Thomas Jefferson on Christianity and Religion

[Christa]

In spite of right-wing Christian attempts to rewrite history to make Jefferson into a Christian, little about his philosophy resembles that of Christianity. Although Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence wrote of the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, there exists nothing in the Declaration about Christianity.

Although Jefferson believed in a Creator, his concept of it resembled that of the god of deism (the term "Nature's God" used by deists of the time). With his scientific bent, Jefferson sought to organize his thoughts on religion. He rejected the superstitions and mysticism of Christianity and even went so far as to edit the gospels, removing the miracles and mysticism of Jesus (see The Jefferson Bible) leaving only what he deemed the correct moral philosophy of Jesus.

/Snip

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

More:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

[struggle4progress]

1. To Dr. Benjamin Rush, with a Syllabus Washington, Apr. 21, 1803

DEAR SIR,

-- In some of the delightful conversations with you, in the evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an anodyne to the afflictions of the crisis through which our country was then laboring, the Christian religion was sometimes our topic; and I then promised you, that one day or other, I would give you my views of it. They are the result of a life of inquiry & reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other. At the short intervals since these conversations, when I could justifiably abstract my mind from public affairs, the subject has been under my contemplation. But the more I considered it, the more it expanded beyond the measure of either my time or information. In the moment of my late departure from Monticello, I received from Doctr Priestley, his little treatise of "Socrates & Jesus compared." This being a section of the general view I had taken of the field, it became a subject of reflection while on the road, and unoccupied otherwise. The result was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus, or outline of such an estimate of the comparative merits of Christianity, as I wished to see executed by some one of more leisure and information for the task, than myself. This I now send you, as the only discharge of my promise I can probably ever execute. And in confiding it to you, I know it will not be exposed to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new misrepresentations & calumnies. I am moreover averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed. It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behoves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God & himself.

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl153.htm

[darkstar3]

3. While your point here is not without merit,

it should be noted that Jefferson was a notorious fence-sitter, a single bridge in the long and wide gap between Christianity and atheism.

You see, Jefferson called himself a Christian because he believed in the existence and message of Jesus. However, by the standards of his day and the standards of most vocal Christians in OUR day, Jefferson was not a Christian. He did not necessarily believe in the divinity of Christ, or that all of his teachings had been faithfully recorded. He did not believe in any literal interpretation of any part of the Bible, from beginning to end. And he forcibly rejected the doctrines of Christianity in his day, and I believe would do so in our own day.

No man is an island unto himself, but Jefferson sure as hell tried. Neither side, Christian or atheist, can claim him as one of their great thinkers, and any attempt to do so does the memory of his powerful intellect a disservice.

[onager]

2. One of my favorites

And thanks for the link.

:hi:

"You judge rightly that I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering.

I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off.

Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself."

From a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1816

[struggle4progress]

4. That text appears in the draft, but not in the final version, of Jefferson's 21 Jan 1816 letter to

Horatio G. SPAFFORD. The text of the full letter, and the subsequent transmission of the excerpt to Thomas Ritchie at the Richmond Enquirer, is available here:

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=807&chapter=88155&layout=html&Itemid=27

<page 14>
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816-1826
By Thomas Jefferson
Paul Leicester Ford, Editor
Copyright, 1899, G.P. Putnam's Sons; 10 Volume collection; Vol. X: 1816 - 1826
http://books.google.com/books?id=CGcSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=pamphlet+Lyman+Beecher+Pearson&source=bl&ots=F12_6d054X&sig=2W98yj5PR4VV6tLfeUtr6dfzwc0&hl=en&ei=6NQLS7TLAsS-lAej6KiVBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=pamphlet%20Lyman%20Beecher%20Pearson&f=false

