The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson by Barton David

Author:Barton, David [Barton, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WallBuilder Press
Published: 2013-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

A final proof that Jefferson was not opposed to all clergy can found in his work on the Virginia constitution. The original 1776 state constitution contained a prohibition against clergy serving in the legislature.62 Jefferson had fully supported this provision at the time, explaining:

The clergy are excluded because if admitted into the legislature at all, the probability is that they would form its majority, for they are dispersed through every county in the state; they have influence with the people and great opportunities of persuading them to elect them into the legislature. This body, though shattered, is still formidable, still forms a corps, and is still actuated by the esprit de corps. The nature of that spirit has been severely felt by mankind, and has filled the history of ten or twelve centuries with too many atrocities not to merit a proscription from meddling with government.63

Recall that this was the early constitution in a state that by law had protected an official state denomination established for the previous century and a half. Jefferson believed that what had occurred in the previous 150 years when Virginia had persecuted ministers from other denominations might still continue in the new independent state, and he wanted that possibility precluded.

Years later, however, Jefferson no longer supported that clause, explaining to the Reverend Jeremiah Moore:

I observe . . . an abridgment of the right of being elected, which after 17 years more of experience and reflection, I do not approve: it is the incapacitation of a clergyman from being elected. . . . Even in 1783, we doubted the stability of our recent measures for reducing them [the clergy] to the footing of other useful callings [but i]t now appears that our means were effectual. The clergy here seem to have relinquished all pretension to privilege and to stand on a footing with lawyers, physicians &c. They ought therefore to possess the same rights.64

In summary, many of Jefferson’s writings praise clergymen and their important work, they were among his close friends, and he regularly opened his pocketbook and exerted his influence to help them. The modern claim that Jefferson was anticlerical is another one of the many Jefferson lies that has penetrated deeply into American thinking today; it is yet another Jefferson lie that must be shaken off.

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