly slippery idea. Who knows what a particular person was thinking hundreds of years ago? And whose thoughts, exactly, are the ones that count? The more important question is whether original intent really matters. Today's U.S. bears little resemblance to the colonies for which the Constitution was written, yet we turn to that document for answers to questions the Founders could never have imagined. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we can divine the thinking of some of our national ancestors.
Certainly at the top of that list would be Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and had an outsized influence on every document of the period. Jefferson adopted the wall-of-separation phrase from Roger Williams, a true founder whose 17th-century ideas were extremely influential in late 18th-century America. In his letter to the Baptist Church of Danbury, Conn., Jefferson famously wrote, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which . . . buil[t] a wall of separation between Church & State." Clearly, Jefferson thought he and his colleagues had built that wall, and deliberately.
What about James Madison, the political brain behind the Constitution? Madison never used the "wall" tag, but he insists in his writings that religion and government have no business intersecting. In his "Remonstrance," he emphasized that "Religion is wholly exempt from [the government's] cognizance."
In the same camp were John Adams, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. These men were deists. Their writings irrefutably reflect the Enlightenment spirit of the times: Reason trumped faith. Nominally Christian, most of them (Washington was a notable exception) were not active churchgoers. In this, they reflected the beliefs of the people they represented — indeed, historians estimate that, at the time of the Revolution, some 96 percent of all colonists belonged to no church at all.
The Constitution itself mentions religion only once — prohibiting any requirement that officeholders be of a particular religion. Freedom of religion was not enshrined in it until the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791. The First Amendment guaranteed the "free exercise" of religion to all citizens and prohibited the government from making laws "respecting the establishment of religion." This latter clause is the point on which the separation argument ultimately turns. Obviously, this was designed to keep the government from adopting an official religion, as England had. But "respecting the establishment of religion" also implies that the government should not appear to support any one religion — including Christianity.
This conviction was echoed in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, signed by President Adams, which frankly stated that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." There could hardly be a more straightforward statement of original intent. The Founders clearly had no wish at all to have the U.S. considered a "Christian nation."
How could they? Some of the earliest settlers to the new land were Jews and, yes, Muslims — all of whom were guaranteed religious freedom. The vast majority of citizens were agnostic and atheists. The country was never universally Christian.
The ideals of our Founders are enshrined, in part, in that wall that keeps government from interfering with religion and, just as important, ensures that our leaders will not force any Americans to support — in practice or taxation — beliefs with which they disagree.
Lesley A. Northup is a religious-studies professor at Florida International University.