Regarding the excised part of the letter, Jefferson told the Richmond Enquirer "In answering the letter of a northern correspondent lately, I indulged in a tirade against a pamphlet recently published in this quarter." The pamphlet was based on an address by Lyman Beecher (the gradualist abolitionist and father to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin"). Jefferson tells the Enquirer the pamphlet "is the most bold and impudent stride New England has ever made in arrogating an ascendency over the rest of the Union" and summarizes it thus in the excised remarks:

"They are now looking to the flesh pots of the South and aiming at foothold there by their missionary teachers. They have lately come forward boldly with their plan to establish 'a qualified religious instructor over every thousand souls in the US.' And they seem to consider none as qualified but their own sect. Thus, in Virginia, they say there are but 60 ... Now the 60. they allude to are exactly in the string of counties at the Western foot of the Blue ridge, settled originally by Irish presbyterians, and composing precisely the tory district of the state. There indeed is found in full vigor the hypocrisy, the despotism, and anti-civism of the New England qualified religious instructors. The country below the mountains, inhabited by Episcopalians, Methodists & Baptists (under mere nominal ministers unacquainted with theology) are pronounced 'destitute of the means of grace, and as sitting in darkness and under the shadow of death' ... That section then of our union having lost it’s political influence by disloyalty to it’s country is now to recover it under the mask of religion ..."

So Jefferson's tirade is directed against the idea that New England missionaries will be sent to convert already religious Southerners to New England sects, a proposal Jefferson interprets as political activism under the guise of religion

As a minor aside, the son of Horatio G. Spafford, also Horatio G. Spafford, wrote the well-known hymn
It is well with my soul
http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/i/t/i/itiswell.htm

[struggle4progress]

5. In order to provide more context for the evangelization pamphlet that upset Jefferson,

here's some additional information on Lyman Beecher, whose address formed the original basis for the Pearson pamphlet:

... In 1806 he preached a widely circulated sermon on duelling, and about 1814 a series of six sermons on intemperance, which were reprinted frequently ... http://www.nndb.com/people/095/000100792/

Washington, D.C: American Colonization Society
November 1834
DR. BEECHER'S ADDRESS
... In our own country, it is manifest that slavery must terminate quickly; and we trust that before the close of the present century, the reproach will be wiped away ... That the slave trade must cease is certain. Feeble as the moral sense of nations is; and slow as is their movement in a work of justice end mercy, the conscience of nations is beginning to act ... That the slave trade must cease soon, is manifest from the movements of Providence. — The power of steam is opening a highway to the heart and the extremities of Africa and commerce, the pioneer of Christianity, has commenced her march, and the angel has lifted the wing for flight, to preach, trumpet-tongued, the everlasting gospel. But the influence of the slave trade over the petty kings on the coast and in the interior is such as renders impossible the establishment of mere missionary stations. Fast as they could be planted, they would be instigated to cut them off with moral certainty ... Humanity, benevolence, self-preservation, and the providence of God, demand urgently, a more direct and efficient movement to avert the evil ... http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abes38at.html
http://www.corvalliscommunitypages.com/Americas/US/USNotOregon/beecherall.htm

... Lyman Beecher remained in Cincinnati until 1851 and during the intervening years was faced with the controversy over the issue of slavery at Lane Seminary, which caused some students to rebel and seek asylum in the newly formed Oberlin Collegiate Institute. The Old School Calvinist, Reverend Joshua Lacy Wilson, also confronted him with charges of heresy and slander, challenging Beecher's eastern Congregationalism and his New School theology. Lyman Beecher was acquitted of the charges but controversies were never really silenced while he remained in Cincinnati ... http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/2001/beecher/lyman.htm

TRIAL AND ACQUITTAL OF LYMAN BEECHER,D.D
BEFORE THE PRESBYTERY OF CINCINNATI,
ON CHARGES PREFERRED BY JOSHUA L. WILSON, D.D.
REPORTED FOR THE NEW YORK OBSERVER, BY MR. STANSBURY, OF WASHINGTON, D. C.
CINCINNATI
PUBLISHED BY ELI TAYLOR. 1835.
http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924029477670/cu31924029477670_djvu.txt

