Letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut
January 1, 1802
On this day in 1802, President Thomas Jefferson "coined the famous phrase describing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as erecting "a wall of separation between church and state." He used the phrase in his famous letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, who had asked him to explain the meaning of the First Amendment's phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
“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 prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
"On matters of religion, Jefferson in 1800 was accused by his political opponents of being an atheist and enemy of religion. But Jefferson wrote at length on religion and many scholars agree with the claim that Jefferson was a deist, a common position held by intellectuals in the late 18th century."
Biographer Merrill Peterson summarizes Jefferson's theology,
First, that the Christianity of the churches was unreasonable, therefore unbelievable, but that stripped of priestly mystery, ritual, and dogma, reinterpreted in the light of historical evidence and human experience, and substituting the Newtonian cosmology for the discredited Biblical one, Christianity could be conformed to reason. Second, morality required no divine sanction or inspiration, no appeal beyond reason and nature, perhaps not even the hope of heaven or the fear of hell; and so the whole edifice of Christian revelation came tumbling to the ground."For Jefferson, separation of church and state was not an abstract right but a necessary reform of the religious "tyranny" of one Christian sect over many other Christians. Jefferson tried re-instating a new religion for all to use, but this idea quickly failed and Jefferson was almost removed from office."
Much more at Wikipedia ...
See also Thomas Paine, METAXY
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