“Why all these pains, and what need of sureties? There is a short and easy way to settle the whole business. Let Mr. Jefferson only set his name to the first part of the apostles’ creed. ‘I believe in God, the Father almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. And Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord.’ Can… the people to whom Christ is precious, require and expect less?” – Rev. William Linn [1]
The mischaracterization of both America’s founding principles, and the men that erected our system of governance, has reached epidemic proportions over the past ten years. The volume of fake and distorted quotations, falsely attributed to our founding framers, being circulated online is truly surreal. Things have gotten so bad, that it’s often hard to find a legitimate and in-context quotation. If you see a quote on FaceBook, you can almost guarantee that it’s not correct.
The primary motivating force behind this historical fabrication epidemic is what is known as Christian Nationalism, i.e., a political movement that seeks to create an American theocracy. The Christian Nationalism movement maintains that the American Constitution is a religious document based upon biblical law, and that Christianity was afforded a special place in the Constitution, granting special power under law – in other words, an oppressive religious state.
Leading the charge in this pseudo-historical crusade, is a man named David Barton. Barton has gained substantial influence as a “historian” among the religious base of the GOP, largely due to the stamp of legitimacy bestowed upon him by FOX News and Glenn Beck. Barton appears on FOX News regularly, and serves as the official “historian” at the Glenn Beck “university.” Outside of this theocon circle, Barton is recognized as the total fraud that he is. His dis-accreditations are too numerous to mention.
David Barton has recently published a new book that’s sure to please his Tea Party followers. This latest work of historical fiction attempts to paint Thomas Jefferson as a devoutly Christian man, who actually rejected Enlightenment principles and thinkers. The title of Barton’s book is truly Orwellian: “The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson.” Unfortunately for the unsuspecting American population, this book literally lives up to the first half of its title: this book is indeed a lie, and is an attempt to spread mythology rather than “exposing” any mythology. To see a piece of propaganda like this become a New York Times bestseller, is truly frightening.
This current rendition of the “Jefferson as Christian” myth is not even original to Barton. The late Dr. James Kennedy propagated this tale long before Barton. However, Barton has gone to much greater lengths in constructing his historical scaffolding than Dr. Kennedy ever dreamed possible.
Attempting to deconstruct the edifice erected by master propagandists such as Barton, is no small task. The entire scaffolding is specifically designed to collapse in upon anyone who so much as attempts to pull even one single pin, thus impeding any attempt at serious inquiry. In serious scholarship, citations are used to further illuminate the path of knowledge, but in the hands of a master propagandist like Barton, they are used as tools of deception, specifically designed to bring darkness. Following Barton’s citations is like running through a forest on a moonless night, without a flashlight.
Rather than falling into Baron’s trap by attempting to untangle the snaggle he so painstakingly constructs, (under the guise of “raising academic standards”) I’ll simply make my own case from the ground up, and leave it to the Christian Nationalists to prove any errors in my argument. I’ll use a Christian religious test that is cited in one of Barton’s early books, The Myth of Separation. According to Barton, all our founders could have passed the following test with flying colors.
Religious Test
It’s hard to imagine anyone seriously espousing the idea that our founders intended for only Christians to hold public office. However, one can clearly see this in the recent efforts by some conservatives, such as Herman Cain, to exclude Muslims from holding political office. These politicians use Barton’s theories as moral justification to push their Christian Nationalistic agenda.
In one of his early books, The Myth of Separation, pseudo-historian David Barton puts forth the idea that the vast majority of our founders subscribed to the general tenants of Christianity. As evidence in support of this theory, Barton cites a religious test found in the Delaware Constitution. Barton claims that the founders would all have been required to pass a similar religious test in order to serve as delegates during the Federal Convention of 1787, and were all therefore, Christians. According to Barton, not only were our founders devout Christians, they also intended for everyone else to be Christian as well – if they wanted to hold any public office.
Here are two oaths of office Barton uses as examples. He claims that founders such as Thomas Jefferson could have honestly sworn to these oaths with a clean conscience:
“I___, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.” [2]
Here’s another religious oath Barton uses from Article 22 of the Delaware Constitution:
“Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust…shall…make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: ‘I,—, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.” [3]
I think that it is fair to say that the points in these religious tests are most lenient in their requirements. These are general profession of faith in the trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the divine authorship of the Bible. It says nothing in specific concerning the virgin birth, death, nor resurrection of Christ. It says nothing of having to subscribe to Christ having calmed the seas, changed water into wine, nor having fed multitudes with a few crumbs of bread and two fish. If it is true that Thomas Jefferson was a Christian, as theocons like David Barton maintain, with the volumes of written records Jefferson left behind, it should require little effort getting Jefferson to pass.
Election of 1800: What Others Said
I’ll begin my argument by using charges of infidelity, and even atheism, that were made against Jefferson during his own time. Accusation of Jefferson’s hostility toward religion abounded. The Reverend William Linn, who I quoted at the beginning of this essay, was one of Jefferson’s harshest critics. Linn was a Dutch Reformed minister from New York who served as a chaplain in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. In 1789 he was elected the first Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, and was also the second President of Queen’s College (now Rutgers University).
