Jefferson was a Unitarian. He wrote on June 22, 1822:
"I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of 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."
Franklin's theology was certainly Unitarian and he was friends with and attended services held by dissenters (Unitarians) such as Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey. He reflected the general Unitarian view of Christ:
I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see
Thomas Paine said in no uncertain terms he was a deist. Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams and others get labeled with the word "deist" because other congregations did not like Unitarians and thought they to not be Christians (same thing we see today...Mormons, Catholics and various protestant groups claim others are not true Christians). Liberals also like to pretend many of our Founders were not Christians but were deists.
Only one month before his death, Franklin questioned the divinity of Jesus. So Franklin can only be a true Unitarian if Unitarians at the time of Franklin's death questioned the divinity of Jesus.
Hi LarryLied! I think what we have here is a case of “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” At the level of foundational beliefs, I don’t see any distinction between Unitarianism and deism, which differ fundamentally from the Christian revelation of the New Testament.
I’m not a Unitarian (i.e., a deist), though my Dad is. He refers to himself by either term more or less indistinguishably. Which suggests to me that he considers the terms to be synonymous.
A look at the core beliefs of Unitarianism and deism as compared with Christian ideas may help to illustrate the identity of the two.
First, Unitarians and self-described deists both believe in a creator god – One impersonal God – who got the universe started, but then withdrew. This God is not active in creation, either directly or through human souls. God is “unitarian,” that is, One; therefore, Jesus was not the Son of God, not the Logos of the “in the beginning,” but a great human moral teacher on the level of a Buddha. The soul is not immortal – there is no afterlife. When a man dies, he is simply extinguished, his body decomposed and returned “back to nature.”
Christians, on the other hand, are Trinitarians: They believe in a God of Three Persons, One of Whom – the Son – incarnated as Jesus the Christ and entered into actual human history. This is a “suffering God” who died for the forgiveness of sins, and to restore the order of the human soul destroyed in the Fall by bringing it back into relationship with the Father. The soul is immortal, and lives everlastingly.
We are clearly speaking of two different creeds here. On this basis, Reformed Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and the Church of Latter Day Saints are all “on the same page” – that is, they are “Christians” in the fullest sense. Unitarians, however, in rejecting the creedal core of the Faith, have gone a different way.
I don’t mind if we lump them all together and call them all Christians, provided we do not ignore the fact that there are profound differences in belief as between Unitarians (deists) and Trinitarians (theists).
Thanks for writing, LarryLied. Best, bb.