geekyIn 1752, nine year-old Thomas Jefferson began attending a local school run by a Scottish Presbyterian minister. There he studied Latin, Greek, and French. Six years later, from 1758 to 1760 he was taight by Reverend James Maury near Gordonsville, Virginia while boarding with Maury's family and there studied history, science and the classics.
Jefferson was raised in the Church of England at a time when it was the established church in Virginia. The Church was also funded by Virginian's taxes. Before the Revolution, parishes were units of local government, and Jefferson served as a vestryman, a lay administrative position in his local parish. To hold an elected office (including the Virginia House of Burgesses, to which Jefferson was elected in 1769) required the office holder to belong to the current state religion. At the time, Jefferson counted clergy among his friends, and he contributed financially to the Anglican Church he attended regularly.
Following the Revolution, the Church of England in America was disestablished. It reorganized as the Episcopal Church in America.In fact it was Jefferson who, in 1779, proposed "The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom", which was adopted in 1786. Its goal was complete separation of church and state. In the statute, Jefferson proposed that civil rights have no connection to or dependence on religious opinions, and that the opinions of men are not the concern of civil government.
During the 1800 presidential campaign, a New England newspaper editor wrote, "Should the infidel Jefferson be elected to the Presidency, the seal of death is that moment set on our holy religion, our churches will be prostrated, and some infamous 'prostitute', under the title of goddess of reason, will preside in the sanctuaries now devoted to the worship of the most High." Federalists called Jefferson a "howling atheist" and infidel, and said that his attraction to the religious and political extremism of the French Revolution disqualified him from public office.
Following the 1800 campaign, Jefferson became more reluctant to have his religious opinions discussed in public. He often added requests at the end of personal letters discussing religion that his correspondents be discreet about where they disclosed its contents.
During the first winter of Jefferson's Presidency he regularly attended service on Sunday in a small humble Episcopalian church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the House of Representatives, a service which featured preachers of every Christian sect and denomination.
Despite his exposure to Christian clergymen in his formative years, Jefferson did not embrace classical Christianity in his later years. He was intensely interested in theology, religious studies, and morality. Like his friend John Adams, Jefferson identified with Unitarianism. He agreed generally with the moral precepts of Christianity, and he professed a belief in an afterlife and he acknowledged the active involvement and guidance of God in the affairs of man. When it came to the teachings of Christ however, he considered them to be "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man," be be believed that these teaching were distorted by some of Christ's early followers, causing him to accept and reject parts of the New Testament.
Jefferson used certain passages of the New Testament to compose The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Many refer to this as the "Jefferson Bible", an edited (by Jefferson) version of the four books of the gospel which excluded any miracles by Jesus and stressed his moral message. Jefferson expressed opposition to many practices of the clergy, and to many specific popular Christian doctrines of his day, but he repeatedly expressed his admiration for Jesus as a moral teacher, and consistently referred to himself as a Christian (though referring to his own unique type of Christianity).
Jefferson opposed Calvinism, and belief in the Hold Trinity. In private letters Jefferson also described himself as a "19th century materialist".
Upon the disestablishment of religion in Connecticut, he wrote to John Adams: "I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character."
As the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson articulated a statement about human rights that most Americans ascribe as alluding to a belief in a Higher Power.
In his two inaugural addresses, Jefferson acknowledged the guiding hand of a Higher Power in the affairs of his nation. In his first, he said that "acknowledging and adoring an overruling providence" was important and in his second inaugural address, he expressed the need to gain "the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old."
Also in his second inaugural address was the following comment about freedom of religion:
"In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies."
Together with James Madison, Jefferson carried on a long and successful campaign against state financial support of churches in Virginia. Jefferson is credited with authoring the phrase "wall of separation between church and state" in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut. During his 1800 campaign for the presidency, Jefferson had to contend with critics who argued that he was unfit to hold office because of their discomfort with his "unorthodox" religious beliefs.
On the divinity of Jesus, Jefferson said "We all agree in the obligation of the moral precepts of Jesus, and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in his discourses". He also said that "the doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man". But he considered much of the New Testament of the Bible to be false. In a letter to William Short in 1820, he said that he was not with Jesus "in all his doctrines", Jefferson called many of the passages in the gospels as "so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture". In the same letter Jefferson writes of what he called the "roguery of others of His disciples", calling many of then a "band of dupes and impostors", who wrote "palpable interpolations and falsifications." He said that Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus". He differentiated his beliefs from those of Jesus on the subject of the forgiveness of sin, in the letter to William Short, by saying " I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it."
Today it is common for many factions to claim Jefferson either as an ally of Christianity or as its enemy. I think the fairest way to sum up which side of the line that Jefferson fell on is "its complicated."