Faith of our Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson

Many years ago, I stood behind a church pew and argued with a college student who was the son of a Reformed Presbyterian minister. My family had just attended the Sunday evening service at his father's Pennsylvania church. Decades earlier, the building had belonged to a Christian & Missionary Alliance congregation. It was where my parents had been baptized as adults, where they were invited to sing cantatas with the choir, and where I was dedicated to the Christian God by a Pastor Raymond Dibble. We were in town to revisit those memories, but I was more fascinated by this Presbyterian church's songbook: a psalter that contained nothing but metrical psalms put to hymn tunes or chants.

I was also surprised to meet a young man close to my own age who had no aversion to conversation with a female. We stumbled onto the subject of American history, a favorite of mine. My fascination with the guy probably made me over-assertive. His studies had convinced him that Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian. At least not in the sense that his preacher-father would ever use that word. My home-education reading had led me to believe the opposite, and I was as stubborn as a bulldog. Not often did I have the opportunity to verbally wrestle with a handsome, intelligent young man! The intellectual contact made me as giddy as his wavy hair and Scottish last name did.

When my parents loaded us all back into the car to return to our hotel that night, my belief in our Christian founding fathers was still unswayed, though I did wonder how such such a cute Christian young man could defend such error so sincerely! I may even have been slightly jealous that he got to study such subjects in college.

My information had come largely from David Barton and ATI Wisdom Booklets. It was many more years before I realized the difference between real historians and David Barton. My definition of "Christian" has also undergone multiple revisions since that time. And now I understand what that pastor's kid was trying to explain to my much younger, naive but inquisitive and ever-searching self.

Thomas Jefferson

(Source: Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia at Monticello.org)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. (Letter to Peter Carr, 1787)

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one 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. (Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1803)

In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to them. . . . We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the Amphibologisms into which they have been led by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging, the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. (Letter to John Adams, 1813)

I must ever believe that religion substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. (Letter to Miles King, 1814)

But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems,* invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.
* e. g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, 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, &c.
(Letter to William Short, 1819)

No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances towards rational Christianity. When we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus, when, in short, we shall have unlearned every thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples: and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian. I know that the case you cite, of Dr Drake, has been a common one. the religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor. (Letter to Timothy Pickering, 1821)

The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the 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. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors. (Letter to John Adams, 1823)

Strange Stories of the Bible: Elisha

The Double Portion and The Two Bears

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”

“Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied.

“You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.”

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two.

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 

He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.

2 Kings 2:9-12,23-25

Elisha Arouses a Dead Boy

When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm. Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out on him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite.” And he did. When she came, he said, “Take your son.” She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.

2 Kings 4:32-37 

Elisha's Potent Bones

Elisha died and was buried.
Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.

2 Kings 13:20 

Fantasy, Faith, Fraud

I read incessantly. I have been reading incessantly since I learned how before I went to kindergarten. Throughout the 1980's, I scoured my parents' bookshelves for anything I could figure out; history, nursing manuals, theology - it didn't matter. Library trips were never frequent enough for me, so I often read the same books again and again.

My favorites were the inspirational little paperbacks from publishing houses like Baker or Zondervan or Whitaker House or, even further back, Logos or Creation House. They were easy to hold, very portable, handy to stash in the bathroom cabinet or under the couch for later, and often contained exciting first person narratives of escape from Nazis, torture by atheist Communists, or Bible-smuggling behind the Iron Curtain. Some were agonizing accounts of crippling accidents, drug addiction, brain damage, and poverty. Every one of them included miracles. Kathryn Kuhlman's miracle stories were good, Smith Wigglesworth was memorable, and I pondered Corrie ten Boom's vitamin bottle for decades, but Mel Tari was the miracle winner, hands down.

Momma didn't allow fantasy on our bookshelves, but Mel Tari made the Indonesian island of East Timor every bit as thrilling as Narnia or The Wizard of Oz could have been. Never mind the sick getting well. Like a Mighty Wind and its sequel, The Gentle Breeze of Jesus, had water springing out of dry ground, fruit appearing on trees, singing angels, broken bread growing back in a woman's hand, God showing movies on the clouds to weary itinerant preachers, a dead eye regrowing to match the seeing one, water turning to [non-alcoholic] wine, invisible umbrellas, non-consuming flames, corpses returning to life, shamans cutting their hair short (sure proof of God's power in the 70's!), and much, much more.

