alt.education

On Apr 2, 11:09 am, buckeye wrote:
> 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 variou=
s
> 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
> <> 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 tha=
t
> 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 Americahttp://members.tripod.com/~can=
dst/theocracy.htm
>
> American Theocrats - Past and Presenthttp://members.tripod.com/~candst/the=
ocrats.htm
>
> The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and Statehttp://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 =B7 Historical Reality SepChurch&Statehttp://groups.yahoo.com/gro=
up/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
> ****************************************************************

A simpler way of putting it was that Jefferson was probably a stone
agnostic, disliked the clergy so much that if a clergyman showed up in
a room with Jefferson, he would leave the room. If you read the law
on freedom of religion written by Jefferson as a law in Virginia, you
will see the real bitterness he held toward churches and the clergy.
I have read a few of his letters to his friends, and one to his son-in-
law blasting him for leaving the Virginia law in committee to long.
He was so proud of that law, it is included on his gravestone, along
with the Declaration and the founding of the University of Virginia.
At the least, he was a deist, as were most of the founders. They
would not share power with churches.
Regards, Ken Hogan