The debate over Thomas Jefferson's proposed secular university took
place in the midst of a broader political and religious struggle over the
civic role of Christianity in Virginia, a state whose 1786 Statute for
Religious Freedom constituted the radical end on the spectrum of church-state
relations. The controversy first stirred up in Virginia during the Revolutionary
era, when the Anglican (Episcopalian) church was dis-established and Jefferson
and James Madison thwarted Patrick Henryís general assessment idea.
It carried over into the nineteenth century, when much of the debate focused
on the control of higher education in the 1810's and 20's. Here Jefferson's
old allies from the Revolution, the Presbyterians, continued to share many
of Jefferson's educational goals and moderate Enlightenment sentiments,
but still fought him tooth-and-nail for control of the state's literary
fund. Presbyterians wanted the money spent on Washington College (formerly
Liberty Hall and later Washington & Lee), Hampden-Sydney and Union
Theological Seminary, while Episcopalians struggled to maintain respectability
at William & Mary with little help from the legislature. Jefferson
wanted all the money spent on a scientifically-grounded university with
no chapel, chaplain or divinity courses, a curriculum unheard of in the
1810's even at other public schools like North Carolina and Transylvania
(both of which were firmly under Presbyterian control at the time Jefferson's
university opened in 1825).
Like the controversies in Chapel Hill and Lexington that preceded it, Jefferson's struggles with the clergy in Virginia involved much more than simple questions of curriculum and discipline, and transcended our modern distinction between secularism and religious faith. Instead, the debate reveals two distinct but overlapping visions for Revolutionary America, both rooted in political liberty and both predicated on religious faith. They shared a commitment to education, but no consensus emerged in Virginia as to who bore the responsibility.
This story has mainly been told from the perspective of Jefferson, who is presented as carrying the torch of Enlightenment against an ignorant and intellectually repressive clergy. This talk complicates (but does not entirely contradict) that view. Unlike most research done on this topic, I have utilized the records of Presbyterian and Episcopal opponents of Jefferson, presenting a fuller interpretation of their positions. The talk focuses on the public debate between Jefferson and prominent clerics such as the Presbyterian John Holt Rice and the Episcopalian William Meade, both of whom brought elements of evangelism into the Christianity of the state's middle and upper classes and vied with Jefferson for control of those classes. Rice published the most articulate positions on the necessity of faith and the most unrelenting criticisms of "Mr. Jefferson's University." Meade shocked University of Virginia students and faculty by giving a dramatic sermon in the Rotunda in which he blamed a recent wave of deaths from typhoid fever on Jefferson's alleged atheism. The event helped encourage the Board of Visitors to embrace a more compromised position toward Christianity in the school's subsequent history. I'll briefly trace the roots of the controversy in the Revolutionary era, analyzes the common ground and points of friction between Jefferson and the clergy, and finally show how the debate between Jefferson and evangelical Presbyterians and Episcopalians played out in the early history of the University.