What Children Did Not Learn in School

The Intellectual Quickening of Young Americans in the Nineteenth Century

Bibliographic Data

ID3196189
AuthorsR Laurence Moore (Cornell University, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume68
Issue1
Pages42-61
Publication date1999-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChurch History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3170109
OpenAlexW2081660363
LanguageEN
References cited15

Thomas Jefferson belonged to a generation of common-sense rationalists who hoped that religious tolerance in the United States would put an end to religious quarreling. Once freed to practice religion as they pleased, adult citizens, Jefferson thought, would recognize the moral advantages of nondogmatic creeds and treat religion as a philosophical inquiry based not on Scripture but on what was selfevidently true. Religion, a subject for mature minds who could weigh evidence, was not for infants. Young children, he said, were "at an age when their judgments are not sufficiently matured for religious enquiries." Children had to learn to think about religion gradually and to study it with a questioning mind only after they had attained adulthood

Developmental psychology · Quickening · Sociology · Subject (documents) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious Education and Schools · Religious studies

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