Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | Jefferson, Thomas - James H. Hutson (essay date 1999)

James H. Hutson (essay date 1999)

SOURCE: “Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists: A Controversy Rejoined,” in William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4, October, 1999, pp. 775-90.

[In the following essay, Hutson discusses the newly-restored manuscript of Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, and its effect on current controversies over the separation of church and state.]

Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, January 1, 1802, contains a phrase that has become almost a household expression in the present-day United States: “a wall of separation between church and state.” In his letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson linked this phrase to the religion clause of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” By juxtaposing the wall of separation metaphor and the Establishment Clause,...

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