Thomas Jefferson...Deist?

I wrote this blog while visiting Virginia Beach. In the middle of town they have a memorial called Virginia Legends. As you walk the roughly one-hundred yards you can read plaques of famous people that were born in the state. It's a nice little walk but rather odd, for of the thirty-eight people honored they have diverse names such as Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson and Katie Couric. Thomas Jefferson, along with seven other presidents were represented.  As a sidebar, we met a nice older couple at the pool (and older than us is old) who were from Missouri. Just to keep the conversation going, I said "By the way, thanks for Rush Limbaugh." Wrong thing to say! The gentleman promised to protest Rush's recent nomination to the Missouri Hall of Fame. I was about to mention the Virginia Legends that honored a very diverse group but thought better of it. There's been a resurgence of interest in the Constitution since the days of Ronald Reagan and in the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson. A new round of biographers took up Jefferson's life and thus who he was is clearer today, in many ways, than it has ever been. The same can be said for George Washington and I reviewed and recommended a newer book about his religious beliefs in a November 11th, 2010 blog. That book is Sacred Fire , written by Peter A. Lillback. The book that I would like to recommend in this blog is titled The Jefferson Lies, Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson by historian, speaker and the founder of the Christian organization Wallbuilders. I've written about David Barton before in a July 11, 2009 blog. I like his writings and appreciate his work with the exception that he often displays the same minimalism on the topic of America as a Christian nation from its founding that he critiques in The Jefferson Lies. Was Jefferson a deist or an atheist? Did he father children of his slave Sally Hemings? Was he a racist? Did he found a secular university, the University of Virginia, to keep out God? Barton attempts to answer these and other questions. He looks first at what the accepted belief is and then examines the origin of these beliefs and the veracity of the truth claims. He adds an important chapter on the trends in political philosophy today that are intellectually corrupt yet dominate our campuses. Barton calls them "modern tools of historical malpractice" and every American interested in the future of our nation should at least be aware of them. They are those of Deconstruction, Poststructuralism, Modernism, Minimalism and Academic Collectivism. There is no new revelation here on why Americans so easily fall for the nonsense coming out of academia and the mainstream news media for these subjects have been tackled again and again by Christian authors but his summations are succinct and a valuable addition. There is plenty of new information on how the accepted beliefs came to be. I would really rather you read the book than give examples of this "malpractice" so I will focus here on the the help Barton has given us on who Thomas Jefferson really was. I had believed that Jefferson was "certainly" a deist but I now don't think that to be the case. Nothing in his life, his letters and his influence point to that. In fact he described himself as "a sect unto himself." Christianity has, from time to time, been plagued from within by some with a sincere but ignorant motive to return the church to the model of the primitive church in the days of the Apostles and shortly thereafter. There has been a resurgence of this even in recent times. These Christians seem not to be able to deal with the work that is involved in growing in the knowledge of their own faith. It's part of our fallen condition and will always be there. They erase all doctrine, good and bad, that they had received and attempt to go back to the simple life of the morality of Jesus. The result can be just a weak denomination with some fundamental errors (the thing that some rebelled against to begin with) or it can result in denominations with serious errors that deny aspects of the very gospel it proclaims to defend. It has also resulted in heretical sects or cults not started by Christians but egos that have found truth or heard directly from God and were instructed to found their own religion, oblivious to or rejecting the thousands of years of Christianity before it. A hotbed of the former, disoriented Christians, originated in Charlottesville, Virgina, near Jefferson's home, in the later period of his life. Thomas Jefferson was the ultimate Renaissance Man, a polymath whose intellect was fundamental in the founding of the United States of America but one whose same intellect kept him from the Gospel. He was driven by his code of honor. This fact, along with an accurate description of the DNA results concerning Sally Hemings children, and the character, or lack of it, of his main accuser, make it an absurd proposition that he fathered any of this young lady's children. Thomas Jefferson lived a long life and his opinions were radically altered a few times. Once, due the death of his beloved wife and again, later in life, as the Christian Primitivism movement established a base near his home. Jefferson's writings throughout his life are clear and forceful. He believed in the Bible but only in what his intellect would allow. There was no Jefferson Bible with the miracles cut out. What there was was writings gathered in book form of biblical concepts of interest to him, much like many books published today. His university was not established secular as we have been led to believe, rather the non-denominational emphasis was such that it is interpreted today as secularism. No, Thomas Jefferson was no deist, but he was  most definitely not a Christian either. Barton's strength has always been in digging beneath the accepted beliefs and constructs of the day to find original intent, the title of a previous book of his on the Constitution, but his weakness had been in defending Christian truth as it pertains to many of our Founders... but not so much in this most recent book. He acknowledges, sort of, Jefferson's errors in his faith and that is what I would ask of any Christian historian. That Jefferson was not a deist is important for he did not just acknowledge a divine source that then stepped away from his creation. That he was not a Christian is also important. It does not take away from his work, in fact it explains some of it and amplifies the extreme precision of his mind to a point that he could not see the forest for the trees.