Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson

228 Pages·1996·2.29 MB·English

by  Edwin S. Gaustad

LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY
Edited by Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, and Allen C.
Guelzo
The LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY is a series of original
biographies on important religious figures throughout American and British
history.
The authors are well-known historians, each a recognized authority in
the period of religious history in which his or her subject lived and worked.
Grounded in solid research of both published and archival sources, these
volumes link the lives of their subjects-not always thought of as "religious"
persons - to the broader cultural contexts and religious issues that surrounded
them. Each volume includes a bibliographical essay and an index to serve the
needs of students, teachers, and researchers.
Marked by careful scholarship yet free of footnotes and academic jargon,
the books in this series are well-written narratives meant to be read and
enjoyed as well as studied.
LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY
available
Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America Lyle
W. Dorsett
Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America Edwin
S. Gaustad
The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of
Modern Evangelicalism Harry S. Stout
William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian
Britain David Bebbington
Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister Edith
Blumhofer
Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of
Thomas Jefferson Edwin S. Gaustad
Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American
Evangelicalism Charles Hambrick-Stowe Blaise Pascal:
Reasons of the Heart Marvin R. O'Connell
forthcoming
Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief Roger Lundin
Sworn on the Altar of God
A Religious Biography of
Thomas Jefferson
Edwin S. Gaustad
For Susan who likewise "cannot live without books"
Contents
Foreword, by Mark A. Noll and Nathan 0. Hatch ix Preface xii
1 The Anglican 1
2 Student of the Enlightenment 16
3 The Revolutionary 42
4 The Statesman 77
5 The Religious Reformer 111
6 The Educator 147
7 The Eternal Vigil 181
8 A Religion for the People 210
Note on the Sources 229
Index 241
Foreword
Unlike those of all but a small handful of his fellow Founding Fathers, Thomas
Jefferson's name has not faded into the mists of time. When the producers of a
recent film, Jefferson in Paris, chose to play fast and loose with his character and
what he had done in his years as the new American ambassador to France,
discomfited pundits joined angry scholars in vigorous protest. A phrase from one
of Jefferson's letters concerning a "wall of separation" between church and state
has been for the past fifty years at the forefront of constitutional discussion on
sensitive questions about the proper place of religion in public life. (Nor is it
irrelevant to note that reader demand prompts new editions of his many and
always interesting letters.) Jefferson's words in many significant documents -
especially the Declaration of Independence - remain a focus for diligent
historical research into the moral as well as political world in which the United
States came into existence. His presence on the nickel, as a revered icon for
Democratic politicians at Jefferson-Jackson dinners, and more recently as an
inspiration for Republican congressional leaders who invoke his sentiments on
the danger of big government - all this and more testifies to Jefferson's
continuing power in American memory.
The great achievement of Edwin S. Gaustad's biographical study of
Jefferson is its demonstration of how religious concerns were central to many of
Jefferson's main preoccupations. That achievement requires, by the nature of the
case, great nuance, for Jefferson is a type of person who has become
considerably more difficult to assess in the twentieth century than he was in his
own day. He was sincerely, even profoundly, religious, and yet he also
repudiated many of the doctrines, attitudes, and convictions of traditional
Christianity. The Jefferson who read the New Testament (often in Greek or
Latin) almost every day for the last fifty years of his life also prepared two
different editions of the Gospels for his own use so that he could read about
Jesus with the miraculous bits cut away. The Jefferson who cooperated with his
friend James Madison in passing a landmark bill separating church and state in
Virginia (thereby helping almost immediately Baptists, Presbyterians, and
several feisty Protestant sects) also blithely predicted that most of the country
would soon become Unitarian. The Jefferson who contributed money on at least
one occasion to a Bible society also railed against the tyranny of New England-
based religious voluntary societies. The Jefferson who intensely disliked the
moral economy of slavery himself kept slaves. The Jefferson who distrusted any
large-scale concentration of power nevertheless expressed nearly unbounded
confidence in the moral potential of the monolithic educational system he
proposed for Virginia. This is, in other words, a complicated person whose
religious opinions and practices need every bit of the cautious wisdom that
Gaustad devotes to his subject in the pages that follow.
Good historical studies do not necessarily have to speak directly to the
present. But because this religious biography pays such close attention to a
person whose ideals remain so important in American life, it becomes something
of a challeng ing tract for the times as well as a luminous historical study.
Readers who ponder Gaustad's picture of Jefferson's friendships with Madison,
John Adams, and Benjamin Rush will be tempted to ask why today's partisan
political differences exhibit so much less intelligence and so much more
meanspiritedness. Those who take seriously Gaustad's contention that modern
conservative evangelicals have as much to learn from Jefferson as to scorn will
be in a better position to discriminate between essentials and nonessentials in
contemporary culture wars. Those who note the resemblance between Jefferson's
views and those of Jonathan Edwards on the subject of God's providential care
for the world may find themselves more willing to seek wisdom in political
opponents as well as in political friends. And those who, with the editors of this
series, think that Jefferson went too far in critiquing the Puritan heritage or that
he overestimated the virtues of French political life while underestimating the
residual value of British politics should nonetheless find some attractive
surprises in Gaustad's portrait. The book, in short, embodies many of its subject's
virtues and, from any point on the political spectrum - from the start of the
nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth - that is a substantial
recommendation indeed.
Mark A. Noll
Nathan 0. Hatch