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On the morning of March 4, 1801, president-elect Thomas Jefferson, walked from his rooms in Washington, D.C., to the only portion of the Capitol that had been completed -- the Senate chambers -- to take the oath of office administered by Chief Justice John Marshall.
According to the United States Capitol Historical Society, lame-duck president John Adams had left town rather than watch Jefferson, his political rival, take office after a furious and tumultuous election that had to be decided by the House of Representatives. For his first inaugural speech, Jefferson extended the olive branch of peace between the nation's warring parties saying, "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." BYU political science professor Matthew Holland calls Jefferson's words civic charity. In a new book titled "Bonds of Affection," Holland analyzes the political statements and writings of Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and John Winthrop for evidence of religious principles. What he found was evidence of religiosity in the writings of all three men, including Lincoln and Jefferson, who are known for backing a deep separation between church and state. Winthrop was a Puritan. "When he was young, [Jefferson] was not particularly fond of traditional Christianity -- maybe even hostile," Holland said. Holland asserts that Jefferson and Lincoln acknowledged and used Christian principles as leaders. "Both of them in different ways came to believe that certain Christian ideals were necessary for the health of America," Holland said. Holland said the idea of civic charity is vital to a civil society because it allows forces to work together and power to transition smoothly from party to party. "This idea of civic charity is I think in ingrained in American politics," Holland said. During his second inaugural address, given about month before he was assassinated, to a nation fraught with civil war, Lincoln pled for forgiveness saying, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Lincoln not only referenced charitable forgiveness but deity. Holland found that Lincoln's second inaugural address contained many references to the Bible and to God. Some experts on Lincoln have not seen the words as sacred allusions. "His argument for 'civic charity' in public life will challenge Lincoln scholars to think again about accommodations between the secular and the sacred in the meaning and intent of Lincoln's words," said Bryon Andreasen, a research historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in a press release. The issue is not one of time period differences. Holland said the U.S. still tends to be more religious than other similar democratic nations. He cited George Bush's compassionate conservatism. "In some ways my thesis explains why America is the way that it is," Holland said. Robert Millet, a professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU, said the U.S. tends to be a nation without a particular sect or persuasion, but that has a consciousness of deity. "We have to distinguish between civil religion and theology. Civil religion is an underlying theme that dates back to the Founding Fathers, that God has a hand in the destiny of the nation and that we should be reliant on that providential power that we call God," Millet said. He said civil religion is not tied to a denomination or a particular religious group.
• Brittani Lusk can be reached at 344-2549 or at
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