text: In the United States, separation of church and state is governed by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and by legal precedents, some quite controversial, interpreting that clause. Although the Establishment Clause states that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," the U.S. Supreme Court has long interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment (one of the Reconstruction Amendments) as making the Establishment Clause and other portions of the Bill of Rights binding on state and local governments as well. Many other democratic governments around the world have similar clauses in their respective constitutions.\n\nThe phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, but rather derives from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, Jefferson referred to a “wall of separation between church and state.” James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wrote in the early 1800s, “Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States.” Ulysses S. Grant also called for Americans to "Keep the church and state forever separate."