The Theology of Jeffersonian Hypocrisy

I recently spent a week or so immersed in constitutional law, looking at — among other things — the place of the Declaration of Independence in constitutional interpretation. It has gotten me thinking about the virtues of hypocrisy. The Declaration is a particularly good example of this. Thomas Jefferson was nothing if not a hypocrite when he declared that all men were created equal and had inalienable rights. Sugar coat it as you might, there is no denying that Jefferson was a slave owner and that whatever abolitionist principles he had in his extreme youth were jettisoned in later life. The English, quite rightly, resented being lectured on liberty by American slave owners, and to its credit the United Kingdom outlawed slavery long before the United States did and the British Navy did more than anyone else in suppressing the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

And yet, I can’t help but see Jefferson’s hypocrisy as an ultimately good and productive thing. One of the unfortunate effects of modern hyper-liberalism is that it tries to locate all morality in the choices of the autonomous self. This pushes one toward the silly excesses of Satre and Camus and the exaltation of the integrity of the individual as the ultimate sign of virtue. This is not a moral universe in which Thomas Jefferson fares well. If one gives up on locating morality wholly within the self, however, Jefferson can still claim some scraps of virtue. His hypocrisy points beyond himself, locating morality in a sphere outside of the choosing self, making it something that has claim on our choices beyond the ultimately formal demands of integrity. This is important because ultimately this gives the demands of principle a transformative power over not only the self but also the ends and means that the self employs. The working pure of Jefferson’s hypocrisy through the development of American constitutional law ultimately worked a great and good transformation that integrity standing alone could not have done.

Put in Christian terms, hypocrisy is an instantiation of the Augustinian insight that man falls short of the glory of God and this makes him, in some sense, evil, sinful, and less than he should be. Left to itself, hypocrisy can degenerate into the moral passivity of an extreme and perhaps bastardized Calvinism. Yet there is also an optimistic, Anabaptist and perhaps even Pelagian aspect of hypocrisy. It calls forth repentance, transformation, and points toward perfectibility and even — according to the Mormon heresy — exaltation.

Mormons, of course, are hypocrites. We sin and white our sepulchres, falling short of the exortations of the prophets and the gospels. To be sure there is shame in this, but it ought not to be the shame of a vacuous integrity. Rather, it seems to me, that our theology creates the possibility of a productive, Jeffersonian hypocrisy that leads on to better things. Much of American constitutional law can be seen as a kind of repentance, a working pure of the primal Jeffersonian hypocrisy not in terms of pure integrity but rather in terms of progression toward the ideal that makes Monticello at once so appealing and so appalling. Christianity in general and Mormonism in particular place us in a similar position. Fortunately,the eventual redemption of Jeffersonian ideals provides some reason for placing hope in the transformative seed of our hypocrisy.

32 comments for “The Theology of Jeffersonian Hypocrisy

  1. Sure, Nate, neither the Founding Fathers nor the Declaration of Independence lived up to the ideal of freedom as stated in the precious document.

    These men were a product of their times. They were hypocrites I guess in that sense but they were also realists just as much as Brigham Young was a pragmatist.

    The point I’m trying to make, and I think what you are trying to make, is that Jeffersoniasm allowed for a nation to have a foundation on which to build a more perfect union.

    You can’t build something out of the air. For the nation to all of a sudden embrace complete abolition and suffrage would have thrown the entire society out of wack, I think. The people just weren’t ready for it at the time.

    The ideals we embraced under the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution allowed for us to examine our collective souls (As we still do)

  2. We should not be surprised when any human personality embodies blatant contradictions. Rather, we should be surprised to find someone who is (or appears to be) entirely consistent in everything they think, say and do.

  3. Let me just add that I agree with Nate’s point that Jefferson’s hypocrisy was productive.

  4. I, too, dislike the modern notion that hypocrisy is the worst possible sin. I’d never associated it with Sartre and Camus, though…the guy I can’t stand is Henry David Thoreau, who I’ve always seens as more influential in shaping American ideas of individualism.

