22 Comments

1. ossicle:

What absolute malarkey, you make Stuttaford’s point better than he did! Neither of those draws Jefferson into your camp in the least.

In the first quotation, Jefferson is not saying that faith in the supernatural is crucial to a citizenry’s liberties. He’s saying that a citizenry’s retention of its liberties hinges on its conviction that those liberties are inalienable and therefore not something government has any legitimate power to grant, or deny.

In the second quotation, Jefferson is, quite rightly, being incredibly patronizing and cynical. He’s merely saying that no sizable society can function without religion; he’s not praising religion, he’s correctly gauging the magnitude of people’s incapacity/ mediocrity! And to boot, he’s patently admitting he attends church just to throw the people a bone along these lines.

Jul 8, 2008 - 1:15 pm 2. schrifty:

Mr. Kimball,

Perhaps Bush’s speech writers had some such passage in mind??? Far more likely they just wanted to misleadingly appropriate Jefferson to prop up their erratic rhetoric. Jefferson’s anti-clericalism – a rather attractive part of his Enlightenment kit – mingled consistently with his respect for religious tradition and the notion that they could be separated for political convenience is as perfect a symbol of this administration as I can conceive.

Regards,

SC

Jul 8, 2008 - 1:34 pm 3. Joe:

“Monkish ignorance and superstition” are also what Unitarians like John Adams and mainstream Protestants from Maine to Georgia would have said the Reformation saved them all from. Bush’s speechwriters may have omitted the lines believing they were specifically anti-Catholic, rather than generically anti-Christian or anti-religious.

Jul 8, 2008 - 1:36 pm 4. ricpic:

It may or may not be that the rights promulgated in the Declaration belong to all mankind. That is up to all mankind. So far the evidence of a universal desire for liberty has been uneven, to say the least. One thing’s for certain, a republic – which America purports to be – does not force other nations to put on the cloak of liberty. A light unto the other nations, yes. Their dresser, no.

Jul 8, 2008 - 1:43 pm 5. R Hampton:

After reading several letters in which he describes how Jesus was maltreated by the priestly class and other letters in which Jefferson describes how he was abused by the clergy, one cannot help but wonder whether Jefferson identified his own plight with that of the earlier misunderstood sage …

Jefferson returned to the theme throughout his life. “I am not afraid of the priests,” he wrote in 1816. “They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.”

“I abuse the priests indeed,” he wrote in 1815, “who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of their master, and who have laid me under no obligation to reticence as to the tricks of their trade. The genuine system of Jesus, and the artificial structure they have erected, to make them the instruments of wealth, power and pre-eminence to themselves, are as distinct things in my view as light and darkness: and while I have classed them with soothsayers and necramancer, I place him among the greatest of the reformers of morals, and scourges of priest-craft that have ever existed. They felt him as such, and never rested until they had silenced him by death.”

The Pious Infidel
by Steven Waldman
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/230/story_23040_1.html

Jul 8, 2008 - 2:28 pm 6. Paul:

The belief of Jefferson, and of his fellow Deist-rationalists, that religion is a useful device for human solidarity, social cohesion, and rule-following behavior is in no way evidence of a Jeffersonian belief (or that of any other sons of the Enlightenment among the founding fathers)in Christianity, or in any other organized religion. That religion is useful (a claim that can be justified, if one ignores its well-known inutilities) is no evidence that it is true.

Jul 8, 2008 - 2:50 pm 7. Mustang94:

Perhaps Jefferson was a premature Straussian?

Jul 8, 2008 - 3:26 pm 8. jjv:

Editing out the anti-Catholic parts of the founders writings in a present day speech is not a big problem. Certainly we do not quote Jefferson on race? Also, as he was often a horrible Jacobin conservatives ought not glorify the man too much. In him are the seeds of much that we despise in modern liberalism. It is not too much to say that Jefferson was the first of the prominent American “limousine liberals” (coach and four liberals?).

Jul 8, 2008 - 3:45 pm 9. R.C.:

Let’s get some perspective here:

Jefferson had religious beliefs and practices. He couldn’t help it; no thinking man has ever avoided them.

We sometimes mistake a man with a self-assembled religion for a man with none, as if a man with a kit-car or a custom home were without transportation or shelter.

Jefferson, being a thoughtful man, had a religion; that it was less formal and “off the rack” than the religion of his contemporary Pope Pius VI made it no less of a religion.

For if one insists on using the term “religion” to cover such disparate things as the “faiths” of Confucianists and Christians, of Buddhists and Bahais, of Mithraists and Muslims, of Satanists and Scientologists, then one is necessarily reduced to defining a given man’s “religion” as consisting of some, but not always all, of the following:

1. Opinions regarding the natural (including its origins) and supernatural (including whether it exists);
2. Opinions regarding the nature of man and his relationship to other men, the world, and the supernatural if any;
3. Opinions regarding how man should act and think;
4. Practices and limits for advocating the content of those those opinions to others and for propagating them to the next generation, including roles for tradition, education, authority, and culture.

