Friends: Thomas Jefferson wrote the American Declaration of Independence that we celebrate July 4.  I owe him an apology, and we’re going to spend the next few weeks doing that.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #970

June 17, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Declaring Truth, Part 1   By Bob Walters

“[Jesus’s] system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has ever been taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1803, letter to Joseph Priestly, quoted in The Jefferson Lies

It appears I owe Thomas Jefferson an apology.  Maybe you’d like to join me.

A year or so ago I ran across a book title that caught my attention: The Jefferson Lies.  I bought the book with some other 2024 vacation reading and didn’t get to it last summer. Now I have, and with what I learned and the fact I teach U.S. history, I wish I had.

I had earlier seen author and historian David Barton’s name on a top-25 list of influential Christian writers, and figured his work on Jefferson would confirm what I had imagined to be my own broad and authoritative knowledge of Jefferson’s views on faith, slavery, education, philosophy, and Christian values in America.

Wow, was I ever wrong … especially about my “broad, authoritative knowledge.”

This was not, as I surmised, a book that said Jefferson was lying.  Instead, it is a detailed account exposing the lies about, and misrepresentations of, Jefferson which modern news media and academia have heaped onto the author of the Declaration of Independence, America’s third president, and founder of the University of Virginia.

The book frees Jefferson’s integrity from the shady shackles of woke criticism.

First published in 2012, The Jefferson Lies met fierce criticism for confronting our ever-secularizing, Christ-denying culture’s attempt to demean, diminish, and humiliate Jefferson as it also attempts to debase America’s founding heritage.  His publisher pulled the book from the market.  Republishing it in 2016, Barton addresses and refutes the criticisms in an extended, authoritative preface that is lively to read and powerful to ponder.

With Independence Day coming up July 4, and being well aware of next year’s 250^th anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence – i.e., the birth of America – I thought I’d share what I’ve newly learned about Jefferson … this despite my embarrassment about what I have gotten wrong – and shared – in the past.

My particular mistakes about Jefferson that I’m driven to correct, given the Christian thrust of this column, regard his religious and philosophical beliefs. Barton paints a blazing picture of Jefferson not as a pre-supposed Enlightenment deist – as I thought – but of his multi-lingual understanding of and enthusiasm for the entire Bible and the more specific moral lessons of Jesus and the New Testament. Jefferson was thoroughly a Christian. 

A deist would say God created the world and left us to fend for ourselves.  Enlightenment philosophy – ascendant in the 1700s and 1800s – generally sought to elevate humanity onto an equivalent if not superior plane to God himself. “Deism” has been my default position on Jefferson’s religion.  No more.  It is time to make amends.

In the coming weeks we will address the “Jefferson Bible,” Jefferson’s multi-denominational – not “secular” – approach to education, and his “separation of church and state” doctrine that today is so badly misunderstood and disingenuously applied.

If all you want to know is whether Jefferson really had a child with slave girl Sally Hemmings, read the first chapter (spoiler: he most likely did not). If you consider Jefferson nothing but a racist owner of slaves, read chapter four (slave owner? yes; racist? no).

Barton debunks seven lies in all, and I’m thankful for his declaration of truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) feels personally convicted by his own misconceptions.

And ... see #555 Truth and Freedom from 2017. Column about TJ, the Bill of Rights, and the Media.