During the 1800 election against John Adams, William Linn was one of several adversaries to Jefferson’s election who based their opposition upon Jefferson’s religious beliefs – or, lack thereof. Along with other political pamphlets, such as John Mason’s The Voice of Warning to Christians on the Ensuing Election of a President of the United States, Linn published a scathing indictment against Jefferson titled, Serious Considerations.
In Serious Considerations, Linn makes the case that Jefferson could not “put his name” to even the most basic of Christian dogmas, and that he could show Jefferson’s “disrespect of divine revelation” by using “Mr. Jefferson’s own writings.” Among Linn’s list of indictments are Jefferson’s rejection of the flood myth found in Genesis, his rejection of young-earth creationism, and his opposition to teaching the bible at school. The charge we will use for our study pertains to the separation of church and state as well as right to conscience.
Linn claimed that Jefferson once stated, in a conversation with a “gentleman of distinguished talents and services” concerning the necessity of religion in government, that Jefferson “differed widely from him” and that Jefferson “wished to see a government in which no religious opinions were held.” Linn further charged that Jefferson’s secular government would be a nation of Atheists. [4]
Linn used sections from Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia to make his case. Linn quoted Jefferson’s famous passage concerning religious requirements in civil government: “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Jefferson rejected religious tests as being required to hold public office, and the famous quote above is in reference to a 1705 Virginia Act of Assembly that stated: “if a person brought up in the Christian religion denies the being of God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are more Gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military.” [5]
Jefferson also made it clear that the way to resolve “religious disputes, is to take no notice of them.” Jefferson commented that “millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned” in the attempt to gain uniformity of Christian beliefs. The telling passage is where Jefferson places Christianity in with a “thousand different systems of religion” and that Christianity was just “one of that thousand.” [5]
Linn made a compelling case that would certainly disqualify Jefferson from holding office if Barton’s Christian religious test applied.
Contemporary Historical Accounts
Not only does David Barton’s account of history stand in striking contrast to what Jefferson’s adversaries had to say concerning his religious sentiments, it also contradicts the vast majority of modern historical narratives as well. Jon Meacham writes that, “Jefferson’s was among the most eloquent and forceful of the Founders on the fraught subjects of religion. Intellectually daring, Jefferson had little time for the intricacies of creeds, talk of miracles, and the familiar tenets of the faith that grew out of the life and, for believers, resurrection of Jesus. ‘I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know,’ Jefferson said.” [6]
Meacham summarizes the faith of men like Jefferson correctly, when he states that to our founders, “Jesus of Nazareth was a great moral teacher – even the greatest in all history – but he was not the Son of God; the Holy Trinity was seen as an invention of a corrupt church… The mind of man, not the mysteries of the church, was the center of faith.” [6]
Jefferson in His Own Words
In order to be considered among the ranks of the Christian faith, one must subscribe to the concept of the trinity. Catholicism, as well as all major Protestant denominations subscribe to the Holy Trinity. Jefferson however, did not embrace trinity theology:
“It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet the one is not three, and the three are not one: . . . But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore believe.” [7]
In the following letter to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, Jefferson explicitly refutes the doctrine of the trinity:
“…Platonizing Christians make more stir and noise about it. The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he [is] all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is everything, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin?” [8]
The most fundamental requirement to be considered a Christian is the subscription to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, something Jefferson explicitly said he did not believe:
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.” [9]
Here’s Jefferson’s expressing his thoughts concerning some of his Christian adversaries:
They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800
As I so often point out, religion was seen as a great threat to liberty, according to many of our founders who were of a more Enlightenment mindset. Here’s Jefferson on religious fundamentalism and free government:
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813
Jefferson had many problems with Christianity and the Bible, as can be seen in this letter to John Adams. Jefferson uses strong language:
The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814
By all accounts, from Jefferson’s adversaries during his own time who made note of his infidelity, to modern historians who overwhelmingly agree on Jefferson’s lack of Christian faith, to Jefferson’s own words; Barton’s historical narrative is obviously wrought with intellectual dishonesty, historical fabrications, and theocratic political motivations.
A few additional Jefferson quotes on religion for good measure:
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819
I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820
Citations:
[1] Linn, William, 1762-1808. Serious Considerations on the Election of a President: Addressed to the Citizens of the United States. New-York: Printed and sold by John Furman, at his blank, stamp, and stationary shop, opposite the City hall, 1800. Reproduced in the Microbook Library of American Civilization, fiche LAC 40066 (Chicago: Library Resources Inc., 1971).
[2] David Barton, The Myth of Separation, p.33
[3] David Barton, The Myth of Separation, p.23
[4] Serious Considerations on the Election of a President Addressed to the Citizens of the United States, Rev. Wm. Linn
[5] Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Penguin Classic, p. 164-166
[6 ] Jon Meacham, American Gospel, 2006, Random House, p.3-8
[7] The Adams Jefferson Letters, Edited by Lester J. Cappon, p.368
[8] A UNITARIAN CREED To Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse Monticello, June 26, 1822 Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826. Letters Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library
[9] Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823