Thomas Jefferson Was A Calvinist?!?

Sort of!  I believe he was, in the same way that I am a Freudian, Darwinist who sees the world in light of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

I am not saying that Thomas Jefferson was a Presbyterian minister in disguise.  Nothing of the sort.  And I will leave to others - specifically to God Himself - to determine the state of Jefferson's experience of grace and confession of faith.  But I do think that the world of Jefferson's thought, and the thought of those around him in those colonial times, was deeply formed by the ideas of John Calvin.

Deeply formed in much the same way that as an American in the 21st century my view of the world and the shared conversation regarding values, people and politics is deeply formed by the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.  Even though I have significant disagreements with two of those thinkers, their impact on my world is such that I am effected.  Like the water that a fish lives in, their thoughts have effected the pond in which we all swim, breathe and live so to speak.  

It was that same way with John Calvin for Thomas Jefferson.  I am not thinking about his own convictions, but the cultural atmosphere in which he lived.

I became aware of this connection by doing three things that I suggest for you.

• First, read the Declaration of Independence - Click here to do that.
• Then, read the last chapter of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion entitled "Of Civil Government" - Click here to do that.
• Finally, read the Declaration of Independence again.

A note to the reader: Expect this to take about 45 minutes - with reading the Declaration twice taking only ten of those!  Understand that Calvin wrote in the mid-sixteenth century in Latin.  We live in a day of sound-bite videos from Sesame Street to the Jon Stewart show, so are unaccustomed to writing that follows a long and careful argument.  This exercise was worth the effort for me, and I would recommend it to you.

Read these two pieces and see if you don't find the same connection that I do.  Jefferson was no theology professor, but the ideas that he wrote from, and the ideas of the people he wrote for and to were deeply informed by the view of reality and thoughts presented by Calvin in his chapter on Civil Governemnt.

It's another study to document further evidence of the impact of Calvinist thought on the forming of the United States.  In this post, I simply want to make the connection and ask a question: If Calvinist thought was the intellectual culture that gave birth to our Declaration of Independence, what are the implications for our liberty and politics when that intellectual culture has changed - which it certainly has?

By the way, at no extra charge, here is a link to a great - and brief - post entitled "The Presbyterian Rebellion."  King George of England connected the rebellion of his colonies with Calvin as well!