Editing Separation of church and state (section)

===Jefferson and the Bill of Rights===
{{Main|Establishment Clause|Free Exercise Clause}}
[[File:Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1800.jpg|thumb|right|[[Thomas Jefferson]], the third [[President of the United States]], whose letter to the Danbury Baptists Association is often quoted in debates regarding the separation of church and state]]

In English, the exact term is an offshoot of the phrase, "wall of separation between church and state", as written in [[Thomas Jefferson]]'s letter to the [[Baptists in the history of separation of church and state#American Baptists|Danbury Baptist Association]] in 1802. In that letter, referencing the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution]], Jefferson writes:

<blockquote>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 and State.<ref name=Jefferson11/></blockquote>

Jefferson was describing to the Baptists that the [[United States Bill of Rights]] prevents the establishment of a national church, and in so doing they did not have to fear government interference in their right to expressions of religious conscience. The Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791 as ten amendments to the [[Constitution of the United States]], was one of the earliest political expressions against the political establishment of religion. Others were the [[Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom]], also authored by Jefferson and adopted by Virginia in 1786; and the French [[Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1789]].

The metaphor "a wall of separation between Church and State" used by Jefferson in the above quoted letter became a part of the First Amendment jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was first used by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in ''[[Reynolds v. United States]]'' (1878). American historian [[George Bancroft]] was consulted by Waite in the ''Reynolds'' case regarding the views on establishment by the framers of the U.S. constitution. Bancroft advised Waite to consult Jefferson. Waite then discovered the above quoted letter in a library after skimming through the index to Jefferson's collected works according to historian Don Drakeman.<ref>{{cite web |author1=Mark Movsesian (Director of the Center for Law and Religion at St. John's University) |title=How the Supreme Court Found the Wall {{!}} Mark Movsesian |date=13 February 2013 |url=https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/02/how-the-supreme-court-found-the-wall |publisher=[[First Things]] |access-date=June 16, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200220144157/https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/02/how-the-supreme-court-found-the-wall/ |archive-date=February 20, 2020}}</ref>