alt.education

Free Lunch wrote:

>:|Could you point to a reference about Jefferson's Christianity? I was
>:|under the impression that he was deist.


" You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as
far as I know. "
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819



Barclay, left the building again
Jul 27 2004, 8:23 pm
Newsgroups: alt.parenting.spanking, alt.parenting.solutions, misc.kids,
alt.activism.children, alt.education, misc.education,
alt.politics.usa.constitution
From: "R. Steve Walz"
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:23:56 GMT

from another post of mine

>buckeye-...@nospam.net wrote:

Some people like to toss labels around. For instance you hear people say
the founders were Christian. Some where, some were not, however, those
people fail to understand the differences that existed between the various
Christian denominations or sects and they fail to grasp the mistrust,
dislike and even fear that existed between the various Christian
denominations and sects.

Jefferson was raised within the framework of the Church of England, the
Anglican Church, which was the legally established church in Virginia.
At some point in his teen years or early adulthood he basically walked
away from that and it was at this time on his life that he probably could
be considered a deist.

However, th treatment Jefferson received by the New England Clergy in the
elections of 1800, Joseph Priestley and Benjamin Rush were all factors
that led Jefferson to re examine Christianity in the early 1800s.

This led to a changing in his thinking regarding Christianity. and led to
his writing one item and creating two others:

SYLLABUS:
In a letter to Dr. Rush, April 23, 1803, Jefferson outlines his views
on the comparative merits of Christianity in syllabus form, stimulated
by Dr. Priestley’s treatise of “Socrates and Jesus Compared.”:
[This was published in Europe in 1816 by Van der Kemp, with
Jefferson's permission.]

“. . . 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 in which he wished any one to be, sincerely attached to his
doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every
«human» excellence; and believing he claimed no other. . .”


The PHILOSOPHY, which Jefferson compiled in 1804 is not something
Jefferson actually wrote, but is 46 pages of sections that he cut out of
two Bibles and glued on blank pieces of paper.

This was in two columns per page and was not done in four languages.
Which Jefferson did give permission to van der Kemp to publish this as
well, neither van der Kemp, nor anyone else ever published it.
It still existed in 1826 but sometime between then and the 1850s the
original disappeared.

In 1983 Dickson W. Adams published a reconstructed version in his book
Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels [based on the historical data that
is available, most feel that the reconstruction, while not perfect,
perhaps, is probably pretty accurate.]

Sometime between 1816 and 1820, with the weight of evidence now pointing
to around the 1820 time period Jefferson compiled the MORALS. It was this
particular item that is known as the Jefferson Bible, and it was this that
was done in four languages, not the PHILOSOPHY.
Again, it was not omething Jefferson actually wrote, but instead was
clippings of passages from> Bibles, in English, Latin, Greek, and French.

But the above reflects a movement in his thinking in the direction of a
personal form of "Christianity" that he considered his own personal sect
or religion.

It might well of contained deistic thouight and Unitarian thought along
with primitive Christian thought. However, it was not deistic or
Unitarian, per se, and it sure wasn't orthodox Christian.

***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

***************************************************************
. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote

"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"

That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.

It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.

*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************