“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
So what “cult” did Thomas Jefferson belong to?
Van der Kamp was a Dutch Patriot and friend of Jefferson who immigrated to the U.S. after being kicked out of his Dutch homeland.
People who would assert that Jefferson was a Christian in the sense they mean it probably refer to this – ignoring his description of much of the New Testament:
4. Hence the doctrines he [Jesus] really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.
5. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatizing followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught, by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an impostor.
Upon his syllabus being published against his explicit wishes (because he feared people would misuse what he was saying on purpose), he becomes more clear when backed into a corner:
But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in its true and high light, as no impostor Himself, but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with Him in all His doctrines.
[…]
I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of His doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart.
Coryphaeus is the leader of the chorus in a Greek dramas, or more generally the leader of a cult (I had to look it up…)
So with what he is explicitly saying he rejects as “corruptions of the doctrines of Jesus” are:
Romans, 1st & 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colliosians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus and Philemon.
Note that he uses the plural for followers – not only Paul.
The “Jefferson Bible” which is the excised New Testament put together by Jefferson has no virgin birth, no Trinity, no Holy Spirit, no Angels, no claim that Jesus is Divine or the Messiah, and ends at the stone being rolled over the tomb where Jesus was buried. There is no Resurrection, no Redemption, no foregiveness of Sins from the Blood of Jesus.
Is he out of the official Christian club yet?
Was he ever in it? Everything I’ve ever seen described him as a deist (he believed in a “Creator” as per the Declaration of Independence), but never a Christian. He admired Jesus as a man and a philosopher but little else.
Based on the polls here (which are more a reflection of “right wing” radio than the population in general), there are a lot of beliefs that have little or no connection to reality, and unfortunately they are growing in popularity – which is entirely predictable during a period of uncertainty and fear. Glenn Beck is trying to ride that populist wave (or become its leader).
“In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.” Desiderius Erasmus
I hope after his week of vacation, he changes the subject and stops patting himself on the back about the 8/28 rally and taking the country back to its religious roots, etc…. and spends a little time on North Korea, the “end” of the war in Iraq, the situation with Iran, the War in Afghanistan, Energy Policy (should we be building more nuclear power plants?), Obama’s plan to impose a two state solution on Israel/Palestine, the unemployment rate, the effects of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, how the coountry will cope with 20%+ increases in health care premiums, what a “Lame Duck” Congress might do, who is really behind the Tea Party?, what is the Replican Party’s “plan” if they do win control of both houses – you know… substancial stuff about current events. I wonder what Jesus would say about capital gains tax rates and collateralized mortgage obligation defaults?