According to Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, church-state separation began in the Reformation, and continued through the American colonial period into the present day. Some of the religious leaders of the colonial period, such as Roger Williams, favored religious freedom. Williams insisted that the state should have no business in enforcing orthodoxy. A person's understanding of religion and truth, Williams insisted, must come from within. He argued for complete freedom of conscience, a concept he called "soul liberty."

It was Williams who coined the phrase that may have been the grandfather to Thomas Jefferson's famous "wall of separation" between church and state metaphor. In his 1644 treatise, "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution, for cause of Conscience," Williams warned against opening "a gap in the hedge, or wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." A decent distance between church and state, he maintained, would keep the purity of the church intact and safe from the corrupting influence of government."

Similarly, Pastor John Leland was dismayed to see dissenting preachers in jail for their religious views. Leland's writings echo some of the comments made by Jefferson. Leland, defending freedom of conscience, wrote, "Government should protect every man in thinking, and speaking freely, and that one does not abuse another...all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, pagans and Christians."

On another occasion, Leland wrote in opposition to the idea that holders of public office should have to believe certain things about religion before they could even run. Such "religious tests" were common in many colonies. Wrote Leland, "If a man merits the confidence of his neighbors...let him worship one God, twenty gods, or no god--be he Jew, Turk, Pagan, or Infidel, he is eligible to any office in the state.

In 1790 he wrote, "The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever...If all the souls in a government were saints of God, should they be formed into a society by law, that society could not be a Gospel Church, but a creature of the state."

Pastor Isaac Backus, a Baptist minister, went so far as to refuse to pay a church tax and was arrested. In 1774 he wrote a document blasting the tax, which asserted in part, "Religion is a concern between God and the soul with which no human authority can intermeddle."

In 1787 when the framers excluded all mention of God from the Constitution, they were widely denounced as immoral and the document was denounced as godless, which is precisely what it is. Opponents of the Constitution challenged ratifying conventions in nearly every state, calling attention to Article VI, Section 3: "No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

An anti-federalist in North Carolina wrote: "The exclusion of religious tests is by many thought dangerous and impolitic. Pagans, Deists and Mohammedans might obtain office among us." Amos Singletary of Massachussetts, one of the most outspoken critics of the Constitution, said that he "hoped to see Christians (in power), yet by the Constitution, a papist or an infidel was as eligible as they."

In 1797, America made a treaty with Tripoli, declaring that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This reassurance to Islam was written under Washington�s presidency and approved by the Senate under John Adams.

We are not governed by the Declaration of Independence. Its purpose was to "dissolve the political bonds," not to set up a religious nation. Its authority was based upon the idea that "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," which is contrary to the biblical concept of rule by divine authority. The Declaration deals with laws, taxation, representation, war, immigration, etc., and doesn't discuss religion at all.

The references to "Nature's God," "Creator," and "Divine Providence" in the Declaration do not endorse Christianity. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, was a Deist, opposed to Christianity and the supernatural.

"Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus," wrote Thomas Jefferson. However, Jefferson admitted, "In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man and that other parts are the fabric of very inferior minds..."

It was Thomas Jefferson who established the separation of church and state. Jefferson was deeply suspicious of religion and of clergy wielding political power.

Jefferson helped create the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786, incurring the wrath of Christians by his fervent defense of toleration of atheists: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others. But it does no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Jefferson and the founding fathers were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Their world view was based upon Deism, secularism, and rationalism. "The priests of the different religious sects dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight," wrote Jefferson. "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter...we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this..."

As late as 1820, Jefferson was convinced everyone in the United States would die a Unitarian. Jefferson, Madison and Paine's writings indicate that America was never intended to be a Christian theocracy. "I have sworn upon the altar of God," wrote Jefferson, "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

(for further information, please read, Why the Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church and State, by Rob Boston [Prometheus Books, 2003])