Who Was Isabella Beecher Hooker?
Suffragette, Daughter of Lyman Beecher
© Anya Laurence
Isabella Beecher, the fourth daughter and ninth child of Lyman Beecher, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1822, and died in Hartford, Connecticut in 1907, leaving behind a legacy of years of involvement in women's rights and domestic freedoms ... In 1871, Isabella spent her own money to organize a national convention "for the purpose of calling the attention of Congress to the fact that women were already citizens of the United States under the Constitution, interpreted by the Declaration of Independen, and only needed recognition, by that body, to become voters." She was ultimately invited to address the Senate Committee on the Judiciary of the United States ... http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/who_was_isabella_beecher_hooker

[struggle4progress]

6. Let's summarize who Jefferson was attacking in this text from his draft letter to Spafford:

he was attacking Lyman Beecher, who was perhaps the foremost architect of nineteenth century American religious liberalism. Beecher and his children were influential in many social policy areas, including dueling, temperance, abolition, and female suffrage: the first eventually died out at the state level, while the next three all produced constitutional amendments -- though prohibition was ultimately regarded as a failure. Beecher apparently considered such policies naturally Christian in nature and sought to evangelize the entire nation, including the South and the West

Here is an interesting location associated with Lyman Beecher's son, Henry Ward Beecher:

Beecher Bible and Rifle Church
Until 1854, when Kansas was opened for settlement, the spot on which this old landmark church stands was just part of a vast ocean of tall prairie grass ... The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, passed in May, 1854, changed all this forever. It provided that Kansas could become a free state or a slave state ... The race was on to stake out claims, and to vote Kansas "free," or "slave" ... In New England "Kansas Fever" ran high. The people of New Haven, Connecticut, raised money to send a group of colonists to Kansas, sixty or more men, led by .. Charles B. Lines ... Before the Connecticut-Kansas Company left for Kansas, a meeting was held in North Church, in New Haven. Professor Silliman, of Yale, pledged $25.00 for a Sharps rifle for the Company. Then Henry Ward Beecher, the great minister from Brooklyn, pledged that his congregation would give the money for twenty-five rifles if the audience would give another twenty-five; people in the crowd responded in great excitement, and soon twenty-seven had been promised. A few days later Mr. Beecher sent Mr. Lines $625 for the rifles, and with the money came twenty-five Bibles, the gift of a parishioner ... They started west on the Oregon Trail, stopping for a few days in the free-state town of Lawrence. Then they continued along the trail to Uniontown, near present-day Willard. Here, instead of following the trail across the Kaw river, they veered left and continued west, south of the river, until they reached .. Wabaunsee ... After two years of raising funds for a church building, mostly in New Haven, they started construction of the sturdy stone church ... http://www.wamego.org/beecher.htm



Beecher Bibles
A Kansas Portrait

The Sharps rifle was a big innovation in firearms during the 1850s. It was highly sought after by men looking to gain political advantage in territorial Kansas. Early in 1856, the Sharps rifle picked up a new nickname through the devise of an article on the Kansas conflict and the effectiveness of the weapon in the opinion of the well-known abolitionist preacher, Henry Ward Beecher.

He (Henry W. Beecher) believed that the Sharps Rifle was a truly moral agency, and that there was more moral power in one of those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles...

This article appeared in the New York Tribune on February 8, 1856, and rapidly thereafter the Sharps rifle became known as a "Beecher's Bible." This appellation was further encouraged by the marking of the cases in which the rifles were shipped as "Books" and "Bibles," a concealment which appears to have served a double purpose; both hiding the identity of the contents from the proslavery men and keeping the Aid Companies from any difficulties with the federal and state authorities who had forbidden the shipping of arms to the bloody region ...

http://www.kshs.org/portraits/beecher_bibles.htm