Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh

by Thomas S. Kidd

Overview

A revelatory new biography of Thomas Jefferson, focusing on his ethical and spiritual life
 
“Kidd’s biography may well be the best treatment of Jefferson’s religious and moral life available, and certainly it is among the few to take those two subjects seriously while carefully avoiding hagiography or anachronism. It deserves a wide readership.”—Miles Smith, National Review
 
“Set aside everything you think you know about Thomas Jefferson and religion, and read this book. This is the definitive account. It is well written, well researched, judicious, and entirely convincing.”—Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College
 
Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity.
 
In this book Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions, including an unapologetic focus on the issue where Jefferson’s idealistic philosophy and lived reality clashed most obviously: his sexual relationship with his enslaved woman Sally Hemings. In doing so, he offers a unique perspective on one of American history’s most studied figures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300271058
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	12/13/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	260,863
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Thomas S. Kidd is distinguished professor of history at Baylor University. His books include Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father and Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis. He lives in Woodway, Texas.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 "If There Is Such a Thing as a Devil" 8

2 "I Speak the Sentiments of America" 30

3 "A Virginian Ought to Appear at the Head of This Business" 50

4 "It Is Not in My Power to Do Anything More" 71

5 "I Am But a Son of Nature" 91

6 "None of Us, No Not One, Is Perfect" 111

7 "The Little Spice of Ambition" 127

8 "Diamonds in a Dunghill" 149

9 "Strange Inconsistant Man" 171

10 "Coup de Grace" 189

11 "Dreams of the Future" 210

Conclusion: "All That Has Passed" 227

Notes 241

Acknowledgments 299

Index 301

Editorial Reviews

What we need is a balanced reassessment of Jefferson’s thought and attitudes on God and religion. Thomas S. Kidd, a professor of history at Baylor, gives us that in his crisply written life Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh.”—Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal

Chosen by Wall Street Journal as one of “10 Books to Read on Faith in the Modern World”

“[An] excellent, timeless biography. . . . Balanced and judicious.”—Collin Garbarino, World, Book of the Year for 2022

“Thomas Jefferson offers a new direction to examine a contentious figure. . . . By considering Jefferson as an emblem of early American tensions between religion, Enlightenment, race, and morality, Kidd offers a biography that embraces a contradictory protagonist.”—Daniel Howlett, Journal of Church and State

“Set aside everything you think you know about Thomas Jefferson and religion, and read this book. Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh is the definitive account. It is well written, well researched, judicious, and entirely convincing.”—Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College

“At long last, we have a biography of Thomas Jefferson that treats the enigmatic founder as more than just a living symposium of ideas or as a living museum of hypocrisies. In this long-awaited book, Thomas Kidd, one of the world’s most respected historians, portrays for us a compellingly complicated human being—who through both genius and will, and despite grave flaws, gave us a country we could not recognize apart from him. For people all across the ideological spectrum, this biography will be the starting point for countless new arguments and ideas.”—Russell Moore, chair of theology, Christianity Today

“I don’t know a scholar more able than Thomas Kidd to bring breadth, depth, and moral clarity to a treatment of a figure as significant and complicated as Thomas Jefferson—and to do so with vivid, compelling prose that will engage a broad audience of readers.”—Karen Swallow Prior, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Kidd has written a unique work—‘a narrative of Jefferson’s moral universe’—that will make an outstanding contribution to scholarship on Jefferson.”—James Byrd, Vanderbilt Divinity School

“In ‘trying to untangle the thicket of Jefferson’s moral, philosophical, and theological commitments, in the context of his time, not ours, while avoiding both ‘patriotic apologetics’ and ‘iconoclastic destruction,’ Thomas Kidd gives us the Thomas Jefferson we need right now.”—Kevin R. C. Gutzman, author of Thomas Jefferson—Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America

From the Publisher