The goal of this book is clear: pander to evangelical Christians and abuse their trust in order to sway opinions toward putting God in public schools. The problem is that Barton is lying to them. In writing about the life of Thomas Jefferson, I have pored over his personal letters, legislation, and historical record.
Jefferson was certainly not a conventional Christian by any stretch of the term. He rejected all of the miracles (including the virgin birth, raising people from the dead, and the Resurrection). He accused Paul of corrupting the truth to turn Jesus into a mythical God figure rather than a sage teacher. Jefferson did not believe in a Holy Trinity and called his version of faith Christianism rather than Christianity. He thought the path to Heaven was through good deeds rather than salvation. He also kept a healthy skepticism about the existence of Heaven.
Jefferson was very clear in wanting to keep the church and the state separated. He was a student of the Enlightenment and thus preferred reason over revelation. He wanted America to embrace all faiths and non-believers as well. He built Mr. Jefferson's University (now UVA) intending to offer courses in anything other than religion. He refused to allow religious services to be held there in his lifetime. He also said children should not be exposed to the debauchery and violence found in the Bible.
Far from being a civil rights man, Jefferson was happy with racial separation. He wrote about perceived biological differences that separated the races, and he believed Africans were incapable of the same intelligence, reasoning, and prosperity that he viewed as inherent in white men. "All men are created equal" referred to white males only. He wanted natives to assimilate to European standards of living and, when they were too intellectually inferior for his taste, he wanted them driven out of America to the West and the North. Even when he pushed for free public education, he intended it for white males. He was no one's idea of a pioneering civil rights icon.
Jefferson inherited slaves. He owned slaves. The only slaves he freed were the children of Sally Hemings, children whose ancestors have Jefferson's DNA. Jefferson had an unusual chromosomal makeup that distinguishes his ancestry from all other Jeffersons.
Barton's insistence that the Jefferson Bible was anything other than a cut-and-paste of the passages he deemed trustworthy makes no sense. There is a physical book to examine to see that he did, in fact, cut verses from various Bibles in multiple languages. He did remove any references to the divinity of Jesus. That cannot be disputed when we have the leather-bound book that passed down through his family.
Barton's reimagining and reshaping of Jefferson into an evangelical hero should be viewed with healthy skepticism. Research Jefferson for yourself. Don't give a dime to a person who has every reason to lie about a man who cannot rise from the dead to explain himself.
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