[email protected]

In a message dated 8/9/2002 6:49:24 PM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:


>
> > 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
>
>
Joyce, thanks for this.
I never knew this about Jefferson even though he is not one of my favorite
people.....

Kim


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