(from America's God and Country by William J. Federer)
On January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist
Association of Danbury, Connecticut, calming their fears that Congress
was not in the process of choosing any one single Christian
denomination in order to make it the "state" denomination, as was the
case with the Anglican Church in England and Virginia.
In his letter to the Danbury Baptists, who had experienced severe
persecution for their faith, Jefferson borrowed phraseology from the
famous Baptist minister Roger Williams who said,
"... the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of
the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever
broke down the wall...."
Jefferson's letter included:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with solemn 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.
This personal letter reassured the Baptists that the governments hands were tied from interfering with, or in any way controlling, the affairs or decisions of the churches in America. Thomas Jefferson did not sign the Constitution, nor was he present at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Neither was he present when the First Amendment and religious freedoms were debated in the first session of Congress in 1789, as he was out of the country in France as a U.S. Minister. Due to his not being present to hear all the comments of the Founding Fathers regarding the First Amendment, Thomas Jefferson had to rely on second-hand information to learn what had transpired in that first session of Congress. This rendered his letter to the Danbury Baptists (which was written 13 years after the First Amendment) ineligible to be a "first-hand" reflection of the intent of the constitutional delegates.