Now anyone who says that Jefferson had no opinions on the nature of nature, on the existence (or nonexistence) of the supernatural, or on the nature of man and how he ought to behave, is simply ignorant of the record.

And Jefferson (like many Deists and Unitarians) apparently thought a religion with whom his own beliefs disagreed on the first two points was, in practice, the best way to communicate to posterity his opinions on the third point. This therefore made up much of his practice, with regards to the fourth point.

Those who hold I am indulging in tendentious word-bending are mistaken: I am clearing the air of a perversion of language which categorizes such opinions and practices to be of a “religious” character when they include one view of the supernatural, but non-religious when they hold the opposite view or no view at all. By that argument, Confucianism, Buddhism, Scientology, and (some) Satanism are far less “religious” than Jefferson’s DIY faith.

No, the beliefs and practices in the categories I described above served, for Thomas Jefferson, exactly the same role that opposing beliefs and practices in the same categories served for Thomas the Apostle, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas More.

They were functionally his religion. Indeed, some of the most functionally religious thinkers in modern life are those whom we mistakenly think irreligious. Richard Dawkins is, if anything, the chief contemporary evangelist of his belief system: And he pursues his calling with what I think most observers recognize as genuine zeal.

The difference, then, between the thinking Christian and the thinking Deist is not a matter of one having a religion and the other not.

It is a matter of the one having a religion from a single source which has presumably had time to “evolve out” any internal inconsistencies, and the other having a religion collected from disparate sources, and for which he himself must exercise the required insight to reconcile any inconsistencies. (Some build their own computers; some just buy a Dell.)

So Jefferson built his own religion: Going so far as to edit the Holy Writ of another religion until it syncretically fit his own. A bit of a hobbyist myself, I can admire his resourcefulness.

And naturally, as the devotee of another belief system, he predictably accused the majority belief system of his day (Catholicism) of being bunkum. I’m sure the few Catholics then in America returned the compliment.

Though I am sure the Bush Administration’s copy-editors did not think of it that way, their role in Bowdlerizing Jefferson was not so much to edit religious sentiment into it, as to edit it out: Just enough to maximize its appeal to the broadest range of believers, from Atheists to Zoroastrians.

Jul 8, 2008 - 6:06 pm 10. R Hampton:

jjv,
Jefferson was referring primarily to Protestants who both hated and feared Jefferson (especially in the run-up to the 1800 election), like:

Pastor John Mitchell Mason (Presbyterian)
—————————
“Conscience is God’s officer in the human breast, and its rights are defined by his law. The right of conscience to trample on his authority is the right of a rebel, which entitles him to nothing but condign punishment. You are afraid of being unkind to the conscience of an infidel. Dismiss your fears. It is the last grievance of which he will complain. How far do you suppose Mr. Jefferson consulted his conscience when he was vilifying the divine word, and preaching insurrection against God, by preaching the harmlessness of atheism?”
- THE VOICE OF WARNING TO CHRISTIANS, 1800

Reverend William Linn (Dutch Reformed)
—————————
“I shall only mention what passed in conversation between Mr. Jefferson and a gentlemen of distinguished talents and services, no the necessity of religion to government. The gentlemen insisted that some religious faith and institutions of worship, claiming of divine origin, were necessary to the order and peace of society. Mr. Jefferson said that he differed widely from him, ad that ‘he wished to see a government in which no religious opinions were held, and where the security for property and social order reflected entirely upon the force of laws.’ Would not this be a nation of Atheists? Is it not natural, after a free declaration of such a sentiment, to suspect the man himself of Atheism?”
- SERIOUS CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ELECTION OF A PRESIDENT, 1800

Jul 8, 2008 - 6:17 pm 11. R.C.:

Hmm. R Hampton says, “Jefferson was referring primarily to Protestants who both hated and feared Jefferson (especially in the run-up to the 1800 election)….”

This may very well be the case. But I hope I can be pardoned for thinking that the phrase “monkish ignorance and superstition” had more of an anti-Catholic ring to it. (I haven’t encountered many Protestant Monks, though I suppose there are some.)

Jul 8, 2008 - 6:45 pm 12. vinn:

Bush’s speechwriters appear to have taken the “huh?”-inducing language out of a phrase, leaving in the inspirational point of it (i.e. breaking the chains and assuming controls of one’s destiny), and making it read aloud in a more smooth and pleasing manner (try both “versions” out loud and tell me which one sounds better and better suits the occasion and context).

Moreover, Bush has been about the “spreading freedom and self-government” thing since roughly 10 a.m. on September 11, 2001. Why cloud what’s perhaps the one clearly-focused idea his administration has pushed for so many years with language that only confuses the issue?

