It is clear to anyone who reads the entire text that Jefferson was speaking about keeping the government from interfering in your exercise of religion. It has been so skewed today as to suggest that no individual who happens to be in government can express their religious views or make a moral argument from a religious perspective without being accused of being ignorant or unlawful. It has been streched to the extreme to suggest that it is illegal to have a display of the 10 commandments displayed at a court house. Those 10 commandments are the well from which all our laws spring.

I'm not a religious person and I don't begrudge anyone their beliefs (unless their god says they have to kill me) but I can still rationally recognize what moral code was the basis for our legal foundation and not be offended because there is a copy of a religious text hanging on the wall at my local courthouse.

Furthermore, there is additional proof that the founders only intended for that clause of the constitution to apply to the federal government, and its interference at the state level (like most of the constitution is designed to do), since several of the original states had OFFICIAL STATE RELIGIONS until well into the 1800's.

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