Was Jefferson a Secularist?

Jefferson wished his epitaph to read:

HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON

AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

In his letter to the Danbury Baptists he expresses his interpretation of the First Amendment:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" thus building a wall of eternal separation between Church & State. Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion ... as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.

Leonard Levy in his Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side (1989) writes:

Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia: "Instead therefore of putting the Bible and Testament into the hands of the children, at an age when their judgments are not sufficiently matured for religious enquiries, their memories may here be stored with the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European and American history."(17) Religion was also conspicuous by its absence from Jefferson's plan of 1817; his Bill for Establishing a System of Public Education enumerated only secular subjects. In an effort to eliminate possible religious influence in the public schools, Jefferson specified that ministers should not serve as "visitors" or supervisors, and provided that "no religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practised" in violation of the tenets of any sect or denomination.(18) Clearly, Jefferson opposed the use of public funds for the teaching of religion in the public schools.

It is generally assumed that the Founding Fathers were for some sort of Christian education. But Jefferson seems to be following the logic of separation of church and state in such a way as to exclude any form of Christian education. Jefferson seems opposed to even the influence of religion on any state run institution. He believes in the hyper-privatization of faith and religion as a matter of opinion. Perhaps Jefferson was our first secularist calling for religion free zones of public life.