The Jefferson Lies

by David Barton

  Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions; I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you, for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.43

  The separation metaphor was a phrase already commonly used and well understood by the government-oppressed Baptists and their ministers, and Jefferson used it to assure them that the government would protect rather than impede their religious beliefs and expressions. As James Adams noted:

  Jefferson’s reference to a “wall of separation between Church and State” . . . was not formulating a secular principle to banish religion from the public arena. Rather he was trying to keep government from darkening the doors of Church.44

  The first occasion in which the US Supreme Court invoked the separation metaphor from Jefferson’s letter was in 1878 when the Court affirmed that the purpose of separation was to protect rather than limit public religious expressions.45 In fact, after reprinting lengthy portions of Jefferson’s letter and reviewing its general prohibition against federal intrusion into religious beliefs and the free exercise of religion, the Court concluded:

  [I]t [Jefferson’s letter] may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the Amendment thus secured. Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere [religious] opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order.46

  Then to affirm Jefferson’s point that there were only a handful of religious expressions against which the federal government could legitimately interfere, the Court quoted from his famous Virginia Statute to establish that:

  [T]he rightful purposes of civil government are for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order. In th[is] . . . is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the Church and what to the State.47

  Notice that in Jefferson’s view, the only religious expressions that the government could hamper were acts “against peace and good order,” “injurious to others,” acts “subversive of good order,” or acts by “the man who works ill to his neighbor.”

  That Court (and others48) then identified a handful of actions that, if perpetrated in the name of religion, the government did have legitimate reason to limit, including bigamy, concubinage, incest, child sacrifice, infanticide, parricide, and other similar crimes. But the government was not to impede traditional religious expressions in public, such as public prayer, public display of religious symbols, public use of Scriptures, acknowledgement of God in public events, and so on. In short, the separation of Church and State existed not to remove or secularize the free exercise of religion but rather to preserve and protect it, regardless of whether it was exercised in private or public.

  This was the universal understanding of separation of Church and State—until the Court’s landmark ruling in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education in which it announced it would reverse this historic meaning.49 In that case the Court cited only Jefferson’s eight-word separation metaphor, completely severing the phrase from its historical context and the rest of Jefferson’s clearly worded letter, and then expressed for the first time that the phrase existed not to protect religion in the public square but to remove it.

  The next year, in 1948, the Court repeated its rhetoric of the previous year declaring:

  [T]he First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable.50

  The Court again refused to reference Jefferson’s full (and short) letter, and it again applied Jefferson’s eight-word phrase in a religiously hostile manner, using it to enforce an ardent public secularism.

  Amazingly, in that case the Court had ruled that a school in Illinois had made the egregious mistake of allowing voluntary religious activities by students, a practice that had characterized American education for the previous three centuries. The permitted religious activity had actually been so voluntary that students were allowed to participate only with the written consent of their parents.51 But an atheist had objected not to what her own children were doing with religious expressions but to what other parents were letting their children do—attend a voluntary religious class. The Court therefore struck down those individual voluntary activities, demanding that the school remain aggressively and rigidly secular. It ruled that the school should no longer permit the constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion even for those who wished to enjoy it. For the first time the separation metaphor had become a rigid, callous phrase no longer allowing or accommodating voluntary religious activities in a public setting. The result of the Court’s twisting of Jefferson’s phrase was that the First Amendment was no longer a prohibition on the government but rather on individuals.

  Courts have subsequently pushed that original misinterpretation of separation increasingly outward to the point where they have decided the First Amendment’s injunction that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” now means:

  • an individual student may not say a voluntary prayer at a football game,52 graduation,53 or any other school event54

  • cadets at military academies may not engage in offering voluntary prayers over their meals55

  • a choir may not sing a religious song as part of a school concert56

  • a school may not place a Bible in a classroom library57

  • an individual student may not write a research paper on a religious topic,58 draw religious artwork in an art class,59 or carry his personal Bible onto school grounds60

  Significantly, none of these activities pertains to “Congress making a law,” which is the only body and the only activity proscribed by the First Amendment. But ignoring that succinct stricture, the modern misapplication of the historic separation doctrine now routinely results in egregious decisions:

  • A state employee in Minnesota was barred from parking his car in the state parking lot because he had a religious sticker on his bumper.61

  • A five-year-old kindergarten student in Saratoga Springs, New York, was forbidden to say a prayer over her lunch and was scolded by a teacher for doing so.62

