With this year’s Thanksgiving holiday at our door, it is fitting that we ask an important question that has so much to do with our Constitutional liberties: What is the Separation of Church and State?

Why is it fitting to ask this question as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday? Well, it’s precisely the Thanksgiving holiday that reminds us of the origins of the phrase, separation of church and state.

In 1620, a group of Christian pilgrims known as the Separatists washed ashore in what came to be known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. They first left England to escape religious persecution there. They landed in Holland but realized Holland was not a place that allowed their faith to flourish. They set sail again; this time for America.

When the pilgrims set up their colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, they soon employed a policy that came out of their own struggles for religious freedom. They employed the first American policy of a separation of church and state.

This may seem like a counterintuitive decision for a group of deeply religious people. However, the Separatists knew full well that when the power of the church is placed under the control of the government, the government then begins to mandate its own sanctioned religious practice. The Separatists had endured the religious persecution of the state in England and wanted to ensure that no such persecution would occur in America. Unlike the Puritans, who believed in establishing some form of a Theocracy, these Separatists, being true to their name, decided to separate the two entities of the church and the state so as to allow the free expression of religion to flourish. That is precisely what happened. Early America in the 1600’s saw many religious groups and sects set up colonies that were specifically designed for the free expression of their religion without government interference. That is what the separation of church and state is really all about: keeping the government out of the church’s business.

Fast forward to the writing of our nation’s Bill of Rights in 1789. Founding fathers like Patrick Henry and James Madison knew that allowing a mandated government religious practice would stifle religious expression in the new nation. They decided to embrace what is the most harmonious balance between the federal government and the church that the world has ever seen. They wrote the First Amendment of the Constitution.

In the First Amendment we see the balance between the federal government’s role in protecting religious practice and not coercing it. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees all Americans the freedom of speech, religion, press, petition and assembly, has this to say about religious practice: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The federal government cannot mandate a religious practice, nor can they prohibit religious practice. Unfortunately, in the last few decades we have seen many judicial rulings that demonstrate a desire to uphold the establishment clause of the First Amendment at the expense of the free exercise clause. This is completely contrary to the purpose of the First Amendment and a violation of it as well.

The first major case that undermined the balance between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause occurred in 1947. In Everson vs. Board of Education the Supreme Court, led by Justice Hugo Black, an FDR appointee and member of the Ku Klux Klan, reinterpreted the meaning of the First Amendment of the Constitution. This decision set in motion an unconstitutional chain of events that has undermined our First Amendment liberties ever since.

Just what did Justice Black and the other FDR appointees to the Supreme Court do? They hijacked a phrase used by President Thomas Jefferson, “separation of church and state,” found in a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association (1802). Jefferson’s letter was actually used by the court to limit religious freedom.

By taking completely out of context the phrase used by Jefferson in his letter, "separation of church and state," the Supreme Court ruled that the freedom of religious expression in the public square was a violation of the “separation of church and state” found in the Constitution. This is an astounding ruling, as the phrase “separation of church and state” is not even found in the Constitution.

In 1947, the Supreme Court actually used Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists as the basis for their decision, even though his letter is not Constitutional law. This is another example of the Progressive Bait and Switch tactic at work that I spoke of in my last article with Townhall.

Another interesting fact concerning Jefferson's use of the phrase, “separation of church and state” is its true meaning. Thomas Jefferson used this phrase as nothing more than a metaphor to express the First Amendment’s role as a protector of religious expression in the public square. So even if Jefferson’s letter was Constitutional law, Hugo Black and the other FDR appointees on the Supreme Court still misinterpreted the meaning of Jefferson’s letter and the separation of church and state.

In his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, President Jefferson said he believed there was a "wall of separation" in the Constitution that was designed to keep the government from interfering in the affairs of the church, not a wall to keep free speech out of the public arena. Thankfully, the Supreme Court finally clarified what Jefferson truly meant in Lynch vs. Donnelly (1984) when they said that the phrase “separation of church and state” is nothing more than the opinion of Thomas Jefferson, a “euphemism” as they put it, not Constitutional law.

While the 1984 case was a breath of fresh air to those who love liberty, the damage of the 1947 case has led to other terrible decisions that defy logic, reason and the Constitution itself. In fact, the 1947 ruling, in spite of being inaccurate and unconstitutional, has become part of the American collective consciousness.

In what has become the most infamous Supreme Court ruling regarding religious speech, Engel vs. Vitale (1962), the Supreme Court reinterpreted the meaning of the establishment clause in the First Amendment and misused its authority to ban the free exercise of religion in schools. This is the famous school prayer case. Continued...