A recent op-ed by James Grady misunderstood the U.S. Constitution and the concept of religious freedom it enshrines ("Your View: Defend your religious freedom," April 17).

Government officials cannot use their government offices to promote their personal religion. Principals, teachers, judges, and mayors occupy offices that are public trusts, which belong to “We the People,” not the temporary officeholder. If a legislator were to use his office for personal financial gain it would be an abuse of that office. The same is true if he uses his office to support his church or religion. This rule, embedded in the First Amendment, actually promotes religious freedom.

There can never be true freedom of religion without a government that is free from religion. Daniel Carroll, a Catholic representative to the Constitutional Convention from Maryland, put it best when he said that, “the rights of conscience will little bear the lightest touch of the governmental hand.”

By ensuring that our government does not, for instance, impose Christian prayers on all schoolchildren at a public school graduation (as Grady wishes it would), the government is not prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Every individual is still free to pray on his or her own, the government simply cannot organize that prayer and impose it on minority students. This rule not only ensures religious freedom, but avoids the unnecessary alienation of minority children and the inevitable bullying that exclusion leads to.

When government officials align themselves with one religion they divide the people along religious lines. Adherents become insiders; simply by exercising their right of conscience, non-adherents are suddenly outsiders in their own community. This divisiveness in the political process is what the founders sought to avoid. They knew political differences would create enough division without adding religion. Politics and religion are, and have always been, a dangerous mix.

So when the government allows a Catholic shrine to be erected on government property in Montana, or gives out money to New Jersey churches, or erects a cross on government property in California, or when a school distributes scholarships for Christian students but not for nonreligious students, the Freedom From Religion Foundation steps in.

We at FFRF are the watchers on what Jefferson called the “wall of separation between church and state,” a phrase the Supreme Court used for the first time in 1878 to interpret, as Jefferson himself did, both religion clauses of the First Amendment.

That “wall of separation” is an American original. This is not to say the idea is necessarily an American invention, but it was first implemented in the “American Experiment,” as Madison put it. Until then, no other nation had sought to protect the ability of its citizens to think freely. No people had sought to divorce the terrible power religion holds over the supposed afterlife, from the power government has in everyday life. Until then, the true freedom of thought and even the freedom of religion could not have existed.

America invented the separation of state and church. We ought to be proud of that contribution to the world. Another great contribution is the Bill of Rights. This removes from government power certain rights, which all humans possess: freedom of conscience, thought, speech, press, assembly, and more. Though we have a representative government where majority often rules, majoritarianism is irrelevant when it comes to these rights. The Bill of Rights exists to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority — and that protection even extends to a “vocal majority,” despite Mr. Grady’s claim to the contrary.

Those who value true freedom, who value the Constitution, ought to stand alongside FFRF working to prevent politicians from using religion as a tool for personal gain. The surest guarantor of freedom of religion is a government that is free from religion.

Andrew L. Seidel is a constitutional attorney with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state-church watchdog.