6 thoughts on “Did You Know These Things About Thomas Jefferson?”

  1. One could over-conclude from these facts. As someone who has read more than one Jefferson biography, my sense is that Jefferson was a Deist who was friendly to anyone who lived by the Golden Rule. His thrust in this area was simply that there should not be a [Federally] tax-supported established religion as existed in Britain and New England (& Virginia before his initiative). He would have had no problem with educational vouchers going to a church-connected school if they were going to other private schools as well.

    1. With regard to your second sentence, J. Sobran, I suspect that some of the forces in our society pushing secularism had an intense interest in crafting the narrative that the founders rejected Christianity. We have been indoctrinated in that direction to some extent. The reality might have been a bit different than what we have been sold.

      1. I know what you mean about modern forces crafting a narrative. A good few of the founding generation were Deists for at least a portion of their lives. But a good few were conventional Christians too. All were informed by the ethics and culture of Protestant Christianity I think it is fair to say.

        Having said that, notice that Christianity did not induce an experiment like the US’s unique effort to have a libertarian republic in any other Christian jurisdiction over several centuries of Christianity. So Christianity can take some credit for America’s excellent beginning, but something else was going on too.

        1. I think they were also drawing major lessons from the history of western civilization with which they were more familiar than we tend to be, in all probability. It is pretty clear that they did not want a single Protestant denomination to be established as the national religion given the fact that they allowed Catholicism to be the established religion in one of the colonies (Maryland). But I think you are right that the ethics and culture of Protestant Christianity in early America were critical in informing their project— and also the lessons learned from the manner in which Christianity interacted with western civilization throughout history.

  2. Thanks for that history lesson.

    Categorizing Jefferson’s religion is complicated and should be done with some caution. He was baptized and raised Anglican (and married and buried by Anglican ministers), but he rejected many of the tenets of that church. He regularly attended church of various denominations, but he declared that “I am of a sect by myself.” In simple terms, Jefferson is a theist . If a more precise label is sought, he might be labeled a Unitarian. In 1822, he boasted that “I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States,” but he never formally joined that church. Technically, he was not a deist if the term is understood to mean belief in a god who created the universe and then left it to “run” on its own according to natural laws, a “clock-maker” god. Jefferson did believe that God actively engaged in time, sustaining creation on an ongoing basis; yet, in his rejection of Biblical miracles and belief that natural laws were the language of God, he certainly is deistic.[

    Importantly, Jefferson’s religious beliefs played a foundational role in his abiding commitment to religious freedom and separation of church and state.

    1. Sometimes, Fred, people who think deeply can get themselves into trouble spiritually. But I think the speaker in this video made a good case that his fundamental sympathies were Christian.

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