[Photo by Jerry Newcombe in Paris—Was Jefferson influenced more by the anti-Christian French philosophy or by the biblical traditions in his native Virginia?]
Many respected scholars have begun to refute long-standing beliefs that Deism and Enlightenment thought was highly influential
[Photo by Jerry Newcombe in Paris—Was Jefferson influenced more by the anti-Christian French philosophy or by the biblical traditions in his native Virginia?]
Many respected scholars have begun to refute long-standing beliefs that Deism and Enlightenment thought was highly influential in America, and that America’s Christian culture was only of minor significance to the Revolution. The assumption of irrreligion or deism has been the norm of modern historians. In the recent book by James H. Hutson, Chief of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and curator of the Library’s exhibition on Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, he states that “For a long time, scholars argued that [the leaders of America’s Revolution were]… nominally Christian, but committed to the agenda of the Enlightenment.” But Hutson provocatively asserts and effectively demonstrates that according to recent authorities, “this view is wrong.” In an excellent study of colonial society, Patricia Bonomi wrote that the modern historians’ hypothesis of “an eighteenth century of ‘Enlightenment’ skepticism coming between a ‘Puritan’ seventeenth century and an ‘evangelical’ nineteenth century simply does not add up.” She concluded that colonial society had “a far more vital religious culture than that portrayed by conventional historiography,” and that for the colonies in general “no less than some 60 percent of the adult white population attended church regularly between 1700 and 1776.”
Contrary to many scholars, Harvard historian Alan Hiemert has written that, “America’s true Age of Reason unfolded…more as a reaffirmation of evangelical principle than as repudiation”
Sadly, most of Jefferson’s biographers ignore the local and regional religious history, while exaggerating his few years in France and selective quotes, and this has greatly shaped this modern image. Most religiously inclined historians, both liberal and conservative, have made the same historical errors as their secular colleagues when it comes to Jefferson. They have adopted a view of Jefferson that lacks the essential historical context of his religious community.
A lot of people don’t realize that the Great Awakening continued in the South during the war years. This fact is often overlooked in studies of American history, especially histories of Virginia. Hutson observes that “Churches [in America]… continued to be remarkably robust on the eve of the American Revolution, contrary to the persistent notion that religion in eighteenth-century America was progressively declining;…[I]n 1776 between 71 and 77 percent of Americans may have filled the pews on S