I agree with your first paragraph. It’s thoughtful and accurate. Unitarianism is closer to what Jefferson was. He was a wandering searcher and definitely not an orthodox Christian in any way. He had Deist trappings for sure and you’re right that it was Enlightenment mumbo-jumbo and more Unitarian as a label. Fine point. I’m just trying to say that he was not the card-carrying Christian Beck likes to paint him along with the rest.
I resent your second paragraph and find it insulting and personal. I never attack you personally, amencorner. I don’t know you well enough to do so. We’re both Christians and I assume the best about you to be a man of faith, of God, and a sincere conservative. I have no reason to believe you a fool. You apparently think otherwise of me and I don’t appreciate it. I’m not involved in some hair-brained attempt to de-Christianize anybody. As a teacher I look at things from a standpoint of trying to call the facts as I historically see them. Jefferson was a unitarian-style deist and not an orthodox Christian. I see that in his writings, his words, his letters, his attitudes, and in his decisions. Do you seriously think I WANT him to be un-Christian? Why? What good what that do and what comfort would it give me as a believer myself? My entire life was spent mostly as a Catholic and for a while as a conservative Anglican. Never at any point in my life have I been agnostic, atheistic, or anti-Christian? I’m a pro-life, pro-Church, pro-traditional marriage, Eucharist-loving Christian and have absolutely no reason to wish or hope that anyone on this earth is non-Christian?
If I see Jefferson as a Unitarian-type, as you say, deist with some real bizarre theological views, does that mean I hate his message in government and his amazing accomplishments? I’m more Jeffersonian anyday than Hamiltonian! I love Jefferson’s works. He’s one of my favorite presidents of all time. And he had a belief in the freedom of religion, not “from” religion.
I can sit here and show you how Ben Franklin was a huge fan of Voltaire, Deism, and had public expressions of his doubts about his family’s puritan-Christian background. He rejected most of their theology and walked his own path. He expressed a lot of feelings akin to Jefferson BUT he was a huge fan of Cotton Mather. He was also a big fan of George Whitefield’s evangelical movement and yet didn’t believe in the Christology that Whitefield taught or the core evangelical principals of it, but he loved the good works and emphasis on walking the walk that Whitefield encouraged…social gospel. In Franklin’s autobiography we see constant references to his belief in “the deity” and he regularly referred to god’s “providence,” a theme in Jefferson’s works as well.
What I’m very disappointed in is your over-simplification of my posts. You seem to think that because I can call it like I see it, that a few of these FF’s were not orthodox Christians but rather more deistic and cynical about mainstream Christian views of their day, somehow you equate that to ME being anti-Christian and you seem to somehow think that I diminish their accomplishments, greatness, and that I think they were ANTI-religious? The FF’s were all about religious liberty. That’s my very point. They had wide-ranging, varying, hugely different beliefs about God that ranged from mainstream Episcopalianism to deism, Presbyterianism to Unitarianism, poorly-defined beliefs to deeply religious. But all of them agreed on the freedom to express any religion. That was their achievement, their greatness.
The fact that you have labelled me some idiotic “fellow traveler” or uninformed boob is deeply offensive.
And HOW DARE YOU accuse me of being full of joy when Mother Theresa’s revelations came out about her doubts. How dare you! I lamented those revelations deeply! My wife and family talked at length about that and I found it disappointing and by no means edifying.
You should be ashamed of yourself for demonizing me and labelling someone you don’t even know. You have proven NOTHING to me in your posts. You accuse me of cherry picking when you haven’t given me jack squat to prove that Jefferson was the orthodox Christian you tried to paint him to be. With time you switched your position. You might do well to start actually giving some citations, some quotes, some meat in your arguments rather than quoting Glen Beck for a minute and drawing conclusions based on some blurb you heard on his show.
I’ve made my opinion clear about Obama but you’re too deeply entrenched in your tea party pamphlets to listen. I’ll cease my posts with you as well. It’s like banging one’s head against concrete…shame on you.
gurneyhalleck1,
That Jefferson was a questioner and searcher, we can agree. The quotes you’ve included to not address the point you are trying to make, nor the point that I am trying to make. Deism, in the colonies, was more along the lines of Unitarianism than Descartes’ mechanistic view of “god”.
The fact that you focus on the misinformation that started in the 1920’s, attempting to “de-christianize” the FF, means that you are either a “fellow traveler” or simply uninformed.
It is similar to the people who jumped with glee when Mother Terese’s faith struggles were published.
“Yay! Mother Teresa is an atheist!”
“Yay! Some of our founding father’s are not orthodox Christians!”
Ignoring so much of our history, and cherry picking quotes to deny that Christianity, and the denominational antagonism, was not the fundamental milieu from which this country was founded is complete revisionism.
But, as I suspect you are here to inject Obamaism into this forum, I’ll cease to post here.
