The Religion of Thomas Jefferson

Who is Thomas Jefferson? He is the author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States, founder of the University of Virginia, slaveholder, has a monument in Washington DC and his face on our five-cent coin, and is one of the four presidents carved in stone at Mt. Rushmore – along with George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. He has also been called the American Sphinx, because a complete understanding of him has been somewhat elusive. For the National Museum of American Religion our questions are these: what was Thomas Jefferson’s religion and what impact did it have on him personally and on his public actions? Answers to these questions will give us a better understanding of Jefferson and the American project he helped establish and equip us to help guide the American experiment in self-government successfully through the 21st century.

To answer these and related questions, Tommy Kidd is here with us! Dr. Thomas S. Kidd is research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, and a senior research scholar at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Kidd completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where he worked with the historian of religion George Marsden. He received a B.A. and M.A. at Clemson University. He is a prolific author and has written, among other books, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh – the focus of today’s interview; Baptists in America: A History (with Barry Hankins), George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father, and American Christians and Islam. He has written for outlets including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Kidd teaches courses on colonial America, the American Revolution, and American religious history.