Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State

6. Creating “Effectual Barriers”: Alternative Metaphors in Defense of Religious Liberty

Creating “Effectual Barriers” Alternative Metaphors in Defense of Religious Liberty [I]f I could now conceive that the general Government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution. —George Washington to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia (1789)1 I must admit, moreover, that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation, between the rights of Religion & the Civil authority, with such distinctness, as to avoid collisions & doubts on unessential points. —James Madison to Jasper Adams (1833)2 Jefferson was not alone among his American contemporaries in championing metaphoric barriers for protecting civil and religious liberties . Indeed, late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature is replete with various figurative barriers erected to safeguard civil liberty in general and religious liberty in particular. Some of these barriers were constructed before the Danbury letter, and some after. Most, if not all, pretwentieth -century alternatives to the “wall” were made without reference to, or even knowledge of, Jefferson’s now famous construction. In more recent times, various commentators have proposed alternatives to, or re- finements of, Jefferson’s figurative language. This chapter surveys some of the notable barriers built in defense of civil and religious liberties. 6 83 “Effectual Barriers” In the days following his inauguration, President George Washington received a flood of congratulatory addresses from diverse sources, including some two dozen religious societies and congregations. These messages , in the words of a Virginia Baptist association, were “shouts of congratulations” and praise for Washington’s services in war and peace and for his elevation to the chief magistracy of the United States.3 In May 1789, Washington replied to one such address from the United Baptist Churches in Virginia. In his letter, written only months before Congress drafted the First Amendment, the president praised the Baptists throughout America for being “uniformly, and almost unanimously , the firm friends to civil liberty, and the persevering Promoters of our glorious revolution.” He reaffirmed the “sentiment, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, . . . ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”4 Addressing Baptists’ fears that religious liberty was inadequately safeguarded under the new federal Constitution, he also wrote that, if the Constitution “might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society” or if the federal “Government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure,” then he would labor zealously “to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”5 Commentators have observed that this graphic imagery prefigured Jefferson ’s First Amendment “wall of separation between church and state.” Conrad Henry Moehlman, for example, remarked that Washington’s phrase “effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny” was the forerunner of Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state.” Both loved figures of speech: Washington, the military man, thought of “barriers”; Jefferson, the man of home life, thought of a substantial, separating, secure wall around his estate. A barrier is the equivalent of a wall, especially when it is “effectual.”6 Noting that both Washington and Jefferson crafted barrier metaphors in their responses to Baptist associations, one Washington scholar remarked that Baptists “look upon [Washington’s trope] as the forerunner of Jefferson’s ‘wall of separation between church and state.’”7 84 | Creating “Effectual Barriers” Although Washington’s imagery at least superficially resembles Jefferson ’s better known metaphor, Washington’s conceit differs from Jefferson ’s in one vital respect. Washington was writing to the minority Baptist community in Virginia, which had grave reservations about the 1787 Constitution crafted in Philadelphia because they feared that it provided insufficient security for liberty of conscience and religious freedom . Washington did not suggest that “effectual barriers” are normally desirable, nor did he argue that a barrier between religion (or religious rights) and the civil state is a necessary precondition for religious liberty. Rather, he used the subjunctive mood to express a condition that he did not believe had existed. “If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention . . . might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society,” the president wrote, then certainly I...