This whole “issue” is one of the dumber tempests-in-a-teapot that the Bush-deranged have come up with to date. A stroll through the comments beneath the linked original post will confirm that this is primarily about the crazies massaging their anti-Bushism.

Reading the quote in the context of the speech, it sounds just fine and doesn’t actually mean much different without the omitted phrase than with it, but for the confusion the latter adds.

Jul 8, 2008 - 7:43 pm 13. R Hampton:

“Monkish”, I believe, refers to ideological isolation/insulation of America’s colonial clergy – very few were Catholic.

Furthermore, Jefferson’s “Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom” was brought forth in a state where worship of the Anglican Church was made mandatory in 1624:

“After the mid-18th century, evangelical Christians (Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists) challenged the establishment’s discriminatory practices by flaunting licensing laws and refusing to be restricted to particular meetinghouses or locales. As the Revolution approached, they formed an unlikely partnership with apostles of the Enlightenment among the Revolutionary generation. Both were bent upon disestablishing the Anglican church in Virginia.”
http://www.history.org/almanack/life/religion/religionva.cfm

Ironically, those “evangelical” dissenters who wanted religious freedom were deeply suspicious of Thomas Jefferson because he did not believe in miracles, nor the divinity of Christ, nor the Biblical account of history. Even worse (in their opinion) Jefferson had the audacity to champion Reason, Liberty, and Science at the expense of the authority of their religious institutions and beliefs.

Jul 9, 2008 - 12:28 am 14. R.C.:

R Hampton:

You say: <<>>

I see. I assumed he was thinking more broadly of the planet at large, where Catholics were then (and, I think, are now) the largest religion. The same would apply if he were thinking of what he would have thought of as the civilized world; i.e., America and Europe and all British and European colonies collectively.

I knew of course that Catholics were far fewer in America (in his day, that is; unless I’m mistaken they’re the most numerous single American denomination [i]now[/i], though the Protestant denominations, taken together, outnumber them).

Anyway, had he said merely “superstition” I would have assumed he meant Christians in America, but “monkish” threw me off; so I assumed he had European history in mind.

Jul 9, 2008 - 7:08 am 15. R.C.:

R Hampton:

Aw, phooey. I tried to get clever with quoting you in the previous post, and the site filtered out the quote.

The think which looks like angle-brackets <> was supposed to contain a quote of yours, as follows:

“Monkish”, I believe, refers to ideological isolation/insulation of America’s colonial clergy – very few were Catholic.

Jul 9, 2008 - 7:10 am 16. MW:

R. C. and R Hampton:

I think you both might be right. It makes sense that the phrase “monkish superstition” was meant to describe teachings of (primarily Protestant) religious leaders in America. But the reason he that called it “monkish” was likely to insinuate that their teachings were similar to those of their despised rivals in the Roman Catholic Church. Back then, Catholic and Protestant clergy hated each other at least as much as they hated atheists and deists, so if Jefferson really wanted to get their goat, he would compare them to each other.

Jul 10, 2008 - 7:31 am 17. Ed Brayton:

I am a bit amused, Mr. Kimball, at your unwarranted presumptions. You write:

“Leaving aside the question of who it is who advocates “nothing if not monkish ignorance and superstition,” I feel it worth pointing out that Jefferson’s attitude towards religion was not quite so cut and dried–nor so uniformly hostile–as some secularists would have us believe.”

And I quite agree with you. Had you taken the time to read more than just this one post before lumping me in with these unnamed “secularists” (a word which can mean all or nothing depending on the person it is aimed by or at), you would find that I quite agree with this statement. I have, for example, blasted Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens for suggesting recently that Jefferson was some sort of closet atheist, an absolutely absurd suggestion. I have also argued long and loudly that Jefferson was not a deist, as so many historians imagine. Jefferson clearly believed in a personal, benevolent, interventionist god and was therefore a theist. I have long argued that the most apt description of Jefferson’s views is the term “theistic rationalist,” which was coined by the Christian historian Gregg Frazer.

You also wrote:

“Jefferson’s anti-clericalism–it was an unattractive part of his Enlightenment kit–is well known. But if Bush’s speech writer’s omitted a bit about “monkish ignorance,” secularists often quote Jefferson’s brusque dismissal of religion in Notes on the State of Virginia (”It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”) But they somehow never get around to quoting the passage that occurs a few pages later: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?””

I would not regard this statement by Jefferson to be a “brusque dismissal of religion” at all; it doesn’t even address the truth or validity of religion, only the question of whether another person’s rejection of religion harms anyone and might therefore be the sort of thing the government should take an interest in. Anyone, secularist or otherwise, who quotes that statement as a brusque dismissal of religion is fooling themselves. And I, in fact, have quoted the latter statement from Jefferson many times, usually in arguing against the notion that Jefferson was either a deist or an atheist.

