Jefferson the Skeptic

Hudson Review, The, Summer 2006 by Allen, Brooke

No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns, pulling down, build &c. In all these he has his liberty: but if he do not frequent the church, or there conform to ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar.

Locke denies toleration to those who entertain op[inio]ns contrary to those moral rules necessary for the preservation of society....But where he stopped short, we may go on [italics mine].

If magistracy should vouchsafe to interpose thus in other sciences we should [have] as bad logic, mathematics & philosophy as we have divinity in countries where the law settles orthodoxy.

"Where he [Locke] stopped short, we may go on": Jefferson meant that where Locke endorsed only toleration-that is, toleration for dissenters from an established church-the new United States should go further and endorse full religious freedom with no established church. Work that Jefferson would do later that year as a delegate to the Continental Congress included writing the rough draft of the Resolutions for Disestablishing the Church of England and for Repealing Laws Interfering with Freedom or Worship and a draft of a Bill Exempting Dissenters from Contributing to the Support of the Church.

Jefferson served as governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781. The Anglican Church had been disestablished there during the Revolution, but full religious liberty had not been achieved, and this disagreeable fact remained a thorn in Jefferson's side. He derided the "religious slavery, under which a people have been willing to remain, who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establishment of their civil freedom." Notes on the State of Virginia, which he wrote in 1781-2, contains passionate diatribes on this subject, among which the most famous is the following passage:

Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force.