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To: AnalogReigns
The remake of the Arian heresy you mention in liberal Protestant denomintions was orginally almost entirely an import from Europe--Germany leading the way. I find it fascinating that a virtually dead German liberal church was the soil from which Nazism grew....

not so.

You'll want some time to look at the "Jefferson Bible"

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/

Jefferson basically took the bible while in the white house and knocked out anything that seemed intemperate or that suggested that Jesus was divine.

Jefferson's Bible is not the product of some wild youthful speculations, or old age rantings. Rather, he worked on it while in the White House. And in 1803, President Jefferson wrote to his close friend about his views on Christianity. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia was a signer of both Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and was also a close mutual friend of John Adams. Jefferson wrote to Rush:

"In some of the delightful conversations with you in the evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an anodyne to the afflictions of the crisis through which our country was then laboring, the Christian religion was sometimes our topic; and I then promised you that one day or other I would give you my views of it. They are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. 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 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."

notice the last six words?

Jefferson believed that Jesus was fully man...but not a bit God incarnate.
12 posted on 07/08/2002 10:31:28 AM PDT by ckilmer
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To: ckilmer
Jefferson was indeed heretical. So what? He didn't found a religious denomination either.

Other cults grew up in the 1830s on (Mormonism and JW's for example) still I don't see any connection to the American War of Independence--unless you'd prefer having the (then) European style state church--with suppression of all other religions.
19 posted on 07/08/2002 11:07:18 AM PDT by AnalogReigns
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