Oh, yeah. Aslan had nothing on the teenage Tari's God. It was like the book of Acts in Technicolor. Acts was my favorite Bible book, after all, but these events took place just a decade before I was born! Over time, I did wonder if Tari had exaggerated just a bit and I quit reading his books in favor of more staid Christian literature, especially stories of perseverance in the face of suffering that wasn't miraculously abated.

Twenty years later, when I was trying to shore up my faith in God and his powers to reverse nature, I remembered Mel Tari. Looking back at his stories after a few foreign trips myself, they seemed oddly "westernized" for 1960's Indonesia, but perhaps that was the fault of translation. Surely if Tari was genuine, he would have caught attention since. What had he been up to since his books became so popular?

So I googled Mel Tari. And what should turn up but a conviction for fraud in 1994. Nice. Shareholder in an American resort? Maybe my childhood hero was just another con-man who could spin an ear-catching yarn to eager Christian publishing houses in the 1970's and 80's. Like Jack Chick's buddy, John Todd. Like Mike Warnke, "ex-Satanist High Priest". Like Rebecca Brown, a mentally disturbed doctor who had her medical license revoked. And like Crying Wind, whose claims were investigated by Moody Press 20 years after they published her "testimony".

On a hunch, I looked up Cliff Dudley, Mel Tari's co-author who suggested publishing the tales in the first place. Turns out Dudley (now deceased) also co-authored Tammy Faye Bakker's I Gotta Be Me and Run to the Roar. In 1978, he co-authored the volume Choose Life or Death: The Reams Biological Theory of Ionization with Carey Reams, (an agronomist who promoted treating cancer with fasting and lemon juice, and had been convicted of practicing medicine without a license). And with Sidney Custodio, there was Love-Hungry Priest. (Custodio's name now shows up on lists of sexual abuse allegations against priests in California.)

Honestly, I really don't care if God had a celestial movie projector on an island north of Australia before VHS tapes. Angelic singing? Josh Groban's voice is beauty enough for me. And as handy as regenerative bread may be, it seems it is not available in stores. Or to malnourished African children. Now if there was a God who was able to keep his followers from falling, that would be nice. Able to keep them from abusing kids, lying to their fans, scaring people senseless, and taking money that was meant to help the needy. All in God's name, of course.

Mel, of course, stands by his story. He's still out there preaching and praying in Jesus' name, alongside claims that he's walked on water. And, hey, if silver jewelry is turning to gold at Mel Tari's evangelistic healing meetings, maybe I really am missing out.

On Making Distinctions

How pleasant it is not to believe. To be unconcerned with doctrinal purity or heresy, with whether someone is a minister of the gospel or an antichrist, with what the scriptures mean or meant, with who has been born twice or how that even happens. I spent decades inquiring of everyone, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” It is a relief to step outside that world. To peruse blogs and no longer care about issues that once seemed so crucial. Like becoming "colorblind" after a lifetime of racial distinctions, the differences between Mormon and Catholic, Sikh and Pentecostal and Muslim are inconsequential, after all. 

***************

I weeded my flowerbeds yesterday. It did me a world of good! Tugging at obstinate grass, wresting roots from the earth, reclaiming resources for the plants I prefer, opposing nature, thwarting evolution, interrupting the life principle, exerting my will on my little piece of the planet.

Afterwards, I found myself less irked by all those friends who were giving God credit on Facebook for miracles of healing—“miracles” involving helicopter pilots, pharmaceuticals, long hospital stays, chemotherapy, NICU’s, radiation, doctors who invested many years and tens of thousands of dollars in scientific education.  Prayer could not have produced such “miracles” in the middle ages, or even a hundred years ago. These wonders come to us, in developed countries only, after centuries of human curiosity, imagination, persistence, failure, and many, many dead people. Glory be!