Thomas Jefferson and the Founding of the University of Virginia: An American Age of Reason, Religion, and Republicanism
The manuscript that follows, as a direct result of these various polemical viewpoints, examines the main themes at work in our attempts to rationalize, and to reconcile, secular learning with moral instruction, religious diversity and the rights of individual conscience, with the overall aims and objectives of America's collegiate franchises; it also offers a critical examination of the forces at play both prior to and during the founding of America's initial institution for the sole implementation of the scientific curriculum; this dissertation also peers into the compatibility of the republican college, with the express nature of republican participation, and then attempts to compare these observations to the more abstract entities of social equity and democracy. The study concludes with a close look at the religious proclivities of Thomas Paine and offers some insight into Thomas Jefferson's antisectarian reform recommendations, particularly noting the degree to which the elder statesman's attempts to promote universal Christian values, can be misinterpreted in such a way that they may suggest, to many, that Jefferson is in fact an atheistic foe of religion.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign