Though the most Deistic of the Founding Fathers, even Jefferson
was not a full-fledged Deist if we accept that philosophy as
having had two fundamental tenets: a rejection of biblical
revelation and a conviction that God, having created the laws of
the universe, had receded from day-to-day control and
intervention. Jefferson clearly did agree with the first part of
Deism. But he did not agree with the second. Jefferson seemed to
believe in a God who was still present in, and intervened in,
the lives of men and nations. After having read Jefferson attack
so many of the legs of religion, it might seem jarring to now
read his regular invocations of God as a personal force in
life—sometimes in terms so direct and literal, they surpass
those of today's politicians. In his first inaugural address, he
declared that we should be "acknowledging and adoring an
overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves
that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater
happiness hereafter." In his first mes