  • A military honor guardsman was removed from his position for saying, “God bless you and this family, and God bless the United States of America” while presenting a folded flag to a family during a military funeral—a statement that the family requested be made at the funeral.63

  • Senior citizens meeting at a community senior center in Balch Springs, Texas, were prohibited from praying over their own meals.64

  • A library employee in Russellville, Kentucky, was barred from wearing her necklace because it had a small cross on it.65

  • College students serving as residential assistants in Eu Claire, Wisconsin, were prohibited from holding Bible studies in their own private dorm rooms.66

  • A third grader in Orono, Maine, who wore a T-shirt containing the words “Jesus Christ” was required to turn the shirt inside out so the words could not be seen.67

  • A school official in Saint Louis, Missouri, caught an elementary student praying over his lunch; he lifted the student from his seat, reprimanded him in front of the other students, and took him to the pri
ncipal, who ordered him to stop praying.68

  • In cities in Texas, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Nebraska, and elsewhere citizens were not permitted to hand out religious literature on public sidewalks or preach in public areas and were actually arrested or threatened with arrest for doing so.69

  And there are literally hundreds of similar examples.70

  Is this what Jefferson intended? Did he want to prohibit citizens from expressing their faith publically? Was he truly a secularist who wanted a stridently religion-free public square? His words certainly do not indicate this to be his desire; but how about his actions? After all, actions speak louder than words.

  Jefferson’s actions in this area are completely consistent with his words. He has an extremely long and consistent record of deliberately and intentionally including rather than excluding religious expressions and activities in the public arena.

  For example, in 1773, following the Boston Tea Party protest against oppressive British policy, Parliament retaliated with the Boston Port Bill to blockade the harbor and eliminate its trade, thus hoping to financially cripple the Americans and force them into submission. The blockade was to take effect on June 1, 1774. Upon hearing of this Jefferson introduced a measure in the Virginia legislature calling for a public day of fasting and prayer to be observed on that same day “devoutly to implore the Divine interposition in behalf of an injured and oppressed people”71 He also recommended that legislators “proceed with the Speaker and the Mace to the Church . . . and that the Reverend Mr. Price be appointed to read prayers, and the Reverend Mr. Gwatkin to preach a sermon suitable to the occasion.”72 Additionally, Jefferson wrote home to his local church community in Monticello urging them also to arrange a special day of prayer and worship at “the new church on Hardware River”73—a service which Jefferson attended.74

  In 1776, while serving in the Continental Congress, he was placed on a committee of five to draft the Declaration of Independence. He was the principal author of that document, and he incorporated four explicit, open acknowledgments of God, some made by his own hand and some added by Congress. Jefferson’s Declaration was actually a dual declaration: of independence from Great Britain and dependence on God.

  On July 4, 1776, Jefferson was placed on a committee of three to draft an official seal for the new American government. His recommendation was from the Bible: “The children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.”75

  In 1779 Jefferson became the governor of Virginia and introduced several bills into the state legislature, including:

  • A Bill for Punishing Disturbers of Religious Worship and Sabbath Breakers76

  • A Bill for Appointing Days of Public Fasting and Thanksgiving77

  • A Bill Annulling Marriages Prohibited by the Levitical Law and Appointing the Mode of Solemnizing Lawful Marriage78

  • A Bill for Saving the Property of the Church Heretofore by Law Established79

  Jefferson personally penned the language for each proposal, and there was no hint of public secularism in any of them; instead, it was just the opposite. For example, Jefferson’s bill for preserving the Sabbath stipulated:

  If any person on Sunday shall himself be found laboring at his own or any other trade or calling . . . except that it be in the ordinary household offices of daily necessity or other work of necessity or charity, he shall forfeit the sum of ten shillings for every such offence.80

  His bill for public days of prayer declared:

  [T]he power of appointing Days of Public Fasting and Thanksgiving may be exercised by the Governor. . . . Every minister of the Gospel shall, on each day so to be appointed, attend and perform Divine service and preach a sermon or discourse suited to the occasion in his church, on pain of forfeiting fifty pounds for every failure, not having a reasonable excuse.81

  His bill for protecting marriage stipulated:

  Marriages prohibited by the Levitical law shall be null; and persons marrying contrary to that prohibition and cohabitating as man and wife, convicted thereof in the General Court, shall be [fined] from time to time until they separate.82

  Jefferson also introduced a Bill for Establishing General Courts in Virginia, requiring:

  Every person so commissioned . . . [shall] take the following oath of office, to wit, “You shall swear. . . . So help you God.”83

  Clearly, Jefferson introduced many religious activities directly into civil law.

