The Jefferson Lies

by David Barton

  In 1779, when Jefferson became governor of Virginia, he was placed on the board of William and Mary. At that time he introduced legislation to recast the school—an accomplishment known as the Jefferson Reorganization. According to Professor Leonard Levy of Oregon State University:

  Jefferson’s first proposal on higher education came in 1779. His Bill for the Amending of the Constitution of the College of William and Mary stated that the college consisted of “one school of sacred theology, with two professorships therein, to wit, one for teaching the Hebrew tongue, and expounding the Holy Scriptures; and the other for explaining the commonplaces of Divinity and controversies with heretics.” . . . Jefferson proposed to abolish . . . the school of theology with its professorships of religion.65

  Did Jefferson indeed propose to abolish “the school of theology with its professorships of religion”? Apparently so, for Jefferson himself acknowledged:

  I effected, during my residence in Williamsburg that year, a change in the organization of that institution by abolishing . . . the two professorships of Divinity.66

  So it appears that Professor Levy was right—that Jefferson did seek to secularize higher education. At least it appears that way until one reads the rest of Jefferson’s explanation, and then it becomes evident that his intention was exactly the opposite. Jefferson explained:

  The College of William and Mary was an establishment purely of the Church of England; the Visitors [i.e., Regents] were required to be all of that Church; the professors to subscribe its thirty-nine [doctrinal] Articles; its students to learn its [Anglican] Catechism; and one of its fundamental objects was declared to be to raise up ministers for that church [i.e., the Anglican Church]. The religious jealousies, therefore, of all the Dissenters [those from other denominations] took alarm lest this might give an ascendancy to the Anglican sect.67

  Jefferson abolished the School of Divinity because it was solely an arm of the state-established Anglican Church, and he wanted to open the college to greater involvement by those from other Christian denominations. Further evidence that his reorganization of the college was not secular was his stipulation that “[T]he said professors shall likewise appoint from time to time a missionary of approved veracity to the several tribes of Indians.”68 Jefferson took steps to ensure that the Gospel was promoted at William and Mary but not just according to the thirty-nine Anglican articles and that church’s denominational catechism.

  In the same manner Jefferson sought to ensure that the University of Virginia would also reflect denominational nonpreferentialism. He therefore invited the seminaries of many denominations to establish themselves on the campus, explaining:

  We suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects [denominations] to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets on the confines of the university so near as that their students may attend the lectures there and have the free use of our library and every other accommodation we can give them. . . . [B]y bringing the sects [denominations] together and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities [harshness], liberalize and neutralize their prejudices [prejudgment without an examination of the facts], and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality.69

  Jefferson observed that a positive benefit of this approach was that it would “give to the sectarian schools of divinity the full benefit of the public [university] provisions made for instruction”70 and “leave every sect to provide as they think fittest the means of further instruction in their own peculiar tenets.”71 Jefferson pointed out that another benefit of this arrangement was that students could “attend religious exercises with the professor of their particular sect,”72 and he made clear that students would be fully expected to actively participate in some denominational school.73

  Jefferson and the Visitors (regents) also decided that there should be no clergyman as president and no Professor of Divinity because it might give the impression that the university favored the denomination with which the university president or professor of divinity was affiliated.74 But the fact that the school did not have a specific professor of divinity did not mean that it was secular.

  In fact, Jefferson had actually increased the number of Professorships of divinity by encouraging each denomination to have “a professorship of their own tenets” at the school.75 And the decision not to have just one exclusive professor of divinity also did not mean that the university would have no religious instruction. To the contrary, Jefferson personally directed that the teaching of “the proofs of the being of a God, the Creator, Preserver, and Supreme Ruler of the Universe, the Author of all the relations of morality and of the laws and obligations these infer, will be within the province of the Professor of Ethics.”76

  As he explained:

  [T]he relations which exist between man and his Maker, and the duties resulting from those relations, are the most interesting and important to every human being, and the most incumbent on his study and investigation.77

  Jefferson simply transferred the responsibility of religious teaching from the traditional professor of divinity to the professor of ethics. All students would be given general Biblical teaching about man’s obligations to God and the injunctions to observe Biblical morality. Jefferson also made clear that religious instruction would encompass the many religious beliefs on which Christian denominations agreed rather than just the few specific theological doctrines that distinguished each particular one.78 Any instruction about specific narrow doctrines would occur in the various denominational schools attached to the university.

  This nondenominational approach caused Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and others to give the university the friendship and cooperative support necessary to make it a success. Consider Presbyterian minister John Holt Rice as an example.

