Thoughts on Jefferson, the Founders and Christianity

Thanks to some recent new connections, some old friends, and to recent events, I’ve been thinking much these days of the Divine and Judeo-Christian lineage upon which our country was founded. But it was reading this morning of yesterday’s fire at Mission San Gabriel and Jim Hoft’s article Time to Act: Debunking Christian Excuses for Inaction in the Face of Evil that prompted me to write this, which is edited from several letters I’ve written to friends and relatives over the past several years.

I am not Christian per se. The last time I was in church was Christmas Day, 2017, and I like Christmas, not only for its festivity but also for what the day is supposed to represent, the birth of Christ, pagan connections to the present date of observance aside. However, I do dig into the bible from time to time, not only in my own beautiful Easton Press copy of the King James version, but also on BibleGateway, which is an excellent source for finding a passage as well as general study. I recognize that Christ walked the Earth, there is more than ample evidence for that. I do not know what happened at the Resurrection, but what I do know it that something happened that affected people deeply. There are firsthand accounts of Christ’s ministry in the four gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. (Read Cold Case Christianity if you doubt that they are firsthand accounts.) One might argue His Divinity, however, He is the single best example how to carry oneself thru life. Finally, I fully realize that not only Christ, but also the body of Judeo-Christian tradition and values that preceded them, greatly influenced the Founding Fathers.

Study the history…

While the Founding Fathers inherited this body of Judeo-Christian values and legal precedent, they were also products of The Enlightenment period. It is often mentioned that they were Deists, which from Merriam-Webster.com simply means: a movement or system of thought advocating natural (see NATURAL entry 1 sense 8b: formulated by human reason alone rather than revelation) religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe. Britannica elaborates a bit more, “For the Deist, a very few religious truths sufficed, and they were truths felt to be manifest to all rational beings: the existence of one God, often conceived of as architect or mechanician, the existence of a system of rewards and punishments administered by that God, and the obligation of humans to virtue and piety.”

Study the history…

It is useful to quote the first several passages from the Declaration (boldface mine):

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Jefferson was not referring to the State in his usage of “Nature’s God” and the “Creator.” It is important to keep in mind, this day when progressivism runs rampant, that Jefferson, and the Founders, had a deep-seated belief that our essential rights, which we all hold so dear, “life liberty, the pursuit of happiness,” the right to worship as we please, to self-defense, to associate with those with please, etc., indeed to choose the very direction of our lives, flowed from the Laws of Nature and God, stem from our Creator, and that it is government’s job to secure those rights. In other words, our basic rights are preexistent by virtue of Creation. So many on the Left have forgotten that and there is a sense among those of that mindset that the government bestows our rights upon us. But they do not. Our rights stem from our Creator and our very existence as human beings. Our rights do not stem from the government.

It is also important for all of us to acknowledge and realize that “Nature’s God” and the “Creator” is the God of Judeo-Christian worship. Jefferson was not, by any stretch of an historically educated imagination talking about Allah. Few realize that the Crusades were the result of more than 400 years of Muslim aggression throughout Europe. As a model of a human being, Muhammed falls far short of Christ’s example, let alone as example of a divine prophet. Some years after he wrote The Declaration of Independence, as president Jefferson had his own issues with Muslims. See the easy read Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History for a good treatise on this. Study the history…

The difference between Christianity and Islam is choice. Christ asks one to come to Him of his own accord. Jihad is a multifaceted phenomenon, which does not involve choice, other than to convert to Islam, be treated as worse than a third-class citizen, or be killed… Not great choices. In fact, Islam in Arabic means submission. Islam and the accompaniment Shira Law are absolutely incompatible with The Constitution. More on Islam, perhaps, in another article.

Study the history…

About four years ago, there was an interview with Bill O’Reilly on the CBS Sunday Morning Show. Bill collects historical documents, and at the time of the been on a writing spree as co-author of a number of books in his “Killing ___” series. In the interview, he points to a letter that he refers to as the only letter he knows of where Jefferson outlines his views on Christianity. He also refers to Jefferson as very secular.

I put the DVR on pause and took a photo of the letter, which I’ve included herein. The letter has no opening salutation, but you can clearly read the date, Jan 18, (18)24. One can see the closing signature beneath the shade of the pause bar, just to the left of the show’s sun symbol on the bottom right of the screen.

Interestingly, this is one letter for which I can’t find a transcription of on the internet. Here is an excerpt from it:

…and always rejoice in efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus. Had it never been sophisticated by the subtleties of commentation, nor paraphrased into meanings totally foreign to it’s character, it would have been the religion of the whole civilized world. But the metaphysical abstractions of Athanasius and the manic ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded it with absurdities and incomprehensibilities as to drive into infidelity men who have not time, patience or opportunity to strip it of it’s meretricious trappings and to see it in all it’s native simplicity and purity.

I think Bill’s assessment that this is the only place Jefferson addresses his views on Christ and Christianity is incorrect for there are several other letters where he addresses the issue.

Here is another letter, from Jefferson to Timothy Pickering, dated Feb 27, 1821:

no one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in it’s advances towards rational Christianity. when we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus, when, in short, we shall have unlearned every thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples: and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian. I know that the case you cite, of Dr Drake, has been a common one. the religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce it’s founder an imposter. had there never been a Commentator, there never would have been an infidel. in the present advance of truth, which we both approve, I do not know that you and I may think alike on all points. as the Creator has made no two faces alike, so no two minds, and probably no two creeds. we well know that among Unitarians themselves there are strong shades of difference, as between Doctors Price and Priestley for example. so there may be peculiarities in your creed and in mine. they are honestly formed without doubt. I do not wish to trouble the world with mine, nor to be troubled for them. these accounts are to be settled only with him who made us; and to him we leave it, with charity for all others, of whom also he is the only rightful and competent judge. I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the Unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also.

Few these days, I suspect, are aware of the “Jefferson Bible” in which he arranged the teachings of Christ in chronological order. My recollection is that there is at least a replica, if not the original, on display at Monticello.

So, in the two letters above, and from his compilation of Christ’s teachings, which he later published, along with several sources mentioned at https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/jeffersons-religious-beliefs/ we can see that Jefferson was no fan of the Trinity, religious doctrine, or dogma, and he doubted the divinity and resurrection of Christ. That said, one can also clearly see that Jefferson clearly held the teachings of Jesus in high regard. It is quite likely that he used them as his own reference point in how to treat others.

It is not only from these writings of Jefferson, but also from the body of legal thought which preceded them, which includes both The Magna Carta and The Bible, that one ought to recognize that Judeo-Christian values are deeply imbedded in both the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.

This is deeply important for those of us who car to keep in mind in this day of relentless “progressivism,” political correctness, cancel culture, suppression of speech, Crayola virus nonsense and all sorts of other stupidity. Those who hate this country and want to “fundamentally change” it, will destroy it beyond all recognition of what its Founders intended, envisioned or the sources of inspiration for it.

Endnote

This was my fourth article on LinkedIn, originally published on July 12, 2020 and republished here on February 1, 2021.

Namaste,

Mark Stansell

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Edit Feb 10, 2024

Deleted duplicate verbiage in the original two paragraphs just after the quotes from the Declaration of Independence and consolidated into a single paragraph.