AboutEd Buckner Expertise Nationally known freethinker will answer questions on church and state, including giving specific quotations and historical or logical support on religious liberty questions. I`m an expert on the U.S. Constitution, First Amendment, and the Treaty with Tripoli (1796-97). I am a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism, active in the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and a leader of the Atlanta Freethought Society and The Georgia Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I earned a Ph.D.in Educational Leadership from Georgia State University in 1983.
Expert: Ed Buckner Date: 4/4/2008 Subject: Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists
Question Would you agree with the opinion of James Hutson who is with the Library of Congress and his interpretation of the latest findings of this letter?
Hutson states, "By no means, for the Danbury Baptist letter was never conceived by Jefferson to be a statement of fundamental principles; it was meant to be a political manifesto, nothing more."
How do you argue against his interpretation?
Thanks.
Answer Jeff,
I vigorously and emphatically disagree with Hutson. President Jefferson had his Attorney General review the Danbury letter before he sent it and quite clearly did intend for it to be a statement of fundamental principles, one he rightly expected to be an important and relied upon document.
Many statements, public and private, made by Jefferson, either preceding this letter or following it, state the same principles and urge a thorough separation of religion from the federal government.
An excellent example of Jefferson's opinions on these matters is described by E. S. Gaustad, in “Religion,” in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, on p. 291:
"Even more disturbing to Jefferson was the priestly perversion of simple truths. If 'in this virgin hemisphere' it was no longer possible to burn men's bodies, it was still possible to stunt their minds. In the 'revolution of 1800' that saw Jefferson's election to the presidency, the candidate wrote to his good friend Rush that while his views would please deists and rational Christians, they would never please that 'irritable tribe of priests' who still hoped for government sanction and support. Nor would his election please them, 'especially the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists. They fear that I will oppose their schemes of establishment. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man' (23 September 1800).
"It was this aspect of establishment that Jefferson most dreaded and most relentlessly opposed--not just the power, profit, and corruption that invariably accompanied state-sanctioned ecclesiasticism but the theological distortion and intellectual absurdity that passed for reason and good sense. We must not be held captive to 'the Platonic mysticisms' or to the 'gossamer fabrics of factitious religion.” Nor must we ever again be required to confess that which mankind did not and could not comprehend, 'for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition' (letter to John Adams, 22 August 1813). "
Many, many other Jefferson scholars reaffirm what Gaustad has written (and I have quoted, above).
