Faith & Spirit Quote by Jim Garrison

Belief built on omission is the oldest American civic pastime, and Jim Garrison skewers it with a lawyer’s precision. The line hinges on a trapdoor: “complete faith” sounds like responsible citizenship until he adds the self-indicting kicker - he “had never read it.” The intent isn’t just confession; it’s an accusation aimed outward. Garrison is modeling a posture he wants the reader to recognize in themselves: deference to official narratives not because they persuade, but because they relieve.

The subtext is a critique of how authority laundered uncertainty after JFK’s assassination. The Warren Report functioned less as a document than as a social exit ramp, a way to stop looking. Garrison’s timing matters: late 1966 is when skepticism about the assassination was hardening into a mass phenomenon, as critics circulated inconsistencies and the Zapruder film’s implications seeped into public consciousness. His admission positions him as a convert, and conversion stories are rhetorically powerful because they imply hidden evidence without having to present it yet.

What makes the quote work is its inversion of “faith” as a civic virtue. Faith usually implies moral seriousness; here it’s recast as laziness wearing a suit. Garrison, a public servant who would soon prosecute Clay Shaw and become a lightning rod for conspiracy debates, is also quietly laundering his own credibility: I trusted the system, then I did my homework. The punchline is that the homework itself is the radical act.