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WISDOM
AND PATRIOTISM
Thomas
Jefferson Letter to Moses Robinson, 1801
From
this letter, it is evident that following the ratification
of the Bill of Rights, many of the clergy still had
hopes of establishing religion in this country. This
seems to have been particularly true in eastern states
where the clergy were powerful and prideful; able to
persuade their congregations that a union between church
and state was the best way to ensure the survival of
both. Jefferson, however, writes that such ideas can
no longer be sustained in the country's "present state
of science." By "science," Jefferson refers to concepts
of political science and the advances made in political
thought and theory in recent years that had enabled
the founders to "ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America." Apparently, many
of the clergy in the eastern states had fought long
from the pulpit to persuade their people that these
changes and advancements were dangerous tinkerings with
a political machine that already worked well. However,
as Jefferson indicates, the great tide of liberty and
religious freedom sweeping the country was turned against
them. Jefferson closes these remarks by expressing his
hope that the clergy will put off their pride and understand
that true Christianity, as taught by Jesus Christ —
which Jefferson apparently thought was more pure than
these men had been teaching — embraced liberty, science
and all other freedoms of expression of which the human
mind is capable.
RJ&L
Religious Institutions Group
Washington,
March 23, 1801
DEAR
SIR,--I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of
the 3rd instant, and to thank you for the friendly expressions
it contains. I entertain real hope that the whole body of
your fellow citizens (many of whom had been carried away
by the X. Y. Z. business) will shortly be consolidated in
the same sentiments. When they examine the real principles
of both parties, I think they will find little to differ
about. I know, indeed, that there are some of their leaders
who have so committed themselves, that pride, if no other
passion, will prevent their coalescing. We must be easy
with them. The eastern States will be the last to come over,
on account of the dominion of the clergy, who had got a
smell of union between Church and State, and began to indulge
reveries which can never be realised in the present state
of science. If, indeed, they could have prevailed on us
to view all advances in science as dangerous innovations,
and to look back to the opinions and practices of our forefathers,
instead of looking forward, for improvement, a promising
groundwork would have been laid. But I am in hopes their
good sense will dictate to them, that since the mountain
will not come to them, they had better go to the mountain:
that they will find their interest in acquiescing in the
liberty and science of their country, and that the Christian
religion, when divested of the rags in which they have enveloped
it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of
its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most
friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of
the human mind.
*
* * *
Source:
Thomas Jefferson: writings 1087-88 (Merrill D. Peterson
ed., 1984).
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