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In a message dated 8/9/2002 11:07:16 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
starsuncloud@... writes:
> For some of us, believing in the message that
> Christ brought is enough to claim the term "Christian"

Ren,

This is something I've never understood. How does one separate the message
Jesus came to tell, from the words the Bible says he used? Words that to me,
at least, are less than comforting half the time.

The greatest filterer of Jesus' words may have been Thomas Jefferson. He
separated Jesus the ethicist from Jesus the metaphysician and miracle worker.
After having done that, I don't think TJ would ever have considered calling
himself a Christian, not because he didn't follow Jesus' ethical teachings,
but because he knew orthodoxy from heterodoxy, and realized that he was in
the latter camp, as were Franklin, Paine, Adams, and some others, and being
no democrat, didn't think that 1800 years of orthodoxy should change just for
him. [Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I truly know of no place where
Jefferson called himself a Christian. A follower of Christ? Yes. But not a
Christian.]

Sincerely,

Bob Sale


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Fetteroll

on 8/9/02 4:06 PM, rsale515@... at rsale515@... wrote:

> After having done that, I don't think TJ would ever have considered calling
> himself a Christian

Though he wasn't a Unitarian officially, Thomas Jefferson wrote somewhere
that he identified most closely with Joseph Priestly's Unitarian church. He
lived too far and the only church nearby was the Episcopalian one.

Last time I stumbled on Thomas Jefferson's like the Unitarian church I found
some more polished entries, but these are interesting nonetheless:

http://www.sunnetworks.net/~ggarman/deist.html

Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary (1952) includes in the definition of
Deist: "One who believes in God but denies supernatural revelation." There
is no question Jefferson rejected the Bible as divine revelation and
rejected the divinity of Jesus. In the Declaration of Independence
Jefferson's appeal was to the God of the Deist, "Nature's God," not
specifically to the God of Christianity (see letter dated Sep. 14, 1813, to
Jefferson from John Adams equating "Nature's God" with "the revelation from
nature").

As President, Jefferson occasionally attended church services; but, he was
not a communing member of any Christian church. Further, he refused to
proclaim any national days of prayer or thanksgiving.

Jefferson says he was a "Materialist" (letter to Short, Apr. 13, 1820) and a
"Unitarian" (letter to Waterhouse, Jan. 8, 1825). Jefferson rejected the
Christian doctrine of the "Trinity" (letter to Derieux, Jul. 25, 1788), as
well as the doctrine of an eternal Hell (letter to Van der Kemp, May 1,
1817). Further, Jefferson specifically named Joseph Priestly (English
Unitarian who moved to America) and Conyers Middleton (English Deist) and
said: "I rest on them ... as the basis of my own faith" (letter to Adams,
Aug. 22, 1813). Therefore, without using the actual words, Jefferson issued
an authentic statement claiming Deism as his faith. The 1971 (ninth edition)
Encyclopedia Britannica, 7:183, states the following: "By the end of the
18th century deism had become a dominant religious attitude among
upper-class Americans, and the first three presidents of the United States
held this conviction, as is amply evidenced in their correspondence."


http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:cmQbQN0cy0IC:members.aol.com/cwood64801
/jefferson.html+jefferson+priestly+unitarian&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Atheist! Infidel! Jacobin! Jefferson's political enemies were crucifying
him. It was the fall of 1799 and Vice President Jefferson was running for
President of the United States of America. One of his greatest political
opponents, the Federalist Alexander Hamilton, had set the tone of the
campaign by using the epithet "atheist", among others, to label their great
antagonist, Thomas Jefferson.

One outraged cleric issued The Voice of Warning to Christians, on the
ensuing election of a President of the United States. He cried

"This election is not a choice between individuals or policy, but is
infintely more, of national regard or disregard to the religion of Jesus
Chris. Will the people choose Jefferson, a confirmed infidel? Read in his
infamous publicatin Notes on Virginia, of his disbelief in the Deluge, in
his disbelief in the story of Adam and Eve, and of his statement that 'It
does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are twenty Gods or no God.'
Christians, if you value eternity, vote against this infidel! By voting for
him, you will do more to destroy the Gospel of Jesus Christ than the rest of
the whole fraternity of infidels with all their arts, their industry, and
their intrigues."
Another minister wrote, "I do not believe that the Most High will permit a
howling atheist to site at the head of this nation."

A newspaper, the New England Palladium, was even worse. It thundered

"Should the infidel Jefferson be elected to the Presidency, the seal of
death will be on our holy religion, our churches will be prostrated, and
some infamous prostitute, under the title of the Goddess of Resaon, will
preside in our sanctuaries, which are now devoted to worship of our Most
High."

Joyce

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and
some infamous prostitute, under the title of the Goddess of Resaon, will
preside in our sanctuaries, which are now devoted to worship of our Most
High."

And some one will require her to wear a drape so that her breasts are
covered.
~Elissa Cleaveland
"It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction
have
not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry." A. Einstein