Jefferson's Religious
Beliefs
Jefferson was always reluctant to reveal his religious beliefs
to the public, but at times he would speak to and reflect upon
the public dimension of religion. He was raised as an Anglican,
but was influenced by English deists such as Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury.
Thus in the spirit of the 
Enlightenment,
he made the following recommendation to his nephew Peter Carr
in 1787: "Question with boldness even the existence of God; because
if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than
that of blindfolded fear." In Query XVII of Notes on the State
of Virginia, he clearly outlines the views which led him to
play a leading role in the campaign to separate church and state
and which culminated in the Statute of Virginia for Religious
Freedom: "The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could
not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate
powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others.
But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty
gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg
. . . . Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents
against error." Jefferson's religious views became a major public
issue during the bitter party conflict between Federalists and
Republicans in the late 1790s when Jefferson was often accused
of being an atheist.
With the help of Richard Price, a Unitarian minister in London,
and Joseph Priestly, an English scientist-clergyman who emigrated
to America in 1794, Jefferson eventually arrived at some positive
assertions of his private religion. His ideas are nowhere better
expressed than in his compilations of extracts from the New Testament
"The Philosophy of Jesus" (1804) and "The Life and Morals of Jesus"
(1819-20?). The former stems from his concern with the problem
of maintaining 
social
harmony in a republican nation. The latter is a multilingual collection
of verses that was a product of his private search for religious
truth. Jefferson believed in the existence of a Supreme Being
who was the creator and sustainer of the universe and the ultimate
ground of being, but this was not the triune deity of orthodox
Christianity. He also rejected the idea of the divinity of Christ,
but as he writes to William Short on October 31, 1819, he was
convinced that the fragmentary teachings of Jesus constituted
the "outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has
ever fallen from the lips of man." In correspondence, he sometimes
expressed confidence that the whole country would be Unitarian,
but he recognized the novelty of his own religious beliefs. On
June 25, 1819, he wrote to Ezra Stiles, "I am of a sect by myself,
as far as I know."
--Rebecca Bowman, Monticello Research Department, August 1997
Pictured: Descent from the Cross by Frans Floris; photographed by Edward Owen. Herodias Bearing the Head of Saint John, copy after c. 1631 original by Guido Reni; photographed by Edward Owen. Jefferson displayed both these paintings at Monticello.