More On Thomas Jefferson

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Here is an excerpt from an old blog I used to write:

Thomas Jefferson was so adamant about religious freedom that he chose to include his contribution to it on his headstone.  I have visited Monticello and have seen it with my own eyes:

“...author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia”

Note that he thought little of his 8 years as President. The opening of the Virginia statue begins thus:

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do...

He compared attempts to coerce the human mind into one belief set or another to tyranny. At the same time, after being elected president he attended church services inside the House of Representatives. To many this may be contradictory, but it is not. It is an expression of his true belief in religious freedom.

Jefferson was reviled by the religious right of his day as being a sinner and an infidel. But it was a huge error. They confused his tolerance of other beliefs, or no beliefs, based on the concept that God had created man as a free being, with an endorsement of sin.

Likewise, I've seen atheists quote Jefferson many times in justification of their own attacks on religion. They count him in "their camp" in disparaging Christians. Jefferson would be appalled with such behavior, and based on his words above and in many other of his writings, he was a man of personal faith. But his public tolerance rained judgement upon him in his day, and misinterpretations of his faith in ours.