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In a way, yes, Jefferson DID "invent" Freedom of religion, in his letter to the elders of the Danbury, Ct. Baptist Church. In said letter, which most people don't know about and completely misuse the phrase: "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE", which is in it, Jefferson pledges that this nation will NEVER have a national religion, which most European and the UK had at that time.

I'm going to start charging other posters for these history lessons soon!

Nopardons, in the almost 20 years I've been here, no one has answered the religionists reinterpretation of Separation of Church and State until this Jefferson reference! Kudos, and keep going! This was not a “Christian” nation as Jefferson said there will be no State Religion. Heavens, we studied this in grade school in the fifties and sixties. It's why my family chose to come here during pogroms. It used to be rude, uncouth to ask a person's religion...that was considered a private matter of conscience. Thank you for the education lessons!

“...Jefferson pledges that this nation will NEVER have a national religion, “

Exactly. I don’t know why people don’t know the TRUTH about “separation of church and state”. The libs have re-defined it, and rarely does a conservative correct them when they lie.

My husband said this was one of the best and most accurate summary quotes of any writer that he has read, to date: from Mark David Hall, “Did America have a Christian Founding?”,

“. . . states remained active in this business [religion] well into the 20th century. It is true that the last state church was disestablished in 1832, but many states retained religious tests for public office, had laws aimed at restricting vice, required prayer in schools, and so forth. Because the federal government was not to be concerned with these issues, they were not addressed in the Constitution. The First Amendment merely reinforced this understanding with respect to the faith—i.e., Congress has no power to establish a national church or restrict the free exercise of religion.”

In other words, the Constitution restricted the FEDERAL Gov’t, not the States, in the matter of religion.

And that’s my final word on this topic (for now) : )

I wasn’t unaware of any of that.

But how exactly wasn’t the new government’s hand forced quite a bit by all the different faith groups that existed in America at the time?

Yes, the European nations mostly had established state churches, but the U.S. was made up of immigrants from many of those nations. How, then, could the new government even think to choose one Christian denomination, say, over all the others?

So the First Amendment Establishment clause didn’t just come out of thin air, but most likely just expressed the strong will of the people, and those who wrote the Constitution no doubt were well-aware of public opinion.

Over the centuries, it seems like, in a elitist fashion, we’ve reduced the first Americans to just a few people like Jefferson, Washington, Madison, etc., and giving them all the credit for founding the nation.

And on what to do now, the question most often asked seems to be, “What did Jefferson personally believe?,” or “What did the Deist Founding Fathers personally believe?” Then there are comments like, “America was never a Christian nation. The Founders were deist.”

The Constitution wasn’t written in a vacuum, and it wasn’t just ideas imposed on the public, either.