    Of course Jesus spent some energy denouncing something like hypocrisy among the scribes and parisees. What characteristics do you think distinguish good hypocrisy from bad hypocrisy?

  5. Jefferson as our finest president?! The reason that Jefferson didn’t include his presidency on his tomb stone was not because he was so accomplished that there wasn’t room for this particular triumph, but rather because he himself viewed his presidency as a failure. Far from decisively defeating the federalist approach to the new nation, his approach was ultimately decisively rejected. The federalists got Marshall on the Supreme Court and ultimately Marshall’s judicial opinions proved more decisive than did Jefferson’s constitutional theories. As has been aptly pointed out by others, at Appomatax, Thomas Jefferson surrendered to John Marshall. Furthermore, the reduction of federalism to an aristocratic plot works only if one characterizes federalism as meaning only High Hamiltonian Federalism (as opposed to the Middle Federalism of Adams and Marshall) and if one views that High Federalism exclusively through the lens of the Republican polemic.

    Jefferson was a great man of enormous talents who made monumental contributions to his country. However, I don’t think that there is any plausible argument to be made that he was America’s greatest president (Jefferson surely would never have made such a claim, and he was a man given to the assidious cultivation of his own reputation), nor can modern America be viewed as his creation. Marshall, Lincoln, and FDR are much better candidates for that honor.

    (Also posted at DMI)

  6. “Hypocrisy is an homage that vice pays to virtue.”
    -La Rouchefoucald

    “Hypocrisy is not the great vice of conservatism. It is the great insight.
    -Jonah Goldberg

    The more aspirational hypocrisy is, the less objectionable it is. The more deceptional, the worse. But it’s never good. Hypocrisy is always a second best. The Savior was not calling on the Jews to cease to be hypocrites by ceasing to honor God with their mouths. He was calling on them to honor God with their lives they way they did with their mouths.

  7. Marshall, Lincoln, and FDR are much better candidates for that honor.

    Well, I’d have to agree with the latter two, but President Marshall? I think I’d have to leave him off the list.

  8. Nate:

    Thanks. I think these are the finest (and nicest) words you’ve ever uttered re: TJ. Not only have you reminded me of our first mtg at BYU (Nate was signing up new members of the BYU College Republicans and we got into a minor tiff because I like Jefferson & Nate didn’t); but provided me with a very eloquent discussion of what I’ve been brewing in my soul of late re: naming my child. My wife and I have opted for William Jefferson if its a boy. Why?

    Because of what you outlined above. I’d been thinking that the contradictions in his life would provide some comfort to a child growing up and grappling with a desire to good, yet continually failing as any other mortal will. Jefferson wasn’t perfect, made mistakes, even did great wrongs. But he also tried his best and produced great results. I’d be happy if any child of mine could follow in his steps; albeit hopefully w/o some of the sins and with a temple recommend & testimony in hand.

  9. I don’t think he meant President Marshall, but the renowned Secretary of State George C. Marshall.

  10. Lyle: I’d be honored, and I appreciate your honest assessment of my presidency.

  11. One cannot do what is right unless one knows what is right. Those who created the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were drafting a plan, an ideal, something to be worked toward, not something already realized. And there was no hypocrisy involved unless there were claims at the time that these things were already achieved. To the best of my knowledge, Jefferson never made such a claim.

    I personally don’t think that hypocrisy is ever a good thing. It is dishonest. For an example, does a man have to be perfectly Christlike to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ? I don’t think so. Is he a hypocrite for preaching the gospel before achieving Christlike levels of virtue and perfection? Again, I don’t think so. A man becomes a hypocrite in his preaching only if he falsely claims to be perfectly Christlike.

    If a man had to be perfectly Christlike to preach the gospel, no one would ever preach the gospel. It is the same with the ideals taught in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

  12. Marshall, Lincoln, and FDR are much better candidates for that honor.

    As a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian federalist, the thought of FDR as the greatest president is frightful. His great (and greatest) achievement was rallying the country to fight and win WW2, but his economic policies were a failure in his own time (the Depression was solved by the war, not by the New Deal), and have set the modern course for the legion of social programs, hyper-regulation, and deficit spending. Charismatic and smart he was, but the long-term implications of his policies have been disastrous. His presidency was the beginning of the end for a Constitutional republic based on principles of limited government.

