Major, embarrassing update, 2010.09.20: So it turns out that the Slate article from which I learned that Jefferson was the FAITH portrait was pretty much dead wrong. In fact the image is of Samuel Adams, and the source is the same painting in the Adams Wikipedia article. (Although, Shepard Fairey-ized, he still looks like Jefferson to me.) Jefferson makes so little sense for a portrait of FAITH that not even Glenn Beck is stupid enough to try and make him one. I’ve pulled the image from Flickr to prevent propagation of a false meme. Oy.

So there’s this guy who’s really popular with folks who hold political opinions mostly in opposition to mine. It’s come to my attention (probably late, I know) that he’s been waving around images of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, à la Shepard Fairey’s Obama posters, with the words “Faith,” “Hope,” and “Charity” appended to each, respectively.

Now, I might quibble with “Hope” for Washington (what about “Courage?”) and “Charity” for Franklin (I’m sure Ben would’ve preferred “Thrift”), but I really take issue with assigning “Faith” to Jefferson. If you don’t know why this is both silly and (for a non-faith-inclined person such as myself) irritating, I have two words for you: Jefferson Bible.

So, with a little help from the wonderful open-source image software Inkscape, I fixed it.

Image created by jby.

That’s much better. It’s on my Flickr, and CC licensed, so download away for all your reason-based uses.