LITR 4326 Early American Literature Research Posts 2016 (research post assignment) Research Post 1

Brittney Wilson

Founding on a Fault Line: Thomas Jefferson’s fear of unchecked religion shaking the nation

          In the 18^th century, after emigrating from Great Britain to America in order to escape the tyranny of the Catholic Church shadowing the country in constant religious friction and murder that had plagued Europe ever since the Reformation in the previous century and the consequent revolution and civil war in England, new Americans were in need to finding a better way of running things. In light of what they had so desperately tried to escape, the Enlightenment was inevitable. The Enlightenment was thus characterized by people questioning everything—religion mostly—and a thirst for reason and practicality. They could no longer blindly obey the dogma set forth by hypocritical people satiated by ignorantly following a set of laws put in front of them in the Bible full of miracles and the supernatural which became completely impractical when “Godly” men became tyrants and murderers in the name of their faith. Deism is the idea sparked by all of this which is the belief in “Natural Law”, one supreme Creator in place of a supernatural, scriptural God from revelation, “God exists based on reason and observation of the natural universe”, and that God can be found just from looking at everything around us in the world.

          One such thinker was Thomas Jefferson whom we regularly know of as one of America’s founding fathers. Jefferson had personally witnessed the devastation that came from the religious wars caused by the monarchy in England and knew that, in order for this new nation to succeed, it would have to have a separation of church and state. When asked about the subject, a former professor of mine from The University of Texas had this to say: “Thomas Jefferson was a huge proponent of the credo behind the Whig political theory that underlined the dangers of a concentration of power and how important it is to have checks and balances placed on government.” With that in mind, it is easy to see that Jefferson viewed religion like anything else having to do with the government, like the economy or military, in that anything left unchecked can run out of control and destroy the very thing you have worked so hard to create and stabilize.

          Another history professor from Houston Baptist University who feels passionately about the founding fathers and especially their influence of deism said that Thomas Jefferson was accused of being an atheist in his time around the 1790s because of his deistic ideology during the very public debate between the Federalists and the Republicans of the time. The Jefferson Bible was also edited by Jefferson at this time by literally cutting and pasting the original Bible into an edited version where he purposefully left out any miracles by God and the Resurrection in order to keep what he believed to be “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”  However, with such extreme opposition and accusation, Jefferson stood strong in his belief even if it was seen as blasphemous disbelief by conservative Puritans. He never meant any disrespect towards Christians or Christianity but simply knew what would be best for the nation to thrive and survive. Reason and rationale were the best principles by which to govern the people and to avoid the extreme and harmful religious strife that he saw as a consequence of a religiously founded government in England. He knew that government and religion together led to war, bloodshed, and an unhappy populace and was convinced that if Americans hated government, keeping religion and government separate would keep religion popular and sustain membership and attendance. Undermining religion was not his agenda; he simply knew that keeping it a separate entity would help both government and the Christianity to thrive in America where both had steeply declined back in England.

          Jefferson was quoted telling his nephew: “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." He was a wise man from experience and had the best intentions for his country. A nation built on fear would soon collapse but a nation built on reason and separation of church and state would at least have a good shot maintaining a stable foundation- one less likely to crumble in on itself.

Works Cited

          Dotson, Dr. Rhys, Professor of History at the University of Texas at Tyler

          Brown, Margaret, Adjunct Professor of History at Houston Baptist University

          Early American Literature course site