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Sheridan in the monograph Jefferson and Religion he wrote for the Monticello Monograph Series in 1998. Jefferson's actual religious outlook is perfectly encapsulated by Eugene R. Why take on a man who advised his nephew to "Question with boldness even the existence of a God," who said that the Bible should be read with the same scholarly detachment one uses with the works of Livy or Tacitus, who wrote in bemusement that "I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know"? In other words, why not let Jefferson be Jefferson? With the possible exception of Thomas Paine, Jefferson is the last of the founders one would want to try to twist into orthodox Christianity. If your mission is to "prove" that the founders intended a Christian nation, why not turn to Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, Manasseh Cutler, Benjamin Rush, or George Washington? Why try to twist a Christian Jefferson out of the large mass of anti-clerical, skeptical, deistic, anti-Trinitarian, and demystifying material that Jefferson wrote in the course of a lifetime? I agree with theologian and historian of religion Martin Marty of the University of Chicago: "If you wanted to promote the idea of 'a Christian America,' one which would privilege one religion, a version of Christianity, and de-privilege all others, and if you want to get back to roots and origins, the last of the "founding fathers" on whom you'd concentrate would be Jefferson." Many of the founders were more or less traditional Christians. He who wants to comb out of the founding era statements that appear to substantiate the idea that America was intended to be a Christian nation, or that the founders themselves were good Christians, will find plenty of fodder, providing his readers do not check his references or examine the larger body of material relating to this important subject. Some of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson and John Adams, for example, wrestled with their religious sensibilities and belief systems, and though they found many things to fault in the Christianity they inherited as children of the Enlightenment, they never made a crisp break with the Christian tradition. Most of the Founders said things at one time or another that, taken out of the larger context of their works, appear to endorse Barton's thesis. Many of the founders were serious and pious Christians. As long as you don't have a scrupulous sense of scholarly fairness or integrity, this can be a fruitful business. For many years he has combed through the lives and letters of America's founders to find whatever they wrote that appears to reinforce his fixed idea. His life mission is to prove the Founding Fathers intended America to be a Christian nation. The basic problem of Barton's book is that he approaches Jefferson not as a scholar or historian, but as an evangelical Christian propagandist and casuist with a preconceived result in mind. For this reason, though Barton's book is not likely to win praise in any but conservative and evangelical circles, it does a service to our national conversation about the place of religion in American public life, and the debate it is generating may help to clarify both Jefferson's personal religious views and his talismanic phrase, "wall of separation between church and state." Nor did he conceive the University of Virginia as an unambiguously secular institution of higher learning. He did not seek to remove all religious expression from the public square. But Barton is right in one key respect: Thomas Jefferson was less thoroughly secular than some advocates of separation of church and state have claimed. It has very serious problems-special pleading, fundamental errors of omission, a willful misunderstanding and deliberate distortion of Jefferson's basic religious outlook, demonization of those who see Jefferson as a deist and freethinker, and the frequent use of the straw man fallacy. David Barton's new book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, is not as bad as it is being made out to be.
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