Thomas Jefferson’s Wall of Separation
By: Brian Tubbs
Thomas Jefferson was an early and courageous champion of keeping government and churches institutionally separate. Few aspects of his public life characterized him more than this lifelong conviction.
Jefferson authored the famous Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and wrote repeatedly on the subject of faith, often expressing his skepticism and distrust of organized religion. In 1816, he bitterly wrote that the “dogmas of religion…have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.” In 1815, he wrote of the “loathsome combination of Church and State.”
Jefferson clearly did not want to see government caught up in what he considered the irrational and often violent turbulence systemic to organized religion. He believed that civil government should refrain from meddling in religious quarrels; and, likewise, competitive (often adversarial) sectarian groups should not incorporate the arm of government into their arena.
However, despite the outrageous claims of his political opponents in the 1796 and 1800 presidential elections, Thomas Jefferson was no atheist. He most assuredly believed in God, and never retreated from his prominent mention of the Almighty in the most famous portion of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” Underscoring this very religious sentiment (that our fundamental rights come from the Creator, and not government), Jefferson asked later: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?”
Believing an overall acknowledgment of God was critical, Jefferson nevertheless opposed religious oaths and tests for public officials, and stood against the notion that a state, let alone the federal government, should establish a preferred religious denomination. Colonial Virginia, where Jefferson was born, had done this very thing. Prior to the American Revolution, Virginia recognized the Church of England as the official church of Virginia and required local communities to pay the salaries of their Anglican ministers. Jefferson’s contemporary, Patrick Henry, became famous by challenging this practice.
While Jefferson would’ve taken strong exception to the United States establishing a particular Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) denomination as a national church and while he himself was not an active member of any mainline Christian congregation, it appears he nevertheless would have agreed with the assertion of our Pledge of Allegiance that America’s very identity, at least insofar as its commitment to the fundamental rights of the people is concerned, is based on God – or, in Jefferson’s words, “on the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”
Jefferson’s death in 1826 - on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence - brought to a close one of the most significant lives in American history, though his legacy, particularly on this issue, lives on.
Brian Tubbs is a minister and freelance author living in Ohio. In his life, he has taught high school social studies, and worked as a public relations professional and lobbyist for several non-profit organizations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. He has been published online and in several newspapers and magazines. An expert in early American history, he maintains a blog on the American Revolution & Founding Era at http://americanfounding.blogspot.com His personal blog is at http://briantubbs.blogspot.com