Religious Views of Thomas Jefferson - Was He An Atheist?

Most Americans know very little, and many have serious misconceptions about the religious views our third President,Thomas Jefferson, the Sage of Monticello. Jefferson was often denounced during his life as a blatant atheist. He rejected many things found in the bible, eventually creating his own now known as The Jefferson Bible.

Thomas Jefferson was often accused of being an infidel. If the word infidel is taken in its usual meaning, the charge was unjust; but, if we take the alternate definition of infidel'— "one who rejects the doctrines of Christianity usually held in the so-called orthodox churches"—then Thomas Jefferson was an infidel.

Thomas Jefferson was a deist who believed in a creator of all things. In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson wrote the phrases "endowed by their Creator" and "nature's God". All through his correspondence, Jefferson used such phrases as "merciful Providence", "a benevolent Creator".

Was Thomas Jefferson An Episcopalian?

Thomas Jefferson is sometimes claimed to have been an Episcopalian. Although Jefferson sometimes attended the Episcopal church, he was anything but an Episcopalian. Consider the following doctrines held by the Episcopalians and Jefferson’s own views.

First: Jesus Christ is a "very God of very God, being of one substance with the Father." Jefferson constantly asserts that Christ was not divine and never claimed to be divine; that he was a great philosopher, a great moral teacher, the author of the most perfect system of moral philosophy ever devised by man, greater than Epictetus, Seneca, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and other philosophical teachers.

Second: Jesus Christ was "incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary"; that he was born without human generation.. On this subject Jefferson says, in a letter to John Adams that the day will come when the account of the birth of Christ as accepted in the Trinitarian churches will be classed with the fable of Minerva springing from the brain of Jupiter.

Third: The third day "Christ rose again, according to the scriptures", and on this doctrine of the resurrection she stakes her whole existence. This same doctrine Jefferson utterly rejects, believing that Christ died like any other philosopher— as a man and not as a God. He speaks of Christ frequently in such terms as "this great reformer", "this first of human sages", "the benevolent and sublime reformer of the Jewish religion", "the benevolent moralist", occasionally using the conventional term "our Savior", but never referring to Christ as the divine Savior of mankind. He speaks of Him as a great moralist but immature and undeveloped, and subject to serious limitations as a religious teacher.

In a letter to William Short in 1817, Jefferson, spoke of "artificial systems invented by ultra-Christian sects", "doctrines added to the teachings of Christ without any authority from Him", and rejects the following: "the immaculate conception [of Christ], his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of hierarchy."

Thomas Jefferson's view of the supposed miraculous birth of Christ was mentioned above, quoting the comparison with the myth of Minerva. As to the deification of Christ, Jefferson says he never claimed to be divine. In a letter to Benjamin Rush in 1803, he says: "I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished anyone 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."

Thomas Jefferson regarded Christ as the greatest of moral philosophers. He characterized "the moral precepts of Jesus" as more pure, correct, and sublime than those of the ancient philosophers. "They extended their cares scarcely beyond our kindred and friends individually

Was Thomas Jefferson A Unitarian?

The foremost Unitarian of Jefferson's day was the Reverend William Ellery Channing. His sermons contain an epitome of the Unitarian doctrine. He spoke continually of "one God", the "Universal Parent", the "Universal Father", "one Supreme God", indivisible. So far his teachings run parallel with the opinions of Jefferson.

Christ, said Channing, is the "greatest of the sons of God", but not God. He works miracles, but nowhere claims to be divine. "Trinity" is a man-made doctrine, without any warrant in scripture. Christ is "the conqueror of death", "the heir of immortality", "the divine messenger", gone before us into heaven. He always speaks of Christ in terms of reverence, of love, and of worship, yielding Him all honor and glory, but not admitting that He is a member of the Godhead.

Channing believed firmly in miracles and in immortality, emphasizing the resurrection of Christ. The whole Bible he regards as God's revelation to man. He believed firmly in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and accepted the biblical account of the miracles wrought by Christ and his apostles. He and other prominent Unitarians' believed in the utter sincerity of the apostles.

Thomas Jefferson did not believe in miracles, in inspiration or in revelation. He regarded the apostles not only as not infallible but as ignorant and fallible men, liable to serious error. "The teachings of Christ," he wrote, "have come down to us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible." “The apostles and evangelists make the most puerile and erroneous statements as to Christ and his work. They wrote from memory long after they had heard Him declare His doctrines; much was forgotten, much misunderstood, much presented in very paradoxical form”.

Jefferson rejects everything miraculous. “All the parts of the Bible in which miracles are recounted were written by enthusiasts, dupes, and impostors, who added to the record things which Christ never said or dreamed of”.

So What Was Thomas Jefferson? – “A Real Christian”

Jefferson was a deist, he believed in one God, undivided, indivisible. But Jefferson despised sectarianism, ministers, ecclesiasts, and ecclesiasticism. "Reason is our only guide." He believed that the ministers of religion, the "priests", as he called them, were principally concerned with "the loaves and fishes". The Bible, as used in the churches, was a tissue of impostures devised for the subjugation of the human mind and for priestly aggrandizement. A new Bible, purged of all superhuman elements, is sorely needed, and he urged some friends to edit such a volume, when none did he edited his own version now known as the Jefferson Bible.

"I am a real Christian," Jefferson said,—"that is to say, a disciple of the doctrine of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw."

Thomas Jefferson spoke also of "the weakness of Jesus." "The doctrines which he really delivered were defective as a whole." "It is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines." "Christ," he goes on to say, "fought his enemies with their own weakness: evasion, subterfuge and cunning." In a letter to William Short, Jefferson said: "There are, I acknowledge, passages not free from objection which we may with probability ascribe to Jesus himself; but claiming indulgence from the circumstances under which he acted The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation is ever dangerous. Jesus had to walk over the perilous confines of reason and religion ; and a step to right or left might place him, within the grasp of the priests of the superstitions, a blood-thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law. He was justifiable, therefore, in some deception.”

Jefferson believed that Christianity has been corrupted by the early church. …”(N)or indeed do I know exactly in what age of the Christian church the heresy of spiritualism was introduced." Writing to John Adams, Jefferson says: "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. . . . At what age of the Christian church this heresy of arunaterialistn, or masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it.”

Jefferson was a deist and a rationalist, believing in natural religion and rejecting inspiration and revelation. "Reason is our only guide." "We are accountable to God alone for our religious views." The apostles, he says, “made the most puerile and erroneous statements as to Jesus and his work Shortly after His death, His followers corrupted His pure moral precepts into an engine for enslaving mankind and aggrandizing priesthood and priestcraft. His system of morals, though the purest ever given to man, was adulterated and sophisticated into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves, denouncing as infidels all who were not able to swallow their impious heresies. The teachings of Christ have come down to us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible." -

The following statements seem to accurately encapsulate the rational thinking of Thomas Jefferson, one of our greatest Presidents.

A Profession of Faith

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-workers happy.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and mo-nopolize power and profit.

He takes up the trade of priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury.

This might have been written by Jefferson, but was in fact written by another of the great American revolutionaries, Thomas Paine.