[xzins]

Franklin attended the sermons of George Whitefield, a Methodist evangelist whenever he found opportunity.

The “deism” practiced in Revolution era America was a “Judeo-Christian deism” as evidenced by Jefferson’s own translation of the bible.

In short, the deity in question was the Judeo-Christian Deity. It was not Molech of the MidEast, the Sun God of the Aztecs, or the sprites in trees of the animists.

[allmendream]

While there is no doubt that Thomas Jefferson believed in Jesus Christ as a human being and a philosopher, but he did not believe in his divinity, his virgin birth, or his miracles. Christianity without Spirituality is not Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson would think that the divinity of Christ was as mythical of Moloch or Quetzalcoatl or Dryads. As much as he admired the ‘philosophy’ of Christ, he was not a Christian save for by his OWN definition. I guess I should take him at his word that he is a Christian but one must also accept his other words, such as...

“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” Thomas Jefferson in the intro to the Jefferson Bible.

“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” Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams.