ference with those rights. Some people say that Jefferson was a deist, but Jefferson himself disproved that when he stated, "I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus" (Barton, 144). When Thomas Jefferson wrote about separation of Church and State, he truly did mean it. The problem is that many people have misinterpreted Jefferson's meaning of this phrase. His intention was to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with the free exercise of religion, not to limit religious activities in public. Thomas Jefferson had strong Christian beliefs and would not have thought of government to be more powerful than religion. Thomas Jefferson's letter was a private letter written to the Danbury Baptist Association that was not meant for everyone else to read.
             A 1998 FBI Laboratory analysis of the letters showed that Jefferson spent a great amount of thought on the portion of the letter that involves the well-known phrase. The analysis revealed that the first draft of Jeffer
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