The iconic phrase “separation of Church and State” doesn’t mean what most people think it does, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) explained Thursday at the Catholic National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.
“It’s particularly fitting, I think, on this year, that we reflect on the essential role that faith plays, and has always played, in our national life,” Johnson said, noting that 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. “It is from the very birth of our nation, that America has always been sustained by prayer,” Johnson said.
The expression “separation of Church and State” is “often repeated, but very rarely understood,” Johnson said, noting that the phrase is not in the Constitution, but in a personal letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association.
Those who mock faith are twisting the meaning of the phrase to suggest that churches should be protected from government, when it actually stresses the importance of protecting religion from government, Johnson said.
"Jefferson clearly did not mean that law should keep religion from influencing our government," Johnson said, explaining that "the Founders wanted to protect the Church and the religious practice of citizens from an encroaching state."
What’s more, the Founders “understood that a free society and a healthy republic depend upon religious and moral virtue,” because these things help prevent the abuse of power and “make it possible to preserve our central freedom," Speaker Johnson said.
"My administration remains firmly committed to defending the right of every Catholic to worship God freely and without fear," President Donald Trump said in a message read at the prayer breakfast.
