Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (review)

90 Biography 21.1 (Winter 1998) read from start to finish, but also make it ideal as a reference work for students, scholars, and lay readers alike. Any single chapter provides an invaluable introduction to the nuns of a particular period. The work as a whole wiU remain a classic of Christian history and women's history, if not for two millennia, then at least for many years to come. Lisa M. Bitel Edwin S. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996.214 pp. $15.00, ISBN 0-8028-0516-0. The last decade has seen the pubUcation of several biographies of Thomas Jefferson focusing on his various specific interests, including his activities as a builder, as a scientist, and now as a religious thinker and reformer. Edwin S. Gaustad has written extensively and weU on American religious history, and profitably brings this knowledge to bear in examining Jefferson's religious life. His graceful and clearly written account particularly illuminates Jefferson's two great reUgious undertakings, his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and his edited version of the gospels that he titled "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Gaustad places his accurate and thoughtful explanations of these accomplishments in the larger context of Jefferson's involvement in the life of his times. His discussion of him as a student of the Enlightenment notices the writers who influenced the skeptical direction of the young Jefferson, particularly Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury and a flock of deistical writers such as John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and Conyers Middleton, as well as those who nourished the older, more serious critic of the Bible, such as Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and C. F. Volney. Gaustad also places Jefferson against his American contemporaries who shared his concerns about religious life and scriptural truth; the accounts of much more radical deists like Elihu Palmer and more traditional believers like his friend Benjamin Rush situate Jefferson's own thinking in his historical moment. SimUarly, Gaustad's account of Jefferson's and Madison's efforts to enact the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, one of the three accomplishments Jefferson wanted to be recorded on his tombstone, gains power by putting it in the context of the Northwest Ordinance's guarantee of religious freedom and the Constitution's rejection of any reUgious tests for public office. The account of Jefferson's editing of "The Life and Morals of Jesus" demonstrates how this arose out of Jefferson's reading of Priestley, and his pained reaction to the clergy's attacks on his own faith and character during the campaign of 1800. This in turn supports a discussion of his work to establish the University of Virginia as a pubüc, secular institution, against the sometime resistance of those Reviews 91 like the Presbyterians who sought a more immediate involvement in the university. Gaustad notes that Jefferson's final version of reUgious freedom could look very much tike Unitarianism to others, and the book concludes with two chapters that look at Jefferson's legacy as a defender of religious freedom, and his belief in the last decade of his life that Unitarianism would become the national orthodoxy. Jefferson's faith in reason and nature both energized American intellectual life and misread it by faUing to understand the appeal represented by a tradition of evangeUcal religion that was reasserting itself in the decade of his death. Gaustad supports his portrayal with insightful citations from Jefferson's writings, but more serious students wUl regret the absence of formal notes identifying the specific citations. A general "Note on the Sources" lists scholarly work the author has drawn on that might be of interest for those wishing to read further. One might well ask, however, if this constitutes a religious biography that satisfies the expectations a reader might bring to a life narrative so entitled. Religious biographies in the Christian tradition have a powerful and challenging exemplary text in Augustine's Confessions, because Augustine plays off against each other the contradictory narrative threads of his life in the world and his inner growth in grace and spiritual enlightenment. Hence a reader approaching something calling itself...