-- -- Thomas Jefferson, to Moses Robinson, 1801, ME 10:237
The Literary World, Volume 21:
http://tinyurl.com/mmv34uq
"... 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 never claimed any other.... And in confiding it [an enclosed syllabus] to you, I know it will not be exposed to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new misrepresentations and calumnies. I am moreover averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed...."
"April 21, 1803 letter to Doctor Benjamin Rush". The Writings of Thomas Jefferson X (The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association). p. 379. Retrieved 2009-05-23.
However, does this make him a Christian by saying that?
We should probably include all relevant quotes from Jefferson concerning the nation and religion.
From wikipedia (which provides the sources)
"Opposed to Calvinism, Trinitarianism, and what he identified as Platonic elements in Christianity, in private letters Jefferson variously refers to himself as...."
"Christian" (1803)
http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff10.txt
"a sect by myself" (1819)
http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff15.txt
===
an "Epicurean" (1819)
http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff15.txt
Hmmm, another Ism.
I talked about Isms, here:
What's my problem with Conservatism? Part 02
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/08/whats-my-problem-with-conservatism-part_9.html
Since Jefferson claimed this, we should probably take a peak at it.
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention.
Following Aristippus—about whom very little is known—Epicurus believed that what he called "pleasure" is the greatest good, but the way to attain such pleasure is to live modestly and to gain knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires. This led one to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear, as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia). The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure to be the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from "hedonism" as it is commonly understood.
Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism, though later it became the main opponent of Stoicism. Epicurus and his followers shunned politics. After the death of Epicurus, his school was headed by Hermarchus; later many Epicurean societies flourished in the Late Hellenistic era and during the Roman era (such as those in Antiochia, Alexandria, Rhodes, and Ercolano). Its best-known Roman proponent was the poet Lucretius. By the end of the Roman Empire, being opposed by philosophies (mainly Neo-Platonism) that were now in the ascendance, Epicureanism had all but died out, and would be resurrected in the 17th century by the atomist Pierre Gassendi, who adapted it to the Christian doctrine.
more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism
===
a "materialist" (1820)
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28ws03101%29%29
and a "Unitarian by myself" (1825).
http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu01679.xml;query=;
more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_religion
Jefferson quotes here:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law."
Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, p. 459.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_cooper.html
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/800
The Jefferson Qur'an
http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/Public/focus/essay1009_jefferson.html
Jefferson's Quran
What the founder really thought about Islam.
By Christopher Hitchens
It was quite witty of Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., to short-circuit the hostility of those who criticized him for taking his oath on the Quran and to ask the Library of Congress for the loan of Thomas Jefferson's copy of that holy book. But the irony of this, which certainly made his stupid Christian fundamentalist critics look even stupider, ought to be partly at his own expense as well.
In the first place, concern over Ellison's political and religious background has little to do with his formal adherence to Islam. In his student days and subsequently, he was a supporter of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, a racist and crackpot cult organization that is in schism with the Muslim faith and even with the Sunni orthodoxy now preached by the son of the NOI's popularizer Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan's sect explicitly describes a large part of the human species—the so-called white part—as an invention of the devil and has issued tirades against the Jews that exceed what even the most fanatical Islamists have said. Farrakhan himself has boasted of the "punishment" meted out to Malcolm X by armed gangsters of the NOI (see the brilliant documentary Brother Minister: The Assassination of Malcolm X, which catches him in the act of doing this). If Ellison now wants to use his faith to justify an appeal to pluralism and inclusiveness and diversity, he needs to repudiate the Nation of Islam, and in much more unambivalent terms than any I have yet heard from him.
As to the invocation of Jefferson, we know that when he and James Madison first proposed the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom (the frame and basis of the later First Amendment to the Constitution) in 1779, the preamble began, "Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free." Patrick Henry and other devout Christians attempted to substitute the words "Jesus Christ" for "Almighty God" in this opening passage and were overwhelmingly voted down. This vote was interpreted by Jefferson to mean that Virginia's representatives wanted the law "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." Quite right, too, and so far so good, even if the term Mahomedan would not be used today, and even if Jefferson's own private sympathies were with the last named in that list.
A few years later, in 1786, the new United States found that it was having to deal very directly with the tenets of the Muslim religion. The Barbary states of North Africa (or, if you prefer, the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, plus Morocco) were using the ports of today's Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia to wage a war of piracy and enslavement against all shipping that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. Thousands of vessels were taken, and more than a million Europeans and Americans sold into slavery. The fledgling United States of America was in an especially difficult position, having forfeited the protection of the British Royal Navy. Under this pressure, Congress gave assent to the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by Jefferson's friend Joel Barlow, which stated roundly that "the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen." This has often been taken as a secular affirmation, which it probably was, but the difficulty for secularists is that it also attempted to buy off the Muslim pirates by the payment of tribute. That this might not be so easy was discovered by Jefferson and John Adams when they went to call on Tripoli's envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked him by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress:
"The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise."
more here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2007/01/jeffersons_quran.html
====================================
First Muslim in Congress to use historic Quran
Thomas Jefferson's copy of Muslim book to be used in unofficial swearing-in
updated 1/3/2007 8:23:38 PM ET
CHICAGO — The first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, attacked for planning to use the Quran at his swearing-in instead of a Bible, will use a copy of the Muslim holy book once owned by Thomas Jefferson, an official said on Wednesday.
Representative-elect Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, requested the 18th century copy of the Quran for the unofficial part of his swearing in on Thursday, according to Mark Dimunation, chief of rare books and special collections at the Library of Congress in Washington.
Ellison, a Muslim convert who traces his U.S. ancestry to 1741, wanted a special copy of the book to use, Dimunation said, and approached the library for one.
The third U.S. president, serving from 1801 to 1809, Jefferson was a collector with wide-ranging interests. His 6,000-volume library, the largest in North America at the time, became the basis for the Library of Congress.
more here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16455298/ns/politics/t/first-muslim-congress-use-historic-quran/#.U-Z6567Lfs0
=================================================
So, was Thomas Jefferson a Christian?
I think he had chosen one too many Isms to ever be one.
This is the criteria I use for identifying Christians:
Matthew 6:24
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Acts 5:32
And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.
I Corinthians 5:8
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Joshua 24:14
Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD.
Isaiah 8:20
To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
If just saying "I'm a Christian" makes one a Christian, then every President has been Christian, because they've all claimed to be one.
This includes this nations current President.
But we know all know he's not, why?
It's not multiple choice, law and testimony, sincerity and truth.
Not one without the other.
So, it does not matter if one Founding Father said he was Christian.
Just as it did not matter what my intent was before being Converted to The Truth.
What matters is what he did, and what Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers said is on the record.
I mean really.
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