The belief that the First Amendment creates a "Separation of Church and State" is not a misconception. The founders who were responsible for writing the Bill of Rights did indeed intend to separate the government from the church institution because they had come from a country that had an established church and had fled that country in order to seek religious freedom. I hear a lot of malarkey about how the founders seemingly pulled the separation concept from their backsides due to some obscure letter from Thomas Jefferson. That is not true. Madison, who was partially responsible for writing the Bill of Rights, proposed in 1789 that "Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law". Mason, considered the father of the Bill of Rights, said that "no particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by Law, in preference to others". The Treaty of Tripoli, which was signed by every member of Congress, officially declared in 1797: "as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion". Clearly, the founders who were responsible for drafting the First Amendment had a separation between the church institution and the government in mind long before Jefferson's 1801 letter or some barely-relevant ruling from judge Hugo Black. All of this begs the question: why do we separate church from state? To protect both the church and the government from tyranny. When the government has control over religion, that enables the government to determine the doctrine of the church - something I'm sure very few Christians would want. When the church has control over government, the church can impose its will on the government. Both situations would lead only to tyranny and decreased religious freedom. Only when the government stays out of religious affairs altogether, leaving such matters to the individual conscience, can true religious freedom exist. Our founders knew that, which is why they instituted a Separation between Church and State. Separation has nothing to do with prohibiting religious expression. Its purpose is only to promote freedom of religion through religious neutrality in government. Why aren't more Christians behind a concept that protects us from governmental tyranny?

The Amendment was done as a rejection of the power and interference of the state in the affairs of the Church. In other words, the government should get off the neck of the Church and let her be free.

What is amazing is how the political and legal establishement allowed this historical anachronism to persist. I have a book on the History of the Congregational Church. That church was only totally disestablished in Massachusetts in 1834, over forty years after the ratification of the First Amendment. I have verifed this in several other historical sources. I presume that the Congo Church was established in Maine until at least 1820 or 1821 when Maine was severed from Massachusetts and made a state. I would not be suprised that the Congo Church continuted to be established in Connecticut after the ratification, but that is only a guess on my part. The historicial ignorance of the populace is partially at fault and the absolute seizure of the amending power and legislative power by the Supreme Court is a good share of the rest. Congress has the power to trim the Court's sails under Article III and is too pusillanimous to do it!

Other than the 14th Amendment no other has been so greatly distorted as the 1st. The whole concept of separation wasn't born with our founders but rather the Supreme Court in Everson v Board of Ed. The phrase itself was coined by Bay Colony dissident Roger Williams who was arguing within a wholly different context- he was arguing that politicians shouldn't play roles in the church as not to roil the purity of it and thus a hedge, a wall of separation needed to be erected. It was then utilized in a obscure letter to Danbury by Thomas Jefferson- a man who made repeated references to the Lord, Nature's God, and the Creator throughout his works- a man who believed it was absolutely necessary for religion to inform public morality and politics. The Amendment itself is totally consistent Congress shall pass no law respecting an (not THE but AN) establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; This did not prohibit the states from establishing religions, many had, but prohibited the federal government from creating something similar to the Church of England. It also ensured the ability of people to exercise their religion- NOT JUST PRIVATELY BUT PUBLICLY AS WELL. The historical tradition supports this. For years religious organizations co-existed with government and religion actively participated in public dialogue. It was not until Hugo Black distorted Jefferson's reference in Everson and added that the Establishment Clause means at least this... that government cannot aid one religion, all religions in any manner whatsoever, contrary to 200 years of American History and the intent of the Founding Fathers, that we've come upon this perverted view that there is some mythical austerity that separates chuch and state. This new perverted view of the Amendment conflates that Exercise Clause and makes government actively hostile to religion in favor of a new secular dogmatism that promotes the solipsistic religion of the human-God above all else. Nothing could be further from the intent of this Amendment.