“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”
American president Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII
(Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. ed. David Waldstreicher. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 193.)
Please spare me the “America was founded as a Christian nation” pabulum. The Founding Fathers were trying to prevent the Christian tyranny that had plagued Europe for centuries and that had been carried across the pond by the Puritans who were purportedly escaping persecution by other Christians but who themselves became the persecutors. What else is new.
There is no way on Goddess’s green earth that Jefferson would be part of the Christian fanaticism prevalent in the party that he founded (his original party is now called the “Democratic-Republican Party“). It is obvious from his battle with John Adams, who was more like the evangelists of today, that Jefferson was not of that mindset at all.
Thomas Jefferson was a freethinker, not a devout Christian. The secular U.S. is largely his vision. I stand with Jefferson, as a freethinker and secularist. Jefferson has been a significant role model for me since I was a child, and I consider him one of the greatest human beings who ever lived. I emulated his education by studying Classics and languages.
We CANNOT allow Jefferson’s great vision to be destroyed after a mere 230+ years. That destruction would be a crime against humanity! Imagine nothing but lands of tyranny and oppression, with nowhere to turn or run to. Horrifying thought.
Jefferson lives on!!
P.S. Jefferson was not only a freethinker but also apparently at times pondered the subject of Jesus mythicism, as revealed in my article, “Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson Believe Jesus was a Myth?