Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
February 8, 2004
Reading:
My reading for today is from a letter Thomas
Jefferson wrote to his nephew Peter Carr in 1787 who had asked for advice on
pursuing religion. Jefferson responded:
Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object
[religion]. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty
and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that
of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too
serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears and servile prejudices,
under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat,
and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even
the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the
homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. … Read the Bible as you would
Livy or Tacitus. … Examine upon what evidence [the writer’s] pretensions are
founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be
more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For
example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours.
… You are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that
a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should
not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and
should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, and that without a
second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth’s motion, or the
evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next
read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in
your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God,
born of a virgin, suspended and reversed the laws of nature at will, and
ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of
illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out with
pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for
sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law. …
Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of
its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find
incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise,
and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe
there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he
approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future
state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve
it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid
and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and
neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description
of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle
given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but
uprightness of the decision. …
Sermon:
Imagine that we are gathering
together today in worship two hundred years ago. The year is not 2004 but 1804.
Thomas Jefferson is in his fourth year as President, four years after barely
ousted John Adams from gaining a second four-year term. The election of 1800 was
bitter and full of vindictiveness, especially considering Thomas Jefferson
served as vice-president under Adams. (It was a different system back
then—whoever took the second most votes was entitled to be vice-president.)
Needless to say, their political rivalry matched in any in history.
I didn’t know until reading the McCullough biography of
John Adams that Adams and Jefferson, when younger, were close friends while
ambassadors to Europe, working together toward peace with Britain and trade
treaties with France. For a time, Adams’ son John Quincy studied and lived with
Jefferson. Later the Adams’ took in Jefferson's daughter Polly.
Adams and Jefferson were arguably the two most effective
leaders through the formation of our country. The two men had great affection
for one another until they headed the two rival political parties. By 1802,
Jefferson and Adams weren’t communicating at all. Yet their friendship would be
re-ignited not long after Jefferson left office. Brewing within them both were
religious convictions that could overcome political hostilities, even political
betrayal. Their renewed friendship would revolve around religion and culminate
in a fascinating religious document of American history, now known as the
Jefferson Bible. Today I will offer a backdrop of the religious views of Adams
and Jefferson, reflect on what went into the creation of the Jefferson Bible,
and question what significance this has for us.
Upon leaving the capital, the ousted John Adams returned
home to Quincy, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, where he attended a
Unitarian Church. Now Unitarianism hadn't become institutionalized, but it was
spreading quickly. It was a faith in reason that broke with the orthodox
Christian position. The Unitarians proclaimed that Jesus was not God but instead
an extraordinary teacher and prophet, that the teaching of Jesus should be
embraced but the teachings about Jesus should not. This faith tradition held
that the human mind is a god-given faculty meant to be used to discern truth.
Most of the nation’s founders were of this opinion. They were called deists.
They believed God made the world according to the physical laws of the universe
that wouldn’t ever be violated, and so they pooh-poohed the idea of a
supernatural God who could intervene in the laws of the universe. Religion
instead was about human beings cultivating their minds and conscience so they
could live according to our God-given moral reason.
Adams was known for pushing the envelope when it comes to
religious beliefs. One of his favorite essays on religion was written by Thomas
Paine just before Paine died. It was called “Age of Reason,” and Adams was
responsible for its publication. It read in part, "But there are times when men…
begin to doubt the [literal] truth of the Christian religion; and well they may,
for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability
and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason
revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can
be proved." Regarding the view that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, Paine
calls such an interpretation "laughable" and terms "Mystery, Miracle, and
Prophecy" the "foundations of fraud".
Thomas Jefferson was a bit more of a religious enigma, as
he kept his views to his personal diaries and never disclosed them in his public
writings. I don’t believe Jefferson came by his religious views simply through
education. He knew human anguish. Four of his six children died before the age
of ten. He tended his ill wife for several years, before she too died when
Jefferson was 39. He grieved for months and then set upon a path that would
alter the course of human history—for that is what he felt was the true
religion, participating in civic life to change the world for the better.
When Jefferson had been a candidate for the presidency,
emotionally-charged factions, reviled him as a godless infidel. Jefferson
confided to Benjamin Rush, “They believe that my portion of power confided to
me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly;
for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of
tyranny over the mind of man.” These last words now grace the Jefferson Memorial
in Washington DC. “I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against
every tyranny over the mind of man.”
When Jefferson’s neighbor, Robert Skipwith, asked him for a
recommended list of books “befitting the dignity of a Virginia gentleman,”
Jefferson offered suggestions under various headings, including separate
headings for Religion and History. The Bible he listed under the category of
history, not religion. Under religion he listed philosophers like Hume and
Socrates. Jefferson scoffed at the notion of the Bible being inerrant or
infallible.
His two closest friends with whom he corresponded about
religion were Joseph Priestley and Benjamin Rush. Priestley, was the celebrated
British scientist that discovered oxygen. Priestley had led the Unitarian
movement in Britain and was literally chased out after his house was burned
down. Jefferson convinced him to live near him. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the
Declaration of Independence and celebrated physician, was a leading American
Universalist. Given his two closest spiritual advisors and correspondents, it is
worth asking the question, was Thomas Jefferson a Unitarian or a Universalist?
Technically he was neither, he didn't belong to a church. But he did consider
himself a rational Christian and chose to pursue his religious studies in the
quiet solitude of his study and through rich correspondence with his closest
friends. He was a lone religious liberal in Charlottesville in a sea of
evangelicals, effectively arguing for the separation of church and state. In a
letter to a pioneer in Ohio he wrote, “I rejoice that in this blessed country of
free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings
or priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that
there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a
Unitarian.”
