Ruler / statesman · Modern
Thomas Jefferson
1743–1826 · Enlightenment republicanism
Raised Anglican; called himself a “sect by myself,” a Christian in Jesus' moral sense only, denying the Trinity and the miracles.
Author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, third President of the United States, Jefferson grounded rights in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God,” demanded a “wall of separation” between church and state, and cut the miracles out of the Gospels to produce his own “Life and Morals of Jesus.” He was a materialist in philosophy and an Epicurean in ethics.
Why he matters: The American experiment in religious liberty, which John Courtney Murray defended and Dignitatis Humanae partly vindicated, is Jefferson's; so is the natural-law language of the Declaration, which Catholics can read better than he did.
Where to be careful
His denial of the Trinity and divinity of Christ, his mutilation of Scripture, and his “wall of separation” as a principle of state indifference are contrary to the faith and to Immortale Dei (1885); his Epicurean account of happiness and his slaveholding sit against Veritatis Splendor and Gaudium et Spes 27.
Reading
-
The Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious FreedomThomas Jefferson · The two texts that made him.
-
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (the 'Jefferson Bible')Thomas Jefferson · What a deist keeps of the Gospel.
-
We Hold These TruthsJohn Courtney Murray, SJ · The Catholic reading of the American proposition.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.