    Jefferson wins hands down. Calvin Coolidge also gets a nod.

  13. Lots of heroes have flaws, Lyle Stamps. In fact, every single one (except Christ, though one could argue that he had flaws, just not sins). So, uh, Jefferson?!? Come on.

  14. Great post, Nate.

    Just having listened to Founding Brothers, I was struggling with Jefferson’s apparent hipocracy (since it is obvious who Joseph Ellis prefers in the Jefferson vs. Adams comparison), but you have hit the nail on the head. They hoped that the country they were building a foundation for would remedy many of the imperfections that existed, and still exist.

  15. I agree with John. Hypocricy is falseness. It is claiming we are one thing when we are in fact another. George Washington said, “Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly forsee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.” There was no falseness in this. These men generally could forsee what needed to be done regarding the “traditions of their fathers.” It was not hypocracy, but honesty and integrity, that enabled them to design and prepare to throw off those traditions.

    The idea of hypocricy as beneficial is anything but wise, it is not scriptural, and it is sophistry, whether intended as such or not.

    Perhaps what was being sought after was simply the idea that while we are imperfect people we nevertheless seek for perfection (or greater things than at present). If that was the idea, why convolude it in terms that actually diminishes the characteristic of integrity, as well as derides men who are better than the hypocrites they are being recast as here?

    Imagine if the idea were accepted far and wide and promoted as it is being done here, especially in law practice. What would result? Integrity would fly out the window at almost every instance where choosing hypocracy over integrity would be deemed ‘beneficial’. And since hypocracy could be beneficial, even the hypocracy of flexibly redefining what ‘beneficial’ means would be justifyable because after all, in principle (insomuch one holds this unsound notion as their principle) much good could come of it. Thus, virtually any act which violates one’s integrity becomes a justified, no, a necassary hypocracy, because after all, it could be ‘beneficial’, ‘as Jefferson’s was’.

  16. I was naming Lincoln, FDR, and Marshall as the best candidate for shapers of modern America, not as best candidates for greatest president. Two of the shapers happen to be presidents one of them is not.

  17. Folks, don’t take this personally … it’s just an ex-English major going into fits. But I think we need to get the spelling of hypocrisy down. I’ve seen hipocrisy (#16), hypocricy (#17) and “hypocracy”(#17). I’ve seen the “hypocracy” spelling before (at another blog, in the title of a post) and considered the possibility that it could be a deliberate misspelling as a criticism of a particular government. But after a private email the offender fixed the title of his post.

    Anyway, let’s stop this monster before it continues. H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y

  18. “It was not hypocracy, but honesty and integrity, that enabled them to design and prepare to throw off those traditions.”

    That right there, surely, is something of a sophistry; not only does it miss Nate’s main point, it tries to say that X’s sin is not a sin so long as X lays the foundation for others not being able to participate in it.

  19. I was naming Lincoln, FDR, and Marshall as the best candidate for shapers of modern America, not as best candidates for greatest president.

    Oh. Well, in that case, I agree with you. Sadly.

  20. As long as we’re talking about non-presidents—what about Alexander Hamilton? He shaped American government and policy as much if not more than some of the other fellows named. And I happen to like the particular shape that he gave it, which, I guess, puts me at odds with the Jefferson camp.

  21. Danithew: I concur. Trust me, I was just as surprised when I joined my wife’s decision. However, it is an endorsement of Thomas Jefferson and the first born male children named William in my family for several centuries; and zero to do with Clinton; although I will gladly take time off work under the Family/Medical leave act.

    Adam: Jefferson is probably one of three of my favorite Founding Fathers. His name just happened to go best with William. I also think TJ is more of an intellectual father to modern day conservatives than many give him credit for.