  In 1780, while still serving as governor, Jefferson ordered that an official state medal be created with the religious motto “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”84 This phrase had been proposed to Congress in 1776 as part of the new national seal,85 and Jefferson also placed it on his own personal seal.86

  In 1789 Thomas Jefferson began his federal career as secretary of state to President George Washington. One of his early assignments was to oversee the layout and construction of Washington, DC.87 The plan for the city was approved by Jefferson in 1791, and in 1793 construction began on permanent federal buildings such as the White House and the Capitol. Work proceeded rapidly, and by 1795 the structure had progressed far enough that Secretary Jefferson approved a special activity in the Capitol that was still under construction. Newspapers as far away as Boston happily reported:

  City of Washington, June 19. It is with much pleasure that we discover the rising consequence of our infant city. Public worship is now regularly administered at the Capitol, every Sunday morning at 11 o’clock, by the Reverend Mr. Ralph.88

  From 1797 to 1801 Jefferson served as vice president of the United States under President John Adams. During that time, on November 22, 1800, Congress moved into the new Capitol. Two weeks later, on December 4, 1800, with Theodore Sedgwick presiding over the House and Vice President Thomas Jefferson presiding over the US Senate, Congress approved a plan whereby Christian church services would be held each Sunday in the Hall of the House of Representatives,89 the largest room in the Capitol building.The spiritual leadership for each Sunday’s service would alternate between the chaplain of the House and the chaplain of the Senate, who would either personally conduct the service or invite an outside minister to preach.

  It was in this most recognizable of all government buildings, the US Capitol, that Vice President Jefferson attended church.90 This was a practice he continued throughout his two terms as president.91 In fact, US congressman Manasseh Cutler, who also attended church at the Capitol, affirmed that “[h]e [Jefferson] and his family have constantly attended public worship in the Hall.”92 Mary Bayard Smith, another attendee at the Capitol services, confirmed, “Mr. Jefferson during his whole administration, was a most regular attendant.”93 She even noted that Jefferson had a designated seat at the Capitol church: “The seat he chose the first Sabbath, and the adjoining one, which his private secretary occupied, were ever afterwards by the courtesy of the congregation left for him and his secretary.”94

  For those services Jefferson rode his horse from the White House to the Capitol,95 a distance of 1.6 miles and a trip of about twenty minutes. He made this ride regardless of weather conditions. Among Representative Cutler’s entries is one noting that “[i]t was very rainy, but his [Jefferson’s] ardent zeal brought him through the rain and on horseback to the Hall.”96 Other diary entries similarly confirm Jefferson’s faithful attendance despite bad weather.97

  President Jefferson personally contributed to the worship atmosphere of the Capitol church by having the Marine Band play at the services.98 According to attendee Margaret Bayard Smith, the band, clad in their scarlet uniforms, made a “dazzling appearance” as they played from the gallery, providing instrumental accompaniment for the singing.99 However, good as they were, they seemed too ostentatious for the services and “the attendance of the Marine Band was soon discontinued.”100

  Under President Jefferson Sunday church services were also started at the War Department and the Treasury Department,101 which were two govern
ment buildings under his direct control. Therefore, on any given Sunday, worshippers could choose between attending church at the US Capitol, the War Department, or the Treasury Department, all with the blessing and support of Jefferson.

  Why was Jefferson such a faithful participant at the Capitol church? He once explained to a friend while they were walking to church together:

  No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion—nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.102

  By 1867 the church in the Capitol had become the largest church in Washington.103

  Other presidential actions of Jefferson include:

  • Urging the commissioners of the District of Columbia to sell land for the construction of a Roman Catholic Church, recognizing “the advantages of every kind which it would promise” (1801)104

  • Writing a letter to Constitution signer and penman Gouverneur Morris (then serving as a US senator) describing America as a Christian nation, telling him that “we are already about the 7th of the Christian nations in population, but holding a higher place in substantial abilities” (1801)105

  • Signing federal acts setting aside government lands so that missionaries might be assisted in “propagating the Gospel” among the Indians (1802, and again in 1803 and 1804)106

  • Directing the secretary of war to give federal funds to a religious school established for Cherokees in Tennessee (1803)107

  • Negotiating and signing a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians that directly funded Christian missionaries and provided federal funding to help erect a church building in which they might worship (1803)108