The entire letter. What context is taken out?
Reply of Thomas Jefferson:
Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins & Stephen S. Nelson
A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association in the State of Connecticut
Gentlemen:
The affectionate sentiments of esteem & approbation which you are so good as to express towards me on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association assurances of my high respect and esteem.
Thomas Jefferson
January 1, 1802
Whether or not Jefferson's view on the 1st Amendment is correct is simply not relevant to this discussion. Regardless of whether the Founders really did intend to build a "wall of separation" (a view which I reject), they clearly did intend to prevent the government from being more partial toward some Christian sect than others.
By teaching ID, the government is bestowing favor upon those Christian sects the teach that the evolution of man required the miraculous intervention of God.
There are plenty of devout Christians ,including me, who believe that divine providence was enough to effect man's evolution. If a government school teaches its students the false claim that there is scientific evidence for miraculous intervention (which is, in effect, what ID claims), then the government school is showing partiality to the sects that hold to this religious doctrine over those, like mine, that reject it.