The First Amendment was originally ratified in 1791. It guaranteed Americans the “free exercise of religion,” and it prohibited Congress from making any “law respecting an establishment of religion.” In 1791, Americans widely understood an “establishment” to be a tax-supported denomination, such as the Church of England. The First Amendment prohibited the United States from officially endorsing or supporting any Christian denomination, though it permitted the states to do so. Several states, especially in New England, maintained established churches well into the 1800s.

As journalists pore over every line written and uttered by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the Los Angeles Times has highlighted a 2017 speech in which Kavanaugh said that the “wall of separation between church and state” is a metaphor based upon “bad history.”

Separation of church and state has a negative connotation for many evangelicals and other religious conservatives, who believe that the Supreme Court has used it to exclude religion from American public life. But whether the metaphor is bad history depends on whether we mean the Supreme Court’s 20th-century employment of it, or Thomas Jefferson’s original invocation of the wall in 1802. Presumably Kavanaugh was referring mostly to the court’s more recent use of the term.

The First Amendment was originally ratified in 1791. It guaranteed Americans the “free exercise of religion,” and it prohibited Congress from making any “law respecting an establishment of religion.” In 1791, Americans widely understood an “establishment” to be a tax-supported denomination, such as the Church of England. The First Amendment prohibited the United States from officially endorsing or supporting any Christian denomination, though it permitted the states to do so. Several states, especially in New England, maintained established churches well into the 1800s.

The ongoing state support for the Congregationalist Church in Connecticut precipitated the exchange in which Jefferson used the “wall of separation” metaphor. A group of evangelical Baptists in Connecticut had written to Jefferson, lamenting the continued existence of their state’s established religion. The Baptists loved Jefferson, in spite of his reputed Deism, because they saw him as a great champion of religious liberty. Jefferson saw his response to the Danbury Baptists as an opportunity for “sowing useful truths and principles.” In other words, he wanted to make his response public and to explain his vision for religious liberty in America. Jefferson commended the Baptists’ commitment to religious liberty. He hoped that all the states would adopt the principles enshrined in the First Amendment, which built a “wall of separation between church and state.”

But Jefferson apparently did not envision this separation as absolute and antagonistic, for the same weekend he sent the wall of separation letter, he attended a religious service with members of Congress at which John Leland, a longtime Baptist ally, gave an admiring sermon.

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