Those who claim that Jefferson’s various statements about “monkish ignorance” or a “priest-ridden people” were merely anti-Catholic statements are wrong, in my view. Jefferson was not merely working in the tradition of anti-Catholic Protestantism, he rejected nearly everything about Protestant doctrine as well – the virgin birth, original sin, the atonement, the inspiration of the Bible, the miracles, the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus (and whether he had ever claimed to be divine). It was not mere anti-Catholicism that led Jefferson to declare that Paul was “the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus” or the gospel writers a “band of dupes and imposters” full of “unlettered and ignorant men.”

While we’re on the subject of quotes often ripped from context, however, I should note that few people have bothered to recognize at whom the famous quote on the Jefferson monument – “I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” – was aimed. He wrote that infamous phrase in a letter to Benjamin Rush in September of 1800, during the bitter election of 1800 against John Adams. The folks at whom this comment was aimed were the Protestant clergy of the day, particularly the Episcopalians and Congregationalists, who demanded that their religions have government establishments. Here’s the fuller quote in context:

“The delusion into which the X.Y.Z. plot shewed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro’ the U.S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me…”

There are two primary mistakes made on both sides by those who consider Jefferson’s rejection of nearly all the central doctrines of Christianity, his hostility toward revealed religion (which he argued was bad because it led to atheism, incidentally) and his innumerable statements about the dangers of religion wedded to political power. Those on the left tend to presume that this means Jefferson rejected theism itself, which is absolutely false. Those on the right tend to dismiss it as mere anti-Catholic prejudice left over from the Enlightenment. Both are wrong.

Finally, with respect to the infamous anecdote about Jefferson an anonymous friend, “Sir [Jefferson replied], no nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir.” That you quote this from Gertrude Himmelfarb is a bit disturbing to me; of all people, Himmelfarb is a good enough historian not to repeat this story quite so credulously (and perhaps, in context, she did not; I have not seen her telling of the story in context so I cannot tell). At any rate, the validity of this story is highly suspect. The only source for it is a third person retelling of it from the Rev. Ethan Allen (not to be confused with the leader of the Green Mountain Boys), who refers to a note from J.P. Ingle. Ingle, according to Allen, tells the story of he and John Underwood having witnessed this alleged conversation in 1801. But Ingle would have been all of 10 years old in 1801, while Underwood would have been 5 years old. A third person retelling, 56 years later, of an overheard conversation when the witness was merely 10 years old – especially when the quote attributed so clearly conflicts with innumerable statements both about the nature of Christianity and about its necessity for virtue – is more than a bit suspect. It’s not the sort of evidence taken seriously by historians, nor should it be.

Jul 12, 2008 - 9:07 am 18. Jon Rowe:

Mr. Kimball,

My friend Ed Brayton and I know the historical record on Jefferson & religion from the inside out (neither of us, for instance, term Jefferson a “Deist” which he was not).

Jefferson did attend Church and supported in a private sense the institution of “religion” (he was against public funding of religion, but thought it would be better if folks were religious and in churches; he just wanted those churches to “Enlighten” their doctrines).

Though the quotation that you site is unconfirmed in the historical record.

Jul 12, 2008 - 9:25 am 19. Jon Rowe:

I should note the unconfirmed quotation to which I referred was:

“You going to church Mr. J. You do not believe a word in it.”

“Sir [Jefferson replied], no nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir.”

Jul 12, 2008 - 9:27 am 20. Chris Bell:

…How exactly is this post a response to what happened?

It seems like you’re saying that the Bush speechwriters changed the quote because Jefferson “didn’t really mean it” when he said it.

The point is, Bush flatly misquoted Jefferson and did it in a pro-religious manner.

It’s a sad commentary on current times that the founders have to be edited. Any politician that repeated some of Madison’s comments on religion would be run out of town on a rail!

Jul 15, 2008 - 7:28 am 21. Larry Fafarman:

Jon Rowe said,
–”My friend Ed Brayton and I know the historical record on Jefferson & religion from the inside out (neither of us, for instance, term Jefferson a “Deist” which he was not). “–

Jefferson is considered to be a stereotypical deist. If Jefferson was not a deist, then no Founder was a deist.

Jul 15, 2008 - 1:48 pm 22. RiverC:

Well, considering the climate of his time, he was a reasonable man. It is a shame that he could not have met one such as St. Herman, who was his contemporary but on the other side of the continent. perhaps what disturbs us about Jefferson is that he exemplifies that the path of rationalism can not be deterred by the forms of Christianity most men throw about. But, that this ‘reasonable’ man was not non-religious at all nor did he think it good for men to be nonreligious nor did he think that the source of our liberty came from one other than God.

The founding fathers are like those twelve stones at the jordan – stumbling blocks!

Jul 16, 2008 - 9:19 am

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