The United States: A Deist Nation?

I know that I have written about this before but it continues to bother me. Every time that some right-wing christian wants to justify prayer in school or public display of the Ten Commandments they argue that the Founding Fathers were christians and that this is a christian country. They point to a mention of of "God" and "Creator" in The Declaration of Independence to support their assertion.

In fact, "God" is preceded by "Nature's" as in the "watchmaker" god of the deists. That is, a god who set down the laws of nature and set things in motion but then was hands-off. This is the god that Jefferson believed in not the God of the Baptists or Catholics or Anglicans.

In his letter of April 1803 to Doctor Benjamin Rush Jefferson states

I am a Christian, in the only sense [Jesus] wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other.

Jefferson also says that he is opposed to "the corruptions of Christianity" and in his attached Syllabus and later in a letter to William Short he disputes the divinity of Jesus.

While Jefferson believed in the teachings of Jesus he was not an admirer of christianity. He called Paul the "first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus" and believed that Jesus was "a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion" and places him in a line of philosophers such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus.

Jerry Falwell would have you believe that Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and others were christians but it is just not true. Jefferson's version of christianity would be closer to what Jesus taught than the version of "christianity" that Falwell teaches. Jesus taught forgiveness, philanthropy, peace, and kindness not hate and "with us or with the terrorists."

So the next time someone from the "christian" right tells you that the United States is a christian country founded by christians please point them to Jefferson's letters to Rush and Short. They can read Jefferson's own words and see that he says christianity "resulted from artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by [Jesus]." Those artificial systems include Jesus' miraculous powers, his deification, the Trinity, original sin, etc.