  22. Nate and Adam: There are two defnitions of hypocrisy here, each running into the other.

    The first is the contemporary, common, use of hypocrisy: affirming some moral norm while failing to live up to it in practice. As Nate points out, this applies to everyone, since everyone does this (except of course those who affirm that everything is permitted and nothing can be called wrong). But this is precisely what makes this definition almost useless. It may be an instantiation of the Augustinian insight that all people fall short of the glory of God, but if so if it loses much of its moral force. The persistence of hypocrisy (as hypocrisy) may point toward perfectablility and transformation–if indeed we contintue to affrim the violated moral truth–or on the other hand we may conclude that the affirmed truth was either a sham or a piece of reckless utopianianism. Hypocrisy, by itself, does not necessarily lead one way or another.

    The second definition is the one Milton uses when he describes Satan descending to earth, in disguise, to decieve Adam and Eve. “Hypocrisy is the sin that only God knows.” This is because only God knows whether you fail to live up to your principles because of a lie in your heart or because of weakness (the latter isn’t really hypocrisy but a run-of-the-mill moral failing). This is also, incidentally, the sense used in the New Testament. Jesus had plenty of “hypocrites” in the first sense among his disciples, but he reserved that term for those who, in their hearts, did not love God or God’s law. He among all people who walked the earth, “knew what was in their hearts”, and for this reason he was able to give the greatest teachings on hypocrisy the world has ever heard.

    This also seems to be closer to the term in Rouchefoucald’s famous formulation. Which helps us recognize its truly sinister side. We might, like Nate “praise” hypocrisy by pointing out that it is in a way a good thing when people don’t live up to their ideals, since the ideals still reamain and have the power to transform. But I don’t think that when Goldberg praises hypocrisy he is saying that it is a good thing whenever people sin while affirming righteousness. Rather it seems that what is being praised is the fact that people will often make an elaborate show of being righteous, and show a pretended love for moral truth, but merely for the worldly benefits that seeming to be good brings. This is good because it uses human selfishness to spread the good name of virtue. The bad–that some people really hate the law in their hearts–isn’t that bad because all we’re looking for is eager compliance and social harmony rather than the highest spiritual dedication.

    The main problem is that it has to be real, hard-core hypocrisy to work. If people really held in their hearts God’s law, and yet through weakness managed to break it (hypocrites according to the first definition), they would not make an elaborate show of seeming to obey. They would not hide their sin, but would retreat in shame–even though they might not announce their sin to the world, they surely would not allow themselves to reap the benefits of seeming to be a pillar of virtue. This sense of shame may also have some kind of social benefit (and can, possibly, contain an aspect of deception), to be sure. But it’s practically the opposite of hypocrisy.

    Goldberg’s claim that the value of hypocrisy is a great insight of conservatism seems true, but it also contains a great irony. The irony lies in the fact that we are publicly singing the praises of hypocrisy. “It is good that our role models are shams” I don’t deny the insight, only point out that it’s strange that a great mass of the population who call themselve conservatives could be found to affirm it. Hypocrisy only works if the trick works. I think this gets us into some of the most important puzzles of political ideology and political rhetoric over the last 200 or so years.

    A final problem comes when it is (and it sometimes seems to be) applied to Mormonism. The idea is that if you go to church and obey the commandments–even though you have no testimony, faith or love of God–then you will somehow be struck with these things as a prize for outward obedience. Besides all the doctrinal problems which this idea (e.g. the truth that faith comes *first*), it takes the conservative or social insight at least one step too far. It imagines that outward virtue leads not just to more outward virtue (the conservative insight), but also to inward commitment–and not just in society but in the individual. The conservative would likely chasten this extension of his insight, explaining that the best we can hope for some people is that they obey outwardly, or make a show of doing so; he might add that his praise of hypocrisy never contained any great hopes for the utmost depths of the heart anyway. To this, someone who is reading the Gospels might add that outward performance for its own sake more often breeds a neglect of inner committment and a lack of true love rather than a realization of the centrality of these things. When you realize that fake, outward discipleship pays (and the payoff for hypocrisy in the church can quite often seem like real spiritual blessings), many wonder why anyone would want the real thing.

