Almost everyone has heard of the doctrine of the separation of church and state.

Most Americans believe that it's in the United States Constitution, but there is no such

phrase in the Constitution, and there never was.

For a simple reason, the founding fathers never intended for church and state to be completely

separate.

They saw religion, specifically religions based on the Bible, as indispensable to the moral

foundation of the nation they were creating.

So where does that phrase come from?

It comes from one brief letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association

in 1802, at the end of a very long sentence in which Jefferson affirms his conviction

that religious belief should be a private matter, and that the government should not interfere

with such matters.

He uses the phrase, building a wall of separation between church and state.

And that's where the phrase lived, undisturbed, lost in Jefferson's voluminous correspondence

for almost 150 years.

But more on that in a moment.

First, let's discuss what the Constitution actually does say about religion and its role

in public life.

The answer is found in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Congress shall make no law, respecting an establishment of religion, while prohibiting

the free exercise thereof.

Just plain with those words mean, the federal government could not establish a national

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