Thomas Jefferson isn’t the original architect of the separation of church and state, do you know who is?
Roger Williams was the first to architect the concept down to a practical level, and to test it with successful implementation in Rhode Island. Here are five points of comparison between Jefferson and Williams to ponder as we consider how or if religious liberty is important to us today.
- 132 years earlier than the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Roger Williams laid the foundation for religious freedom in Rhode Island, as an experiment in toleration, to respect freedom of conscience. The charter was reaffirmed after England’s monarchy was restored a full 113 years before Jefferson’s masterpiece.
Jefferson lists as one of his three main accomplishments the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty — but Virginia was late to the party. Jefferson drafted the document in 1777, introduced it in 1779 and it was adopted in 1786 just five years before the federal version. As late as 1774 they were whipping Baptists in Virginia, while Jefferson was in Philadelphia writing one of his other main accomplishments: the one about life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It is against that background that finally in 1802 Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists summarizing a rationale for the separation of church and state.
2. Jefferson pointed to the pursuit of happiness as the objective to strive for, along with life and liberty. Roger Williams would agree on life and liberty, because in respecting each we give glory to our creator.
Jefferson went to the trouble of removing many of God’s actions from his copy of the Bible, changing scripture. He claimed all the remaining doctrines of Jesus tended to the happiness of man. Did Jefferson worship the same God as Christians in an evangelical construct? Jefferson biographer Meacham lists Locke, Montesquieu, and philosophers of the Scottish Englightenment (David Hume, Adam Smith) as the influences behind Declaration of Independence. Jefferson said if he were to start a new sect it would be called the Apiarians, and its principle would be that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not in our power, exactly the opposite of what the Bible says. He attended the Episcopalian church and used the Book of Common Prayer, but called himself a sect of one. He called the virgin birth a fable. (Meacham, Jon. Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power p. 471) Islam believes a higher percentage of Christian scripture than Jefferson, yet many today claim no Muslim should be president….Hmmm.
3. Psalm 19 points to three foundations for wisdom: the glory of creation which we study with science, the perfection of his law which we study in scripture, and the meditation of our hearts, even while recognizing it is hard for anyone to catch their own errors. It is collective conscience from individual human consciences in open connection that brings wisdom. Of these Jefferson understood the first foundation, tried to edit down the second and admitted the evidence of other elite plantation owners on the third. Roger Williams recognized all three, because scripture does. What will we guide by, what will be our north star?
4. Jefferson promoted republicanism —that the power was derived ultimately from the people. The implementation he helped invent meant rule by a committee of officials elected by free men that owned land. Once in power, Jefferson immediately recognized effective leadership by one person was essential to speed of execution and operated by that principle instead. He didn’t ask permission to change the rules, he amassed and exercised power.
Unlike most every leader that promoted toleration on the way to gaining power, Williams never wavered from his principle of respect for conscience, persisting in hedgehog like fashion to modify the means to the end until it was practical, but never modifying the end he was seeking. That is the sign of a leader creating a great organization.
5. Jefferson was the very picture of slave-owner, raping at least one woman slave. It may well be more than one: has anyone checked John Heming’s descendant’s DNA? There may be a reason Jefferson’s wife was heartbroken, as opposed to just “sick”, and didn’t write for two years after Betsy got pregnant. His lip service on ending slavery came with the proviso they’d be deported if freed. Jon Meacham purports we don’t know how much of what Jefferson did was rape versus by consent. On a trip to France when Sally, the woman in question, could have left him for freedom, he resorted to extortion, the ultimate catch 22, to keep her oppressed: all her siblings and children would be emancipated at his death. She chose to be a selfless mother. That’s not consent Mr. Meacham. It is more akin to date rape, and yes, it was legal and common. That doesn’t make it right. A person that is not free can’t consent. President Obama was able to call what Mr. Cosby is accused of doing rape, can we do the same for white elite ex-Presidents? Replacing “glory for the creator” as the ultimate purpose with “the pursuit of individual happiness” was perpetuating selfish expression of the savage within even before the paper was dry on the Declaration of Independence.
