How high the 'wall'? A comparison of the church-state separation positions of Thomas Jefferson and John Leland

None did more than Thomas Jefferson during the Founding era of the United States of America to establish religious liberty upon the broadest basis that is consistent with republican government. His letter to Connecticut's Danbury Baptist Association injected language into judicial parlance that is often said to define Church-State relations under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: “a wall of separation between church and State.”; Baptists were Jefferson's most ardent supporters and John Leland the most influential Baptist in the struggle for religious liberty in Virginia. Since he claimed to stand for Jefferson's principles of religious liberty from the side of the Church, Leland provides a fitting means of comparison to Jefferson's stance from the side of the State. Attention to Jefferson's actions as legislator, Governor, and educator in Virginia revealed he carefully prescribed balancing liberty with virtue to preserve republican liberties by protecting their quality. He promoted a public religion of moral precepts drawn from natural law that were consistent with Christianity without being exclusive to it. Natural law prescribed duties toward God and man that were of axiomatic force as a civil principle in the nation's Founding Era. Its precepts guided the responsible moral development of citizens and political culture of the United States. In this action, which included mandatory ethical lectures grounded upon theistic presuppositions in public education, Jefferson distinguished between an impelled conscience and an informed conscience.; Leland, however, consumed with the prospect of religious oppression, could not dissociate theistic moral training from religious coercion and sought to banish religion's influence from public life.; Baptist leader Isaac Backus stood closer to Jefferson, adhering to John Calvin's distinction between civil and ecclesiastical spheres: teachings of special revelation govern Christians; natural revelation's principles of universal application prescribe standards of civil rule.