"Jefferson, apparently very early in life, found most of this distinctive Christian superstructure unbelievable, save for the assurance of life after death. In the middle years of his life he affirmed the Semitic cosmology without the Christian superstructure, although not without some sense of loneliness in a society so assertively Christian. He was persuaded, in part by the strictures of orthodox critics, that his form of religious rationalism did not qualify as Christian, and thus he did not so profess. In times of stress and anxiety he sought inspiration and consolation not in Christian sources but in Stoic and Epicurean moral philosophers. Then, in a period stretching from the early 1790s until the time he became president, he discovered a minimalist, unitarian version of Christianity, most of whose tenets he could affirm. He remained a reasonably consistent advocate of such a unitarianism until he died."
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Presidents of the United StatesUnitarians from the United StatesFounding Fathers of the United States of AmericaUnited States Secretaries of StatePoliticians from Virginia
Original Language: English
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Sources
Paul K. Conkin, 'The Religious Pilgrimage of Thomas Jefferson', in Peter S. Onuf (ed.), Jeffersonian Legacies (1993), p. 21
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
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Thomas Jefferson
1743 – 1826
US-amerikanischer Politiker und der dritte Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten (1801–1809).
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