"DOUBTING THOMAS? The Religious Life and Legacy of Thomas Jefferson" by MARK A. BELILES and JERRY NEWCOMBE deals with the faith---or the lack thereof---of one of our most important founding fathers. But this volume provides NEW information, some of which has not been in print before. To learn more about the book, see www.americapublications.org DOUBTING THOMAS contains previously unpublished documents including a dozen religious letters by Jefferson and two sermons by his pastor Charles Clay. Jefferson voluntarily joined and donated to Clay’s Calvinistical Reformed Church of Charlottesville.
To say that controversy surrounds the faith of Thomas Jefferson (or the lack thereof ) is quite an understatement. There are potential land mines. However, co-author Mark Beliles, a pastor in Charlottesville (Jefferson’s home town) has spent much of his adult career studying Jefferson and his faith. Beliles has discovered …
Because of a misreading of Thomas Jefferson on the matter of church and state, many officials today have converted the freedom-of-religion clauses of our Constitution into freedom-from-religion clauses. Last week we told the story about the lady kicked off a public bus for mentioning God in a conversation (with someone …
In addition to scholarly questions of the modern image of Jefferson on religion in public life, co-author Jerry Newcombe notes that through the years, as a producer for Coral Ridge Ministries (now D. James Kennedy Ministries), he has covered so many stories related to discrimination against Christians because of the flawed perspective of separation …
During his lifetime, some of the strongest criticisms against Jefferson on religion were leveled at him because of his work to end state-coerced religion. He helped disestablish the official state-church in Virginia, i.e., the Anglican Church “by law established.” In his own day, many critics of Jefferson—virtually all of them from the …