I’ve always heard how our Founding Fathers were of a more deist persuasion rather than being a “real” Christian. Apparently, Jefferson went as far as to snip out the good parts and make his own “wee little book”, consisting of only 46 pages, that he entitled “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”.
Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Jefferson deemed this shortened version of the Bible as “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man”.
Friends dubbed it the Jefferson Bible. It remains perhaps the most comprehensive expression of what the nation’s third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence found ethically interesting about the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus.
The article concludes with a quote from the man himself:
“Say nothing of my religion,” Jefferson once said. “It is known to myself and my God alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.”