If only it were so!
Jefferson very much wanted to see his country follow the
teachings of Jesus but he didn't want people to fall under what he called the
"corruptions of Christianity." He saw that folks like Benjamin Rush and Joseph
Priestley helped reestablish liberal Christianity as a viable option for
"reasonable and "enlightened" Americans.
When Jefferson came up with the idea to condense the wisdom
of the Gospels into a coherent little book, he wrote to Priestley telling him he
was the man to do it. Whether Priestley received the letter is not known, for he
died a week after the letter was sent. It was 1805. Priestley’s death prompted
Jefferson to take a razor blade to two Bibles and over the course of two
evenings, he cut and pasted what he called his “wee little book, The Philosophy
of Jesus.” He included most of Jesus’ teachings but excluded the virgin birth,
the miracles, and the resurrection. It wasn’t the study he imagined, with
several translations, but it was a first attempt. Incidentally, he was the
President of the United States.
As a Virginian, Jefferson was understandably concerned that
his religious views might become public if any of his letters to the now
deceased Priestley were published. Sure enough, it happened, but with a highly
unexpected consequence. John Adams, read it in 1820, and though his political
nemesis, Adams immediately wrote Jefferson several letters expressing how much
he agreed with him.
With politics behind them, Adams and Jefferson became
correspondents, with religion one of the significant topics. Their dialogue
further fueled Jefferson’s stance on the separation of church and state
vis-à-vis the surging movements of evangelical Christians. Upon learning that
Jefferson had cut and pasted pieces of the gospels in the past and had hoped to
do a more thorough job of it, Adams wrote repeatedly urging him to finish his
project. Finally 15 years after the first cut and paste job, Jefferson pored
over six translations again with a blade and finished “The Life and Morals of
Jesus of Nazareth,” or as is called today, The Jefferson Bible. Jefferson
wrote to other friends that it was Adams' "stubborn nagging" that got him to
complete his work.
Religious conservatives today argue that the nation’s
founders were good Christian brothers who believed like them that the Bible is
the inerrant word of God and that they looked to Jesus as their savior. That is
blasphemy. Our nation’s founders were highly educated with far more faith in the
ideals of the Enlightenment than in religious rhetoric about sin, resurrection,
or future salvation. Jefferson and Adams honestly thought a faith that urged
people to use their minds to inform their souls would become the nation’s
primary religion. Two hundred years ago they were sold on the idea, and today it
is still an important message: think for yourself, study to make yourself wiser,
discern what is true, and don’t take anybody’s word for how you should live, not
a king or a priest—but consult your own conscience.
I must confess the irony is not lost on me that I am
preaching today about the Jefferson Bible and I am talking solely about
Jefferson and Adams and not exploring the wisdom within the Bible, the whole
reason Jefferson undertook his task. It must be acknowledged that the Bible
simply doesn't sit well with many Unitarian Universalists. But is that any
reason to shirk the truths that are within it?
If we don't look to the Bible or the Gospels as a most
inspired set of texts, what are our guideposts for life? What teachings do we
turn to? If we cannot answer this question, then our faith does not have much
depth. Thomas Jefferson, in his endeavor to take a razor to the Bible may at
first blush appear as a criticism of Christianity, it really stands as a
challenge to us.
A former parishioner once asked me, “Is Unitarian
Universalism a cut and paste faith?” I responded, “If so, is that a good thing?”
Do we simply take what we want and leave behind what we don’t? Who are we to cut
and paste what we like in a religion and ignore what we don’t? I’ve given it
some thought. And yes, we are a cut and paste faith. And is it a good thing? It
depends on what we cut and paste, and why.
Christianity and Judaism are also at core cut and paste
faiths. At some point someone cut and pasted their sacred scriptures. The Hebrew
Scriptures have four different sources spliced together, the Jehova, Elohim,
Priestly, and Deuteronomic traditions. The New Testament is a collection of
writings determined at the Council of Nicaea in 325 when it was decided what
books would be in and what books would be out. Even the gospels themselves went
through re-writes, and Luke and Matthew are clearly cut and paste jobs from at
least two other documents, from Mark and an undiscovered text that biblical
scholars call the Q document.
What Thomas Jefferson did wasn’t all that different from
what religious reformers through the ages have always done: he sought to
separate the wheat from the chaff. Because Thomas Jefferson was no biblical
scholar, it’s good to ask “Who is Jefferson to cut and paste from the Bible?”
His own person to clarify for himself the truth of life. His faith in thinking
for himself, his education, his vast experience, and his clarity within himself
over what is right and what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two revolutionary figures
of our nation, arch-rivals when it came to politics, but on the subject of
religion, they were united. As they aged, Americans wondered who would live
longer, who would have the last laugh. Well, perhaps it was mere coincidence,
but Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within an hour of each other, on the
same day, July 4th, 1826.
They left to the world a young nation based on freedom and
independence, and an example of how to be religious in the world: Fix reason
firmly in her seat, call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question
with boldness even the existence of a God, read the Bible as you would
historians of old, and study moral and religious teaching so as to clarify for
ourselves what is truly important.
May we carry forth in our own lives the faith of our
nation’s founders and be able to say with Jefferson, “We are not afraid to
follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as
reason is left free to combat it.”
May it be so.
Amen.
© Copyright 2004 Alan C.
Taylor, All Rights Reserved.
