This issue of A Public Witness looks back at Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Baptists penned 202 years ago this week and explores why prominent figures deliberately misrepresent the metaphorical “wall of separation” between church and state.
The third president’s attempts to revise Scripture offer a warning about our own tendency to “edit” the truth. Read full piece
The president preferred Jesus’s teachings to his supernatural acts — and edited his copy of the New Testament accordingly. Read full piece
University of Virginia unveiled a Memorial to Enslaved Laborers this month. The memorial acknowledges the estimated 4,000 enslaved people who lived and worked at the university from 1817 to 1865. Read full piece
Last week President Donald Trump attacked his presumptive Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, on religious grounds. It’s been 220 years since the religion card was played so bigly in an American presidential campaign. The precedent is more apt than you might think.