So, are you implying that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were flip-flopping?
None of what you posted negates what they said in the quotes I posted.
“[Our] principles [are] founded on the immovable basis of equal right and reason.”
- Thomas Jefferson, to James Sullivan, 1797.
“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779).
“I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1799.
“Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person’s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the “wall of separation between church and state,” therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.”
- Thomas Jefferson, to the Virginia Baptists, 1808.
“... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824.
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814.
“A professorship of theology should have no place in our institution.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, October 7, 1814.
“Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”
- John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America”, 1787-88.
“God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.”
- John Adams, referring to the Incarnation.
“The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity...
Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.”
- Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831.
“As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries...
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.”
- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams.