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 & State. –Thomas Jefferson to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, 1 Jan. 1802

Related Materials

• Analysis of Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists by James Hutson, Chief of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress
• Transcription of Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists
• Transciption of Jefferson’s draft version of his letter to the Danbury Baptists