Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Kidd

Biblical literacy in early America far outpaces our own

Thomas Kidd, historian at Baylor and, now, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has cornered the market on academic-yet-pleasurable religious biographies of founding figures in the United States. Having already ably covered Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin, he has now turned to perhaps the most enigmatic subject from the era: Thomas Jefferson. Some, like David Barton, try to claim Jefferson as a man who, despite some heterodox beliefs, was essentially an evangelical Christian. Others claim that Jefferson, while not an atheist, was a Deist if there ever was one, someone who simply focused on living a good life in the here and now.

In Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale), Kidd demonstrates that both views fall short of reality. Jefferson was, of course, not at all an evangelical Christian—while he was aligned politically with Baptists, who shared his belief in religious liberty, his denial of the Trinity and and disbelief in some of the supernatural elements of the Scriptures preclude him from any kind of Christian orthodoxy. Neither, however, was he a true Deist, in the mode of some of the French philosophes—along with his meaningful relationships with more theologically traditional Christians, he believed that God providentially guided world events, hardly the view of the deistic god-up-there. Jefferson did not even consider himself a Deist. He called others Deists, but he referred to himself as a true Christian. As Jefferson advised children late in life, summarizing his religious credo, “Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself; and your country more than life. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. And the life into which you have entered will be the passage to one of eternal and ineffable bliss” (236).

Kidd has the eye for catchy and often hilarious anecdotes. (Most funny was Jefferson’s comparison of a political opponent to minnows, which “go in and out of the fundament [anus] of a whale” (76).) While he doesn’t dwell too much on any one thing—the book is a brisk 239 pages of content—he covers all the important bases: Jefferson the writer of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson the president, Jefferson the opponent of slavery, Jefferson the slaveowner who had children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings (and who left most of his slaves in bondage at his death because of his profligate debt), Jefferson the philosopher, Jefferson the patriot. If you want one biography of Thomas Jefferson—especially if you already know a bit about his more famous accomplishments—I would most recommend this one.

Most striking, however, was the intensely biblical milieu in which Jefferson lived. We can concede that Jefferson was no Christian, at least not an orthodox one. And yet, much of his life was shaped, to an impressive degree, by Christianity. Jefferson knew Christian theology—he was shaped by his Anglican upbringing and repeatedly recommended the writings of Anglican minister Lawrence Sterne. And Jefferson knew his Bible. He surrounded himself with paintings of biblical scenes in his Monticello mansion. He maintained a vast collection of Bibles throughout his life, always seeking out new editions, like a new publication of the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint. He brought the Bible with him everywhere he went—he kept a pocket Bible as part of his “traveling library,” which indicates that it would be well read. (Having just reorganized my own home library, enduring the back-breaking work of shuffling hundreds and hundreds of books around, I can attest that one would only regularly carry around books one would actually read.) We also know he read it because of his enormous capacity to quote even fairly obscure sections of the Bible. He would regularly reference the words of Simeon from Luke’s Gospel, chapter 2, in the Latin: nunc dimittas Domine, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace” (214). In a letter to Abigail Adams, looking forward to when they would meet again in their heavenly “country,” quoted Matthew 10, writing that, there, “we shall need neither gold nor silver in our purse, nor scrip, nor coats, nor staves” (227). Jefferson even shocked Abigail’s husband John, who assumed that he knew the Bible better than his sometime-friend, sometime-adversary, by quoting offhand Jeremiah 29, which says, “every man is mad, and maketh himself a prophet, thou shouldest put him in prison, and in the stocks” (190).

Naturally, Jefferson was a genius. But this kind of knowledge of the Bible was not reserved for only the brightest minds of the age, writing in correspondence they knew would be remembered for all time. This was widespread. James Callender, the hatchet journalist, in exposing the Jefferson-Hemings relationship in the newspapers, referred to the president as “the man, whom it delighteth the people to honour,” a reference to Haman in the Old Testament book of Esther, chapter 6 (163). Reader, can you imagine such an obscure biblical reference being quoted in a newspaper today? Simply put, we cannot fathom the level of biblical literacy that existed not only for brilliant thinkers like Jefferson, but even for casual readers of the newspaper.

This is the value of history. Along with giving us a greater understanding of the past, and how we got to where we are, it also holds up a mirror to us, giving us a different vantage point by which to judge ourselves. How do we fare? As Kidd writes, “The Founders, including Jefferson, were hardly pristine saints. But maybe we’re not either” (5). In remembering that we are not, perhaps we can do the work of bettering ourselves, of walking in those good works which were prepared for us long ago.