“Monkish”, I believe, refers to ideological isolation/insulation of America’s colonial clergy – very few were Catholic.

Furthermore, Jefferson’s “Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom” was brought forth in a state where worship of the Anglican Church was made mandatory in 1624:

“After the mid-18th century, evangelical Christians (Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists) challenged the establishment’s discriminatory practices by flaunting licensing laws and refusing to be restricted to particular meetinghouses or locales. As the Revolution approached, they formed an unlikely partnership with apostles of the Enlightenment among the Revolutionary generation. Both were bent upon disestablishing the Anglican church in Virginia.”

http://www.history.org/almanack/life/religion/religionva.cfm

Ironically, those “evangelical” dissenters who wanted religious freedom were deeply suspicious of Thomas Jefferson because he did not believe in miracles, nor the divinity of Christ, nor the Biblical account of history. Even worse (in their opinion) Jefferson had the audacity to champion Reason, Liberty, and Science at the expense of the authority of their religious institutions and beliefs.