Its Three Sentences and Their Reach

The statute is short and its structure is deliberate. A long preamble argues the case: that God made the mind free, that attempts to influence it by punishment beget habits of hypocrisy, that the civil magistrate intruding his powers into the field of opinion destroys all religious liberty, and that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. The enacting clause then does the work in one sentence. And the third section, unusually, admits that no assembly can bind its successors, but declares that the rights asserted are of the natural rights of mankind and that any act to repeal the present or to narrow its operation would be an infringement of natural right.

Two features shaped what came after. The statute protects opinion in matters of religion without limiting itself to Christians, and Jefferson recorded in his autobiography that an attempt to insert the name of Jesus Christ in the preamble was rejected, which he took as proof that the protection was meant to cover the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination. And it separates civil capacity from belief: a man's standing in law is not affected by what he professes.

Jefferson had three achievements cut on his tombstone. This is one of them, and the presidency is not.