What did Justice Frankfurter mean when he wrote that Thomas Jefferson's description of the relation between Church
and State was a wall of separation, "not a fine line easily overstepped?

When considering Jefferson’s famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, most people only consider how the phrase “wall of separation” sounds to our modern ears.  To us, this phrase sounds as if it is describing an impenetrable impasse which stands between our nation’s religious institutions and her political institutions.  Consider, for example, the following opinion of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in McCollum v. Board of Education:

Separation means separation, not something less. Jefferson’s metaphor in describing the relation between Church and State speaks of a “wall of separation,” not of a fine line easily overstepped.

Justice Frankfurter’s opinion sounds perfectly reasonable to most of those living in the twenty-first century, but it is not consistent with the way that this phrase was understood by our forefathers.

The phrase “wall of separation” has a very lengthy history in the Judeo-Christian world view.  It is a reference to the wall which separated between the Jewish and the Gentile worshipers in the temple at Jerusalem, and in Ephesians 2:14, Paul refers to this wall being symbolically broken down by Christ when He died on the cross.  This is almost the exclusive usage of this phrase in the literature prior to Jefferson’s letter, and an example of it can be seen in the 1756 edition of The Family Expositer by Philip Doddridge

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