Discreetly Deist

ED: We’ll turn now to one of the first times religion burst out in the open in a presidential election, when Thomas Jefferson was running for president in 1800.

PETER: Let’s set the stage by rewinding a bit to the American Revolution of the 1770s. During this period, Americans didn’t just repudiate the authority of the King. They were being encouraged to question other kinds of authority, as well, including that of established churches. And that skepticism towards organized religion continued after the revolution.

Take Thomas Paine, for instance. He rose to fame with his pamphlet Common Sense in which he urged the American colonies to fight for independence and a democratic government. But Payne didn’t stop there.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: He followed up Common Sense with a number of writings, including The Age of Reason.

PETER: This is historian Amanda Porterfield.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: He turned his mind to the authoritarianism and tyrannical terrors of biblical authority, and essentially called for a revolution and overthrowing of biblical authority as a natural sequel to overthrowing British monarchy.

ED: Paine likely thought this appeal would be well received. After all, as we mentioned earlier, American leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were Deists, although they were discreet about it. But Paine, in some ways, misjudged his audience. By the time his pamphlet, The Age of Reason was published in 1794, nearly 20 years after Common Sense, America was becoming a far more religious country, in an era now known as the Second Great Awakening.

BRIAN: Where does this leave a man like Thomas Jefferson? During the revolution, his Deism had not been controversial. But when he ran for president 1800, it was clear he would have to adjust to the changing religious climate. His political enemies, chiefly John Adams and the Federalists, slammed him as a French atheist philosopher. And they had the backing of the established New England churches and their followers. Amanda Porterfield says for these religious voters, Jefferson’s Deism was downright dangerous.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: You were worried about the violence and disorder and chaos that would are wrapped when someone who lacked the kind of religious virtue that you would associate with a more orthodox Christian were in power. So the fact that he was rumored to be an atheist, and probably was, would be a sign, a very clear and dangerous sign, of his inability to govern in a republican way. He would just unleash demonic forces.

PETER: But Jefferson had his own religious base in the election of 1800. Baptists and other beleaguered evangelicals, groups that were religious minorities at the time, liked Jefferson’s appeal to the common man. They also appreciated his defense of the separation of church and state, which had allowed these churches to flourish.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: So even though he is a Deist, possibly an atheist, and Baptists who are firmly believing in God and divine providence and miracles and to the authority of the Bible. They are able to make common cause. And he’s able to enlist Baptists, and increasing numbers of Evangelicals, who themselves increase in number because of the power of the Jefferson political party.

PETER: So Jefferson has friends who are Christians and he has enemies who are Christians, in a way. That’s the set up in it you describe. And Jefferson’s Evangelical followers are excited about him, because he’s associated with separation of church and state.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: Yes, and I think, just to add to this, Jefferson appeals to the common man, if you will. Has a political relationship with the Baptists, who represent working, laboring people, but in terms of his own lifestyle, you know, he’s certainly among the elites. And his education– and this was seen by those who opposed Jefferson, like Washington and Hamilton, as the epitome of hypocrisy. That Jefferson would have a French wardrobe, and yet appear at his inauguration party dressed as a country rube. And I think, even though Jefferson was a member of that elite, I think, genuinely, he did ascribe to this more democratic view of how America should be. And that’s the kind of sacred cause of liberty that he has in common with the Evangelicals, even though doctrinally, if you get them talking about theology and who they really think God is, or if there is a God, they’re going to be on very different footing.

PETER: So liberation from the state actually empowers religious people, and there’s a transformation that’s taking place in American life. Describe what it’s like, beginning in 1801, when Jefferson’s inaugurated, how religion will continue to operate in American politics in subsequent decades.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: One of the things that religion is doing after 1801, is, as Americans move west, it is the basis of community formation, town formation. In many cases the law that exists in some parts of the West are essentially what happens in the discipline of churches. So the moral order, if you will, of the frontier is coming primarily in terms of the power that religious communities are able to exert in their locales, not from the governments– state, or territorial, or much less federal, in an era when the strongest federal agency is the post office.

PETER: So it’s a combination of Jeffersonian emphasis on limited government and individual liberty, and the cultural power of the churches to hold a country together, that creates a new conception of what America is in the early 19th century.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: That is so true.

PETER: And this broad notion that our leaders should share our faith prevails in America.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: Well, and I think, also, the way in which religion and politics are now sloshing into one another, in a way that sets the tone for American religious and political life ever since that time.

PETER: Amanda, you’re the best student we have of the religious dimension of the election of 1800. Well, every election since then has had a kind of religious dimension to it, as we are well aware. Where are we today, and, given your understanding of where we came from, how does our world resemble the world that emerged in the 19th century?

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: The most obvious connection is religion is a sine qua non. You have to be religious to run for president of the United States. And just in the same way that Jefferson had to really backtrack from any kind of overt expression of his Deism, even his possible atheism, and expressed himself as more friendly to religion and more moderately religious. I think that today religion is just part of the landscape, but you have the same suspiciousness of the other side’s religion. And it’s really a way of linking religion and politics, here.

So Hillary Clinton, a lifelong Methodist. People who don’t like her don’t see her as genuinely religious. Donald Trump– people who oppose him don’t see his religion as authentic.

PETER: Amanda, I hate to put these two names together, but would you say, that in this election, that Donald Trump is playing the role of Thomas Jefferson.

AMANDA PORTERFIELD: Donald Trump is using the Jeffersonian playbook. Challenging authority, you know, all those people in power. We’ve got to just make a deal with the common man. What’s different is that Trump is also representing himself as the strong man, and Jefferson never represented himself that way. And he certainly didn’t have the love of the limelight that Trump does. I mean, Jefferson hardly ever spoken in public, and when he did, he spoke very softly and few people could hear him. So there’s nothing like the he the persona. But Trump is using the Jeffersonian playbook, the anti-authoritarian, let’s have a revolution playbook.

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PETER: Amanda Porterfield is a professor of religion at Florida State University, and author of Conceived in Doubt Religion and Politics in the New American Nation.