  Holt was a nationally known evangelical leader with extensive credentials. He founded the Virginia Bible Society,79 started the Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine to report on revivals across the country, was elected national leader of the Presbyterian Church, and offered the presidency of Princeton (but instead accepted the chair of theology at Hampden-Sydney College). Rice fully supported and promoted the University of Virginia,80 but this would not have been the case had the university been perceived to have been affiliated with just one denomination. As Rice explained:

  The plan humbly suggested is to allow Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, any and all sects, if they shall choose to exercise the privilege, to endow professorships, and nominate their respective professors. . . . [T]he students shall regularly attend Divine worship, but in what form should be left to the direction of parents; or in failure of this, to the choice of the students. In addition to this, the professors in every case must be men of the utmost purity of moral principle and strictness of moral conduct.81

  Furthermore, when construction of the university began, the special ceremony at the laying of its cornerstone included both the reading of Scripture and a prayer—activities specifically arranged by Jefferson and the Board of Visitors. Notice the desires expressed in the university’s founding prayer:

  May Almighty God, without invocation to Whom no work of importance should be begun, bless this undertaking and enable us to carry it on with success. Protect this college, the object of which institution is to instill into the minds of youth principles of sound knowledge, to inspire them with the love of religion and virtue, and prepare them for filling the various situations in society with credit to themselves and benefit to their country.82 (emphasis added)

  Clearly, then, Jefferson’s own writings and the records of the university, along with the explanations given by ministers who supported the school, all absolutely refute any notion that the University of Virginia was a secular institution. Instead, it was the nation’s first prominent transdenominational school.

  2. Was Jefferson’s Faculty Composed of Unitarians?

  Jefferson established
ten teaching positions at the university,83 and none of the professors filling them was a Unitarian. In fact, when two of the original professors (George Tucker, professor of moral philosophy, and Robley Dunglison, professor of anatomy and medicine) were later asked whether Jefferson had sought to fill the faculty with Deists or Unitarians, Professor Dunglison succinctly answered:

  I have not the slightest reason for believing that Mr. Jefferson was in any respect guided in his selection of professors of the University of Virginia by religious considerations. . . . In all my conversations with Mr. Jefferson, no reference was made to the subject. I was an Episcopalian, so was Mr. Tucker, Mr. Long, Mr. Key, Mr. Bonnycastle, and Dr. Emmet. Dr. Blaetterman, I think, was a Lutheran, but I do not know so much about his religion as I do about that of the rest. There certainly was not a Unitarian among us.84 (emphasis added)

  Professor Tucker agreed, declaring:

  I believe that all the first professors belonged to the Episcopal Church, except Dr. Blaetterman, who, I believe, was a German Lutheran. . . . I don’t remember that I ever heard the religious creeds of either professors or Visitors [Regents] discussed or inquired into by Mr. Jefferson, or anyone else.85

  Jefferson simply did not delve into the denominational affiliations or specific religious beliefs of his faculty; what he sought was professors who were competent and qualified in knowledge and deportment. As he once told his close friend and fellow educator Dr. Benjamin Rush:

  For thus I estimate the qualities of the mind: 1. good humor; 2. integrity; 3. industry; 4. science. The preference of the first to the second quality may not at first be acquiesced in [given up], but certainly we had all rather associate with a good-humored, light-principled man than with an ill-tempered rigorist in morality.86

  It was by applying such standards that Jefferson once invited Thomas Cooper to be professor of chemistry and law,87 but when it became known that Cooper was a Unitarian, a public outcry arose against him and Jefferson and the university withdrew its offer to him.88

  Obviously, this type of original primary-source evidence concerning Jefferson and the religious views of his faculty is ignored by many of today’s writers. But Professor Roy Honeywell of Eastern Michigan University was a professor from a much earlier period who actually did review the original historical evidence. He correctly concluded:

  In general, Jefferson seems to have ignored the religious affiliations of the professors. His objection to ministers was because of their active association with sectarian groups, in his day, a fruitful source of social friction. The charge that he intended the University to be a center of Unitarian influence is totally groundless.89

  3. Did Jefferson Bar Religious Instruction from the Academic Program?

  In 1818 Jefferson and the university Visitors publicly released their plan for the new school. In addition to announcing that it would be transdenominational and that religious instruction would be provided to all students, Jefferson took further intentional steps to ensure that religious training would occur.

  For example, he directed the professor of ancient languages to teach Biblical Greek, Hebrew, and Latin to students so that they would be equipped to read and study the “earliest and most respected authorities of the faith of every sect [denomination].”90 Jefferson also wanted the writings of prominent Christian authorities to be placed in the university library. In August 1824 he asked Visitor (or regent) James Madison to prepare a list of Christian theological writings to be included on its shelves.91

  Madison returned his recommendations to Jefferson, which included the early works of the Alexandrian Church Fathers, such as Clement, Origen, Pantaenus, Cyril, Athanasius, and Didymus the Blind. He also included Latin authors such as Saint Augustine; the writings of Saint Aquinas and other Christian leaders from the Middle Ages; and the works of Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Socinius, and Bellarmine from the Reformation era. Madison’s list also contained more contemporary theologians and religious writers such as Grotius, Tillotson, Hooker, Pascal, Locke, Newton, Butler, Clarke, Wollaston, Edwards, Mather, Penn, Wesley, Leibnitz, Paley, and others.92

