“The happiness which our country enjoys in the pursuits of peace and industry ought to endear that cause to all its citizens, and to kindle their hearts with gratitude to the Being under whose providence these blessings are held. We owe to him especial thanks for the right we enjoy to worship him, every one in his own way, and that we have been singled out, to prove by experience, the innocence of freedom in religious opinions and exercises, the power of reason to maintain itself against error, and the comfort of living under laws, which assure us that, in these things, ‘There is none who shall make us afraid.” From President Jefferson’s Letter to the Chowan Baptist Association in North Carolina, June 24, 1806.

Ask almost anyone with some knowledge of the history of early American church-state relations, and they probably will tell you about Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury (Conn.) Baptists. Famously—or infamously, in some cases—this letter is where the much-debated phrase concerning “a wall of separation between church and State” originates. That discussion is not for today, but the Danbury letter sets the stage for a second Baptist letter, which is all but unknown today. [Google searches, including AI-assisted, invariably to bring up Danbury, but Chowan not so much.]

Two hundred twenty years since Thomas Jefferson’s Chowan Association letter—and as we approach our 250th independence celebration—is an appropriate moment to attend to Jefferson’s other Baptist letter. In May 1806 at the meeting of the newly organized Chowan—also called the North-Carolina Chowan—Baptist Association, held near Edenton, the ministers and messengers resolved to write to President Jefferson. Perhaps the high expectations for the gospel’s progress exuding from a newly formed association—pleasantly situated among states in which fellow citizens’ civil and religious freedoms abounded “unequalled by any nation on this [terrestrial] globe”—played some part in their decision to address the young republic’s chief magistrate.[1]

They wrote to the President in language that sounds somewhat odd at times to 21st-century Christians, referring to their “profound sense of the bounty received by the hands of the SUPREME towards the several churches in our connection, by the overpowering of the Spirit upon them. . . .”[2] In case some contemporary readers are concerned that a term like the SUPREME might suggest Deism, Universalism, or some other unorthodox faith, fear not. The Chowan Baptists, like most Baptists in that day and especially in the Southern country, were confessional, Calvinist Baptists, which their records make clear. But they also had the savviness to address their civil magistrates in terms intended not to magnify possible, or known, doctrinal differences in cases where that was unnecessary.

Chowan’s leaders expressed their gratitude for the liberties enjoyed “under the administration of the government, over which you, Sir, at present preside: For which liberties our fathers, have in times past, suffered at the stake; have bled and died.” While most Americans today are clueless as to the sufferings of those who walked by faith under religious persecution centuries ago in Europe and colonial America, the Chowan Baptists felt “the strongest emotions to be thankful that under your patronage and administration, ‘There is none shall make us afraid.’”[3]

They affirmed that “we feel no danger of your violating your trust, or attempting to endanger the happiness of the people, who have chosen you as their Chief and Head.” [Jefferson was in his sixth year as President, having been reelected in 1804.] The association’s letter closed by expressing “our prayers to the great Disposer of Events, if it is his will, that that life devoted to public good from the commencement of our glorious Revolution to the present day may be prolonged with blessings to yourself and common country.”[4]

Impressive in itself, the President replied promptly, barely a month later. Famously, Jefferson had invented his own document copying apparatus, which can still be seen at Monticello. In this case it came in handy, as his initial reply went awry and never reached the Chowan Baptists. But having a duplicate copy in his possession made Jefferson’s second attempt much easier, and this one reached the Chowan Moderator, Mr. George Outlaw. At Chowan’s next meeting of the association, in May 1807, they included in the minutes both their letter to the President and his reply.

President Thomas Jefferson’s Reply, June 24, 1806

Jefferson began by acknowledging receipt of the Chowan Association’s letter and proffered “my thanks for the favorable sentiments which it expresses towards myself personally.” The following sentence is significant in that it suggests Jefferson was not a Deist as has often been claimed:

The happiness which our country enjoys in the pursuits of peace and industry ought to endear that cause to all its citizens, and to kindle their hearts with gratitude to the Being under whose providence these blessings are held. We owe to him especial thanks for the right we enjoy to worship him, every one in his own way, and that we have been singled out, to prove by experience, the innocence of freedom in religious opinions and exercises, the power of reason to maintain itself against error, and the comfort of living under laws, which assure us that, in these things, ‘There is none who shall make us afraid.’[5]

While Jefferson was no Christian, his expression of the providence of God (the Being) reveals an understanding that God is—unlike the Deist conception—indeed, active in the world. As is well known, Jefferson’s rationalism (the power of reason to maintain itself against error) demonstrates his alignment with the Enlightenment thinking shared by many of the Founders, albeit in several cases, arguably, to a lesser degree than his own.

Jefferson expressed his gratification by Chowan’s confidence “that no attempt will ever be made by me, to violate the trust reposed in me by my fellow citizens; or to endanger their happiness. In this confidence you shall never be disappointed.” He concluded by extending “my thanks to the churches of your Association, and to assure them of my prayers for the continuance of every blessing to them now and hereafter: and accept yourself [Mr. Outlaw] my salutations and assurances of great respect and consideration.”

Having inserted both letters into their minutes, Chowan’s ministers and messengers returned to the business of managing the 19 churches in their little corner of Christ’s Zion in northeastern North Carolina: including Bertie with 253 members, Bethlehem with 39, Middle Swamp with 44, Outlaw’s Chapel with 30-some, and Yoppim with nearly 100. The Chowan Baptists—like their Danbury brethren—could vigorously engage their flocks and their communities with the Word of life with relative security in the liberty to do so according to their understanding of Scripture, and Jefferson’s “innocence of freedom in religious opinions and exercises.”

One of Chowan’s leading ministers, Martin Ross had come to believe the gospel of Christ as a young man. Ross had served in “our glorious Revolution” between 1780 and ’81. He came to believe that the “Christian Religion” offered

. . . peculiar suitableness to the condition of fallen man, [with] its sufficiency to sustain him under the manifold ills of life, and its ability to qualify him for the momentous events of eternity. Especially, he became convinced of its applicableness to his own individual case. Oppressed as he was by the weight of unpardoned guilt; tortured by the reproaches of an awakened conscience, and cast down by the frowns of an angry God, he found this blessed system alone [biblical Christianity] possessed of the power to change his mourning into joy.[6]

Sadly, Thomas Jefferson—great man and Founder that he was—shared not in that joy.

May those reading this be found in it.

Forrest L. Marion is a ruling elder in the First Presbyterian Church (PCA), Crossville, Tennessee.

[1] Minutes of the North-Carolina Chowan Baptist Association . . . May, 1807 (N.p., 1807?), 4.

[2] Minutes, Chowan Association, 1807, 3.

[3] Apparently taken from Leviticus 26:6, “. . . and none shall make you afraid” (KJV) [emphasis in original].

[4] Minutes, Chowan Association, 1807, 4.

[5] Minutes, Chowan Association, 1807, 4 [emphasis in original].

[6] [Thomas Meredith], “Memoir of Elder Martin Ross,” contained in Minutes of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the North-Carolina Chowan Baptist Association . . . [May], 1828 (Norfolk, Va., 1828), 9.