Thomas Jefferson's admiration and financial support of Christianity

[joobz]

Not necessarily, I've been to church at least 500 times in my life and I've never written a single word about it (until now). I read a book by Billy Graham about a year ago and I don't remember one sentence about him going to church in there. The fact that we have eye witness accounts of his congressional building church going is impressive -- especially the eyewitness account of a Congressional representative. The preponderance of the evidence clearly points to a church going Jefferson, especially during his presidency.

I do not see the connection. Have you ever called the bible a pile of poop?

 

[Fitter]

Not necessarily, I've been to church at least 500 times in my life and I've never written a single word about it (until now). I read a book by Billy Graham about a year ago and I don't remember one sentence about him going to church in there. The fact that we have eye witness accounts of his congressional building church going is impressive -- especially the eyewitness account of a Congressional representative. The preponderance of the evidence clearly points to a church going Jefferson, especially during his presidency.

I've been to church at least 500 times in my life also DOC but that does not make me less of an atheist. I would be willing to bet that I have been to church at least 100 times since coming to terms with my atheism. These visits include funerals, weddings and 5 visits with friends who were quite convinced that a service in their particular church would save me. Attending services doesn't default to admiration.

 

[Foster Zygote]

And as far as historian David Barton goes, he probably cares more about sources and facts than all of us put together.

The "historian" David Barton seems to have no academic credentials as an historian. If you'd like I can list several erroneous claims he's made regarding U.S. history.

Not necessarily, I've been to church at least 500 times in my life and I've never written a single word about it (until now).

How does your written output compare to Thomas Jefferson's?

I read a book by Billy Graham about a year ago and I don't remember one sentence about him going to church in there.

I read a book by Jimmy Carter and I don't remember one sentence about him going to the White House in there.

The fact that we have eye witness accounts of his congressional building church going is impressive -- especially the eyewitness account of a Congressional representative.

But considering the man's own words regarding religion in general and Christianity specifically the fact that he may have attended church services hardly validates your claim that he admired and supported Christianity.

The preponderance of the evidence clearly points to a church going Jefferson, especially during his presidency.

The preponderance of the evidence? You've provided very little evidence. You've provided what might be slim evidence that Jefferson was seen attending church services on some occasions. But if you think that this proves that Jefferson was a devout Christian and intended the United States of America to be a "Christian nation" then how do you explain the numerous written statements by the man himself that are critical of religion? Ignoring these facts actually makes your position weaker because it demonstrates that you are determined to ignore evidence that does not validate your claims.

 

[DOC]

Also, are you going to acknowledge the Jefferson Bible? Or the many quotes you have been given since post #2 in this thread showing Jefferson to be disdainful (to put it lightly) of Christianity?

Sure I'll acknowledge the Jefferson Bible. It just goes to show that he was indeed a Bible Scholar and greatly "admired" the teachings of Christ to put so much time and effort into such an endeavor. Also just for the record, I believe Jefferson called it "The teaching and Morality of Jesus Christ" and he never called it the Jefferson Bible.

Although Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Christ (Jefferson referred to himself as a sect unto himself]) technically he could be considered an evangelist for creating the so called Jefferson Bible because it certainly could be used as a tool to spread the teaching and morality of Christ.

As far as the quotes in post #2, I'll just repeat what Blutarsky said about them in post 20:

I don't really find anything in his selection of quotes that makes me believe that he was not a christian. We can fight over what exactly devout means...

I myself have made statements much like the ones above, though not so eloquently, and taken some of the same exceptions to what I see as nonsense within the religious establishment. I don't feel any less christian or devout for voicing my frustrations..."

 

[DOC]

Jefferson could never be an atheist

I think the following is a very interesting quote that was attributed to Jefferson in this thread:

"I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

I, like Jefferson, have always had problems with Calvin. Maybe that's why you don't here much about him (Calvin) anymore.

Also Jefferson is implying he could never not believe in God. So Jefferson is a man who calls himself a Christian (see Benjamin Rush letter) and could never not believe in God.

 

[joobz]

Sure I'll acknowledge the Jefferson Bible. It just goes to show that he was indeed a Bible Scholar and greatly "admired" the teachings of Christ to put so much time and effort into such an endeavor. Also just for the record, I believe Jefferson called it "The teaching and Morality of Jesus Christ" and he never called it the Jefferson Bible.

Ahh, so every Bible scholar is christian? And every person you admire is a god? Some how I think you are conflating Jefferson's words.

Although Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Christ (Jefferson referred to himself as a sect unto himself]) technically he could be considered an evangelist for creating the so called Jefferson Bible because it certainly could be used as a tool to spread the teaching and morality of Christ.

No, you can't consider him that. Being christian requires, indeed, it is entirely based upon the notion of Jesus' divinity. If you do not believe that part, you are not a christian. This is not a "true scottsman" fallacy either. It is central to the Apostle's Creed, the statement of faith that is the hallmark of christian views. To not believe in Christ the devine is to not be christian.

 

[slingblade]

Thus we return to page one of the thread and the fine, albeit virtually ignored post that only a Titanium Superhero could produce:

Source 1:

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

What is it men cannot be made to believe!

-Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, April 22, 1786. (on the British regarding America, but quoted here for its universal appeal.)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative 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 separation between church and State.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820

Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.

-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)

Source 2:

"Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the consciences of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to New London Methodists, 1809. ME 16:332

"I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises and the objects proper for them according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has deposited it... Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:429

"To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2: 546

"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.

"I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson: Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers 2:545


That's just a few.

Also, you should read up on the Jefferson Bible:

I expect it will continue to be ignored by those who could stand to benefit from it most.