  In addition to religious instruction given by the professor of ethics and the professor of ancient languages, Jefferson personally ensured that religious study would also be an inseparable part of the study of law and political science. As he explained to a prominent judge:

  [I]n my catalogue, considering ethics as well as religion as supplements to law in the government of man, I had placed them in that sequence.93

  Jefferson also approved of worship on campus, acknowledging “that a building . . . in the middle of the grounds may be called for in time in which may be rooms for religious worship.”94 He later ordered that in the university Rotunda, “one of its large elliptical rooms on its middle floor shall be used for . . . religious worship.”95 He further declared that “the students of the university will be free and expected to attend religious worship at the establishment of their respective sects”96 (emphasis added).

  Jefferson took many deliberate steps to ensure that religious instruction was an integral part of academic studies. Clearly, then, the claim that there was no Christian curriculum or instruction at the University of Virginia is demonstrably false and easily disproved by Jefferson’s own writings.

  4. Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?

  The modern claim that the University of Virginia had no chaplains is also easily disproved by original documents, including early newspaper ads that the university ran to recruit students from surrounding areas.

  In the Washington newspaper the Globe, the Reverend Septimus Tuston (identified in the ad as the chaplain of the university and who later became the chaplain of the US House of Representatives and then the US Senate) discussed religious life at the school, reporting:

  [I]n the original organization of this establishment [i.e., the University of Virginia], the privilege of erecting theological seminaries on the territory [grounds] belonging to the university was cheerfully extended to every Christian denomination within the limits of the state.

  In the present arrangement for religious services at the university, you have all the evidence that can with propriety be asked respecting the favorable estimate which is placed upon the subject of Christianity.

  The chaplains, appointed annually and successively from the four prominent denominations in Virginia [Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist], are supported by the voluntary contributions of professors and students. . . .

  Beside the regular services of the Sabbath, we have . . . also a Sabbath School in which several of the pious students are engaged.

  The monthly concert for prayer is regularly observed in the pavilion which I occupy.

  In all these different services we have enjoyed the presence and the smiles of an approving Redeemer . . . [and i]t has been my pleasure on each returning Sabbath to hold up before my enlightened audience the cross of Jesus—all stained with the blood of Him that hung upon it—as the only hope of the perishing.97 (emphasis added)

  Another ad run by the university similarly noted:

  Religious services are regularly performed at the University by a chaplain, who is appointed in turn from the four principal denominations of the state. And by a resolution of the faculty, ministers of the Gospel and young men preparing for the ministry may attend any of the schools without the payment of fees to the professors.98 (emphasis added)

  It was the custom of that day that university faculty members receive their salaries from fees paid by the students directly to the staff, but the University of Virginia waived those fees for students studying for the Gospel ministry. So, if the school was secular, as claimed by so many of today’s writers, then why did it extend preferential treatment to students pursuing religious careers? Surely a truly secular university would have given preference to students who were not religiously oriented.

  The University of Virginia did indeed have chaplains, albeit not in its first three years (the university opened fo
r students in 1825). At the beginning, when the university was establishing its reputation as a transdenominational university, the school had no appointed chaplain for the same reason that there had been no clergyman as president and no single professor of divinity: an ordained clergyman in any of those three positions might send an incorrect signal that the university was aligned with a specific denomination. But by 1829, when the nondenominational reputation of the university had been fully established, President Madison (who became rector of the university after Jefferson’s death in 1826) announced “that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by . . . services of clergymen.”99

  The university therefore extended official recognition to one primary chaplain for all the students, with the chaplain position rotating annually among the major denominations that Jefferson identified as the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans.100 In 1829 Presbyterian clergyman Rev. Edward Smith became the first chaplain at the University of Virginia. It was an official university position-but unpaid. In 1833, after three-fourths of the students pledged their own money for the chaplain’s support, Methodist William Hammett became the first paid chaplain. He led Sunday worship and daily morning prayer meetings in the Rotunda. In 1855 the university built a parsonage to provide a residence for the university chaplain. Many of the school’s chaplains went on to religious careers of renown, including Episcopalian Joseph Wilmer; Presbyterians William White, William H. Ruffner, and Robert Dabney; and Baptists Robert Ryland and John Broaddus. Clearly, the University of Virginia did have chaplains.

  In short, first-hand source documents, especially Jefferson’s own writings, incontestably refute all four modern assertions about the alleged secular nature of the University of Virginia. If anyone examines the original sources and claims otherwise, they are, to use the words of early military chaplain William Biederwolf, just as likely to “look all over the sky at high noon on a cloudless day and not see the sun.”101