The Jeffersonian Church of Morals and Reason

What if anytime during the 19th or early 20th Century, a Church is founded based upon Thomas Jefferson's work The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth or the Jefferson Bible? In this work, Jefferson attempted to extract the essence of the teachings of Christ, which he believed to be the best system of ethics the world had ever seen, by constructing his own version of the New Testament, free from all signs of Christ's divinity, all things supernatural and what he perceived as "misinterpretations" by the Four Evangelists.

It's difficult to find a concrete POD for this but; since the Jefferson Bible was only published at the very of end the 19th Century in 1895, how about it getting out into the public much earlier and finding a place in the new religious movements of the 19th Century? In the period of the Second or Third of the "Great Awakenings"?

Now let's just say that this Church becomes widespread and popular enough to be one of the mainstream Christian denominations in modern America? With many enough "Jeffersonian Christians" serving in government and public life by the beginning of the 20th Century. Now this "Jeffersonian Church" would be very unique among the denominations of the world in that it is perhaps the only one that renounces the divinity of Jesus Christ. What effect would this have on Christianity and religion in general in America? And the world?

A LINK to the Jefferson Bible
 
I don't think it really is a terribly unique belief, though it would be very early for anyone to come out and say so openly. If this synopsis is published in the late 18th or early 19th century, German theologians might not get such a bad reputation as iconoclasts, and the American religious scene might well get a bnit mmore interesting, but I don't think the Jeffersonian Church will become terribly popular. More something like the Unitarians - a well-established, tenacious and small group that mostly recruits from among those who want to reconcile a scientific outlook on life with a religion they take seriously.

It'd be interesting to see if this has an effect on developments in Europe. Higher Criticism had a bad time as it was, but if you associate it with revolution, democracy and egalitarianism from the word go, that could strangle it in the cradle at least in Germany. Later generations may come to think of it as a French phenomenon, which could reduce the proliferation of 'spiritual' movements on the German nationalist right.
 

Skokie

Banned
Unitarianism comes close. Jefferson is an honorary member. He corresponded with them and claimed he would have attended their services had they had a church in Virginia. He also said he was certain that someday his "nation of yeoman farmers" would all abandon normative Christianity and become Unitarians.

They used to present new members of Congress with the Jefferson Bible.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Unitarianism comes close. Jefferson is an honorary member. He corresponded with them and claimed he would have attended their services had they had a church in Virginia. He also said he was certain that someday his "nation of yeoman farmers" would all abandon normative Christianity and become Unitarians.

They used to present new members of Congress with the Jefferson Bible.

As a Unitarian-Universalist myself, I was going to say exactly this. Indeed, there are some UU curches around the country named for Thomas Jefferson. One of Jefferson;s best friends was Joseph Priestley, who is one of the founders of modern Unitarianism.

So, you don't really need a POD, because it sort of happened anyway.
 
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