The idea that Thomas Jefferson, a key founding father and our third president, believed in the separation of God and state is a myth. He did believe that the institution of the church and the institution of the state should be separated. He even used the phrase “separation of church …
For most of his life our third president, Thomas Jefferson, was a professing Christian. In 1777, a year after he wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Jefferson wrote up an agreement for the establishment of a Christian church, which called an evangelical minister to be the pastor. Rev. Charles …
When it comes to religion and understanding Thomas Jefferson, it is a complicated picture. But our book by Mark Beliles and me, Doubting Thomas, makes two points that are well-documented. 1) Jefferson was not a lifelong skeptic. Earlier in life, when he was most important as a founding father, by …