Thursday, July 10, 2008
Founders on God & Country: Thomas Jefferson
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?" --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia
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"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." TJ
"he day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." TJ
Jefferson was not an orthodox Christian. His writings on religion learn more to an impersonal god and the acceptance of Christian societal principles as a basis for how to treat one another.
Jefferson believed that the common people required the fear of God in order to keep them in check. However, he didn't seem to truly believe in God's wrath as being a real possibility.
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