  23. I believe we need a return of “The Theology of Jefferson” and the other Founding Fathers as penned in the Declaration of Independence, “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” or, in other words, natural law. We are so much surrounded by man-made laws and court opinions that are at odds with the divine and revealed law of the scriptures or the hope of Cicero and the wisdom of Blackstone. Our “inalienable rights” being denied by the corruption and favoritisms of power brokers at the federal level who give oath of support to the Constitution when sworn in but almost consistently give little regard to the people or good government.

  24. Jeremiah: I think that you sell the transformative power of outward behavior short. Surely it is true that much outward behavior never penetrates the inward man, but I see no reason to suppose that this is always so.

  25. It appears that one of the arguments against the appointment of Judge Bork to the Supreme Court was his commitment to original intent, which to some meant that he would separate the races in Congress, among other things.
    Does this mean that if one can impute hypocrisy, or any other vice, to the Founding Fathers, then any intent that they had when they formulated this inspired document can be dismissed outright by modern hypocrites? At what point do the principles and political doctrines outlined by these great men have any real meaning in modern political discourse and action?
    To whom would one turn for direction if original intent is a false premise on which to interpret law?

  26. Try getting rid of original intent in any other scholarly endeavor and you’ll get roped by your peers and hung from the nearest campus colonnade.

  27. Nate, great post, and good point. Did Jefferson perceive himself as a hypocrite, though? I’m woefully ignorant of his life, so maybe you or someone else can tell me. Did he actually believe that slavery was wrong, and yet found himself unable to resist owning (and bedding) slaves despite that conviction? Or did he and the others simply have a vast blind spot in their view of “all men”?

  28. Rosalynde/Adam:

    Unlike some heroes, Jefferson was aware of, and actively fought against, his flaws. I just read a book on Jefferson over the weekend; and he seems vely clearly to have been inspired in many of his actions.

    First, one of Jeffersons’ first acts as a state legislator in Virginia was to attempt to limit the slave trade. Throughout his political career, he consistently introduced laws that would limit or outlaw and end slavery and he even predicted the Civil War would result if action wasn’t taken. I’ll post more details/dates latter tonight.

    I don’t remember all the debate, but I’m still holding with his nephew being the culprit re: bedding slaves.

    Jeremiah: If a man _is_ what he thinks, then surely the thought required to motivate action also affects what he _is_. Of course, several prophets and James Allen could be wrong.

  29. Nate: I tried not to sell the transformative power of outward behavior short. Indeed I admitted that hypocrisy can be a healthy part of ethical life. But I tried to make two important qualifications: 1) that discipleship may about something quite different (Jesus himself, in the Gospels, is the main source here with which your intuition must come to terms. 2) that the more genuinely hypocritical you are the less the salutary *moral* effect works.

    Jefferson was certainly a hypocrite in some sense of the term, but not in the sense that he in private he really didn’t beleive that Africans were in some sense created equal. He almost certainly didn’t promote the equality of man just so his Enlightened associates would think better of him. His failure to free his slaves (even upon his death) seem to have come from a combination of moral weakness and a notion that was very much accepted by many 18th and 19th century liberals (even Mill)–that despite the abstract equality of all men backward and primitive peoples can justifiably be ruled paternalistically or ‘depotically’.

    The point, which I tried to make (and which I really can’t see in what you’ve said so far), is that there is quite a difference between the hypocrisy which is full of bad conscience, agonizes over its own moral weakness, and makes various attempts to excuse or ‘make up for’ the bad behavior, and the kind of hypocrisy which likes the facade because it pays. I readily admit that people general are found with both in varying degrees–but I also think that they lead in different directions.

    Lyle: I think I understand the statement: ‘A man is what he thinks’, but I find it vague. To be sure thought is connected to being and being good is often if not always preceded by ‘thinking good’. But let’s not confuse necessary with sufficient conditions. Yet as a good Hegelian I might be persuaded to admit that thought is in some sense destined to become actual. Still I think it would be quite naive to imagine that this always happens very quickly or easily (or in the space of a single lifetime). Ages come and go, empires rise and fall and generations of hypocrites pass by before people are raised to a godly life by the mere thought of God by itself.

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