In Jefferson's letter to a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association of January 1, 1802, he clearly made the point of the separation of church and state, which he referred to as a wall of separation between church and state (Thomas Jefferson's). The letter set forth Jefferson's opinion that religion was a personal matter between a man and his god and that the government had no authority to place rules or laws over it. He believed the government should not make any laws respecting an established religion, or prohibit the free exercise of religion, and this is what he called the wall of separation, by which he believed he was expressing the extreme will of the nation. In a letter to Samuel Miller on January 23, 1808, he wrote:
I consider the government of the US as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercise...Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general governmentö (Happy).
In practice the separation of church and state means that civil authority cannot dictate or control organized religious bodies in any way (Cline). They cannot tell religious bodies what to preach or when to preach, and must use a hands-off approach, neither helping nor hindering any religion in any way. This works in two directions, and similarly religious groups cannot dictate or control government, or cause a government to adopt their particular doctrine as a policy for the population as a whole. By the same token, they cannot cause the government to restrict other religious groups and practices. This later point becomes important because it is rare that a government tries to control religion, but it happens that particular private religious groups often try to work ôthrough the governmentö in having their own doctrines and beliefs codified into law or policy.
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