Debate: First Darwin, Then Jefferson - Who's Next?

(April 19) -- "First they came for Darwin and I did not speak out, then they came for Jefferson and I did not speak out, and then they came for me."

When German cleric Martin Niemoller (1892-1984) wrote the prototype of that phrase, he chronicled the Nazis' progressive elimination of Jews, Communists and trade unionists, and of the danger of not speaking up before they eventually came for him. His insight echoes in our ears with the recent scandalous revision of history and science textbooks in Texas high schools.

It is no accident that Thomas Jefferson was the first political leader to be excluded, following the exclusion of naturalist Charles Darwin, from the curriculum's pantheon of giants. Why Jefferson?

Jefferson was not only a man who could run a country, design a graceful building and make an accurate land survey -- he was also a scientist.

It was Jefferson who published the first descriptions of mastodon and giant sloth fossils found in America; and asked Congress to fund the excavation of Charles Willson Peale's spectacular mastodon skeleton in the Hudson River Valley. He was also the first president to launch a government-funded scientific expedition -- headed by Lewis and Clark, no less.

Given his better-known accomplishments, such as drafting the Declaration of Independence and doubling the area of the United States, why would the current crop of creationists want to erase him out of existence in the American psyche?

Because they know that Jefferson's rationalist, naturalistic curiosity led him to disbelieve in biblical miracles long before Darwin was even born. They may also recall that he drafted Virginia's Statute of Freedom of Religion, an achievement he had carved on his tombstone.

America's third president viewed any form of supernaturalism as an offense against reason and the laws of nature. He believed that churchmen had so distorted the story of Jesus that "were he to return to earth, he would not recognize one feature."

Accordingly, he took razor and paste, and edited the New Testament, renaming it "The Life and Morals of Jesus." In his view, biblical truths about the historical Jesus were as easily distinguishable from added supernaturalism "as diamonds in a dunghill," and confidently announced that he had "restored the book to its original teachings." Everything "contrary to reason or nature" was edited out of the "Jefferson Bible," which he always kept at his bedside.

He wrote to a nephew in 1787: "Fix reason firmly in her seat. ... Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there is one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

An early and prominent advocate of a "wall of separation" between church and state, Jefferson encountered a fierce campaign by Congregationalists and Episcopalians to establish their versions of Christianity as the official religion of America.

"They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes," he wrote his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush. "And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me, and enough too in their opinion ..."

Unlike Texas school board members, Jefferson was a non-dogmatic theist. While he acknowledged a Higher Power, his belief was a private matter. He opposed anyone who sought to impose his or her religion, or any particular version of it, on American minds.

In 1904, the Jefferson Bible was considered a treasure to be preserved, and Congress printed 9,000 copies, some of which were distributed to the Senate and House of Representatives. For half a century, Jefferson's secularized bibles were given to every new member of Congress. That tradition ended in 1957, when a wave of arch-conservative hysteria swept the land, accusing leftists and liberals of traitorous disloyalty, inserting the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, and sweeping the collective memory of Jefferson's remarkable secular bible into the dustbin of history.

Now the ideological descendants of Jefferson's enemies have in some cases successfully erased Charles Darwin from biology texts.

One of the most powerful school boards in the country, with a ripple effect that reaches nationally as textbook publishers follow Texas guidelines, has endeavored to erase Jefferson and his enormous contributions to the founding of this nation from political texts, and therefore from the minds of the next generation.

Who is next?

Historian of science Richard Milner is the author of "Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z." He performs his one-man musical show, "Charles Darwin: Live & in Concert," all over the world; for more information, visit him on Red Room.


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