Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Jon Rowe has an excellent post comparing D. James Kennedy's statements about the DaVinci Code with statements by the founding fathers that agreed with the DaVinci code. In a show attempting to debunk the DaVinci code (which shouldn't be hard in and of itself, since much of the material in the book is utter nonsense), Kennedy calls the position that Jesus never claimed to be divine but was voted to be so by the Council of Nicea "one of the most pernicious" aspects of the book (view video here). Yet as Jon points out, this was a position taken quite explicitly by John Adams:
"The Trinity was carried in a general council by one vote against a quaternity; the Virgin Mary lost an equality with the Father, Son, and Spirit only by a single suffrage."- John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812.
And:
"An incarnate God!!! An eternal, self-existent, omnipresent omniscient Author of this stupendous Universe, suffering on a Cross!!! My Soul starts with horror, at the Idea, and it has stupified the Christian World. It has been the Source of almost all of the Corruptions of Christianity."
- John Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816.
"If I understand the Doctrine, it is, that if God the first second or third or all three together are united with or in a Man, the whole Animal becomes a God and his Mother is the Mother of God.
"It grieves me: it shocks me to write in this stile upon a subject the most adorable that any finite Intelligence can contemplate or embrace: but if ever Mankind are to be superior to the Brutes, sacerdotal Impostures must be exposed."
- John Adams to Francis van der Kemp, October 23, 1816.
He was joined in this belief by Jefferson, who argued quite clearly that Jesus never claimed to be divine at all but that this was invented by those who wrote the gospels. Jefferson repeatedly savaged the gospel writers as liars and frauds and the texts they produced as "a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications." The notion of the trinity, of a divine Jesus, he listed as one of the "metaphysical insanities of Athanasius."
This position was also taken by Ben Franklin and almost certainly by James Madison, as Jon points out, as well as by many prominent ministers during the revolutionary war period. And he concludes with this:
If the orthodox of today like the late D. James Kennedy truly appreciated what George Washington, John Adams, et al. really believed, they'd term it a false cult, just like they do Mormonism.
This is absolutely correct. I have always found it amusing that Kennedy and other religious right ministers go to such great lengths to argue that these key men were Christians when it is quite clear that if those men were alive today and their private views on religion (as clearly expressed in their letters) were known, they could condemn those men as heretics at best, infidels at worst.
Imagine Thomas Jefferson appearing before a collection of Christian evangelists and telling them the views he clearly expresses in his letters about the Bible and about Jesus. Imagine him telling them that Jesus not only was not divine but that he never claimed to be divine; that Paul was "the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus"; that the apostles who allegedly wrote the gospels were liars and fraud; that all of the miracles attributed to Jesus were inventions and fabrications; that the notion of the virgin birth is absurd; that the notion of the trinity is "the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." Would they laud Jefferson as a Christian or condemn him as a heathen? Clearly the latter.
Comments
Well, yeah. Jefferson's Jesus is not the polar opposite of the Jesus of Christianity, but he is certainly not Jesus as believed in Christianity either. (In many many conservative Catholic circles his project of the "Jefferson Bible" is highly regarded as one of the worst things ever done, theologically.) It also is sort of interesting to note that even among people as famous as John Adams the idea of God on a cross is found repulsive (this is someone who hadn't thought about the idea that the cross would be scandalous for that reason until just about two weeks ago.)
Posted by: KKairos | April 15, 2008 12:41 PM
I heard someone state once, I think it was Kennedy, that Jefferson was a "Christian" so I went and look at his quotes. He was probably in a general sense a Christian. But he definetly would not be an evangelical Christian like those today. His did not believe any of what would be called essential doctrines. It is clear and obvious in his letters. Adams is less clear but was more than likely a "Universalist." His son was more evangelical from the quotes I read. But I think he went "Universalist" at the end of his life.
It is so wrong to say that these guys would agree at all with Kennedy and other evangelical and fundementalist Christians in essential doctrines. Washington would seem to me to be more of an open question. I would guess he was not evangelical though. But at least there are I think 2 quotes that could make a decent argument for it and thus not an out and out right deception to state he was Evangelical in thinking. That is better than the none of those mentioned above.
I also like the post Ed did about Jefferson and others and that they do not seem to be strict Deist or Atheist as some would presume. I think they were some where in between. I think Jefferson would have just as much problem with Richard Dawkins today as he would Jerry Falwell. For either side to claim him is wrong. He was a very complex thinker from what I have read. We try to pigeon hole everyone into these two camps and miss so many of the brilliant ideas they exspoused that had nothing to do with the God or religion question.
Posted by: King of Ireland | April 15, 2008 1:52 PM
It says something about the state of reason in our society that one actually has to debunk what is clearly work of fiction.
To say nothing of all the people who think The Da Vinci Code is real.
Posted by: Max Dobberstein | April 15, 2008 3:00 PM
People thought the Da Vinci Code was real? Shouldn't be surprised, look how many fundtards think the Bible is real.
Posted by: anevilmeme | April 15, 2008 4:32 PM
"It says something about the state of reason in our society that one actually has to debunk what is clearly work of fiction."
Of course it's just fiction, but Brown didn't make up any of these ideas. As this post clearly shows, a lot of these ideas have been floating around for a long time, regardless of their particular validity. Brown's book was successful not because there was anything radically new in it, but precisely because there wasn't.
Posted by: Moopheus | April 15, 2008 4:56 PM
You reminded me of The DaVinci Code AGAIN. This makes twice. Stop, in the name of all that is holy, just stop.
Posted by: AnneS | April 15, 2008 6:50 PM
Max wrote "It says something about the state of reason in our society that one actually has to debunk what is clearly work of fiction.
To say nothing of all the people who think The Da Vinci Code is real."
Just what I was thinking. What's next, Debunking the Lord of the Rings?
Posted by: MH | April 17, 2008 8:53 AM