Appendix J: Letter to Danbury Baptists (1802)

• Author: Arthur Rizer
• Profession: Director of Justice Policy and a senior fellow at the R Street Institute
• Pages: 249-250

249

APPENDIX J

Letter to Danbury Baptists

(1802)

Jeerson often took quips developed in correspondence or earlier works and applied

them as more fully developed lines of thought in his later works. e Danbury

Baptists exchange is one such example. In this correspondence, Jeerson men-

tions the need to build a “wall of separation between Church & State.”

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a

committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

e aectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so

good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association,

give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pur-

suit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded

of my delity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more

pleasing.

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 estab-

lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a

wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of

the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see