One of the aggressive atheists in recent times is the late Christopher Hitchens, who wrote one of the best-selling atheist books, called god Is Not Great. He purposefully chose not to capitalize the g in God out of disrespect.
Hitchens wrote a book about Thomas Jefferson and called him “The Author of America.” He presents Jefferson as virtually a complete skeptic, who, on occasion, said theological sounding things that didn’t conform with his real skeptical self, according to Hitchens.
∙Hitchens speaks of Jefferson’s: “open skepticism in point of religion”[1]
∙Hitchens claims that Jefferson called for “a day of solidarity with the people of Massachusetts,”[2] when in reality Jefferson had called for a day of fasting and prayer. This occurred in June 1774, when Jefferson served as a legislator in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, after the Boston Tea Party and Britain’s punishment of the Boston colony. Think for a moment on this: the reality: Jefferson calls for a day of prayer and fasting; Hitchens labels it a “day of solidarity.” In this kind of way our American history is being rewritten in secular ways that Jefferson and Washington and Franklin would not recognize it.
∙Hitchens claimed (in reference to Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written in 1777, passed in 1786): “There was a small element of hypocrisy in Jefferson’s own position, since as a ‘Deist’ he did not believe that God intervened in human affairs at all, and was thus in a weak position to claim divine authority for a secular bill.”[3] (As we’ll see in the chapter on that Statute, the bill was built on a theological foundation.) To call it a secular bill is inaccurate.
∙Hitchens claims that the Constitution doesn’t mention God: “The Virginia Statute was passed only one year before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and greatly influenced the omission of any mention of God from the resulting document…”[4] Jefferson’s Statute explicitly states that “Almighty God hath created the mind free.” The Constitution is predicated on our God-given rights so forcefully proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, of which Jefferson was the chief author. The Constitution was signed in the year of our Lord 1787 and in the 12th year of the Declaration. No Declaration, no Constitution. (The Declaration is our nation’s mission statement; the Constitution is our by-laws.)
∙Hitchens speaks of Jefferson’s reading of Lord Bolingbroke, a critic of organized Christianity: “Private in this as in so many things, Jefferson never made any ostentatious renunciation of religion, but his early detachment from its mystical or ‘revealed’ elements was to manifest itself throughout his mature life.”[5]
∙Hitchens writes of Thomas Jefferson’s Philosophy of Jesus in 1805 that it was to be “unembarrassed with matters of fact or faith beyond the level of their comprehensions.” He adds, “This certainly matched Jefferson’s view that Indians should be protected from Christian missionaries.”[6] Yet Jefferson himself called his 1805 excerpts from the sayings of Jesus: The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth from the account of his life and doctrines as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Being an abridgement of the New Testament for the use of the Indians unembarrassed with matters of fact or faith beyond the level of their comprehensions.
∙Hitchens adds: “Toward the end of his life, in 1820, Jefferson published a more complete expurgation, in which he excised all mentions of angels, miracles, and the resurrection.”[7] The goal, says Christopher Hitchens, was to clarify “the distinction between faith and reason.”[8]
∙Hitchens says, “So great was his conviction on this point [the injustice of slavery] that he broke a rule of Deism and spoke of divine retribution of sin. ‘Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.’ But if one could presume a just God, what need would there be for human Enlightenment?”[9] From our perspective, the defect on this point is not with Jefferson but with Hitchens’ misreading of him as essentially an atheist, as opposed to an early 19th century Unitarian.
And on and on it goes. Jefferson, the “author of America,” was a closet infidel intent on making the rest of the nation in his image. According to many modern and even older sources. But is that the full story? Doubting Thomas shows that this a skewed picture. The book shows that Jefferson was not a lifelong skeptic, as many suppose today, nor did he believe in the separation of God and state.
NOTE: Jerry Newcombe has interviewed recently author Larry Alex Taunton, who had developed a personal relationship with Hitchens, with whom together they studied the Gospel of John. Taunton’s new book shows that Hitchens perhaps was re-thinking his atheism. But, meanwhile, that has no bearing on the above-mentioned content per se.
[1] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 3.
[2] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 17.
[3] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 37.
[4] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 38.
[5] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 10.
[6] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 181.
[7] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 181.
[8] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 181.
[9] Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: Atlas Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), 48.