October 7, 2007 | 2:32 pm

Why it mattered and didn’t that Jefferson was an atheist

Everybody fighting for the 2008 presidency has been talking about their religious convictions. (Cynical me, I think they’ve been a bit insincere.) Anyway, if we look back 208 years, we’d see that religion played a substantial role in possibly the most important election for the future of this country.

I had always heard Thomas Jefferson was a ”deist”—someone who believed in a god but not The God. But, according to the papers of his day, laid out recently in The New Yorker, our soon-to-be third president was a “reputed atheist.” (That takes a bit of steam out of U.S. Rep. Peter Stark’s unveiling last spring as Congress’ first atheist.)

As Jefferson and John Adams, a publicly devout Christian, slugged it out on the campaign trail, the Gazette of the United States ran this:

THE GRAND QUESTION STATED

At the present solemn and momentous epoch, the only question to be asked by every American, laying his hand on his heart, is: “Shall I continue in allegiance to

GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS
PRESIDENT;

Or impiously declare for

JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD!!!”

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg in 0 Comments — Leave your comment

Tags: america, atheism, politics, president ‘08

Share this post: del.icio.us Digg Facebook Google Bookmarks Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati YahooMyWeb