More's the pity.

 

[Cleon]

I think the following is a very interesting quote that was attributed to Jefferson in this thread:

It's not that interesting. Nobody has claimed Jefferson was an Atheist. We've been saying he was a Deist. Deists believe in God.

I, like Jefferson, have always had problems with Calvin. Maybe that's why you don't here much about him (Calvin) anymore.

And yet you were going on about James Kennedy supposedly being "the most widely listened to Presbyterian minister in the world." You do know that Presbyterians are Calvinists, don't you?

Also Jefferson is implying he could never not believe in God. So Jefferson is a man who calls himself a Christian (see Benjamin Rush letter)

You're still going on about that? He called himself a "Christian" only in a very narrow sense, which you yourself would not consider to be truly Christian!

Consider:

1. A central tenet of the Christian religion--especially of the evangelical flavor you prefer--is that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior, and that none can be Saved except through Him.
2. As you yourself admitted earlier, "Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Christ."
3. If Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Christ, that means that he did not believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior.
4. Therefore, you yourself would not consider Jefferson to be truly a Christian, as he did not believe in its central belief.

Jefferson believed in the moral teachings of Jesus--hey, that's great, lots of people do who aren't Christians. I don't know any Jewish person (myself included) who doesn't think the moral teachings of Jesus are good. Gandhi, who was not a Christian, admired Jesus. The Dalai Llama says he does, too--again, not a Christian.

Once again, you seem to be twisting the facts to suit your views, rather than changing your views to fit the facts.

 

[DOC]

To not believe in Christ the devine is to not be christian.

So then, you believe Jefferson was wrong when he said he was a Christian in his letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush.

 

[DOC]

I expect it will continue to be ignored by those who could stand to benefit from it most.

Who's ignoring it, that's where I got the quote about Jefferson saying he could never be an atheist.

Bottom line is Jefferson said he was a Christian, he said he could never be an atheist, and he was a habitual church goer (while president.)

 

[joobz]

So then, you believe Jefferson was wrong when he said he was a Christian in his letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush.

In short, yes. If you do not hold to the creed upon which a religion is based, you are not of that religion.

However, I could be wrong. I believe that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet, and I'm still Christian....right?

 

[DOC]

4. Therefore, you yourself would not consider Jefferson to be truly a Christian, as he did not believe in its central belief.

When it comes down to it, it doesn't matter what I believe about Jefferson's personal faith -- that's between him and God. I have a feeling God is not going to be to hard on a man who writes that he is a Christian and rides to church in bad weather on a horse (as the one source mentioned).

I wouldn't call St. Peter a true Christian either when he was denying Christ 3 times to a woman. But he saw something about a week later that changed all that.

 

[Foster Zygote]

So then, you believe Jefferson was wrong when he said he was a Christian in his letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush.

You are mis-characterizing Jefferson's statement to suit your own needs. It is clear from the body of his writings that he felt the basic morality taught by the "true" Jesus (whom he did not believe to be divine, or even genuinely divinely inspired) to be worthy of admiration. He clearly meant that he only considered himself a Christian in the sense that he agreed with much of what the actual Jesus had written. Even I, an atheist, can say that in a very small way I am Christian in the sense that I agree with certain tenets of Christian teaching such as "love your neighbor" and "treat others as you would like to be treated". But he also clearly believed the bulk of modern Christian belief to be a corruption of the original message of Jesus. You have still failed to demonstrate that Jefferson was an orthodox Christian who intended that religion, Christianity specifically, should influence the governance of the United States of America.

 

[Cleon]

When it comes down to it, it doesn't matter what I believe about Jefferson's personal faith

On this, we agree completely. Your mistaken beliefs about Jefferson are irrelevant. Jefferson was quite specific about what he believed, and the facts are there for all to see despite your lying and quote mining.

 

[skeptifem]

um am i the only one pleased with the small amount of progress doc made? i mean its a step in the right direction, thats something to be happy about.

 

[DOC]

Nobody has claimed Jefferson was an Atheist. We've been saying he was a Deist.

I didn't know Deists went to Church every Sunday. Also the 2000 World Book encyclopedia segment on Jefferson stated "In his old age he (Jefferson) wrote to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion." That doesn't seem like something a true Deist would say.

 

[Cleon]

I didn't know Deists went to Church every Sunday. Also the 2000 World Book encyclopedia segment on Jefferson stated "In his old age he (Jefferson) wrote to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion." That doesn't seem like something a true Deist would say.

You know, with a little actual research you could probably determine the origin of that quote and its actual context. But that would be going against the patented DOC methodology of getting factoids from websites.

 

[joobz]

I didn't know Deists went to Church every Sunday. Also the 2000 World Book encyclopedia segment on Jefferson stated "In his old age he (Jefferson) wrote to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion." That doesn't seem like something a true Deist would say.

Ahhh, but a "true christian" would call the bible a pile of crap. Yup, your arguement makes a lot of sense.

 

[DOC]

Ahhh, but a "true christian" would call the bible a pile of crap. Yup, your arguement makes a lot of sense.

Actions speak louder than words. It gets mighty cold sometimes in Washington in the winter, especially on horseback. Maybe Jefferson liked the sound of the Marine band playing at the Christian service in the Rotunda of Congress and it was worth getting out of bed on a cold morning.

 

[Ducky]

Actions speak louder then words. It gets mighty cold sometimes in Washington in the winter, especially on horseback. Maybe Jefferson liked the sound of the Marine band playing at the Christian service in the Rotunda of Congress.

What about his actions of editing the bible to remove any and all divinity of Jesus?