Deism and Christianity by Bill McCracken

I thought it would be interesting to consider what Deism shares with the Christian religion. This topic could be a bit tricky because Deists have no set of codified beliefs. We consider ourselves to be free-thinkers, so we don’t tell each other what to believe. But, in a nutshell, Deists believe in God as revealed in nature, and then use reason to determine for ourselves our other personal beliefs and practices. This makes me reluctant to speak for all Deists everywhere, so I’ll just share the similarities that I know of.    In the first place, modern Deism grew out of Christianity. The earliest Deists, at least in America, were members of churches, usually Anglican. They believed in God. They appreciated and tried to follow Jesus’ teachings, especially the Golden Rule and the importance of loving God and others (something I still hold to). But they also realized that the Church held to many beliefs which just didn’t seem to line up with progressive human understanding. For instance, they questioned the doctrine of the Virgin Birth because everyone knows it takes a male and a female to produce a child. They didn't believe that God impregnates people. They questioned the Christian doctrine that everyone is born evil (Original Sin). They also rejected the doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement, the notion that Jesus had to die in order for God to forgive our sins. So while the Deists affirmed the reality of the Creator and the core teachings of Jesus Christ, they dared to question whether or not Church doctrines or biblical doctrines really line up with reality, with how we know the world really works. But they still affirmed, along with Christians, that God is real and that Jesus taught us how to live good lives.  Another strong tie that Deism has with what Jesus taught is a reverence for nature. Many, if not most, of Jesus’ parables concerned nature – plants, seeds, tree, water, fire, farming, the sun, the wind. He was quite the “country boy” and used stories about nature to illustrate what human relationships to God and to each other should look like. Like Jesus, Deists looked around them at nature and found, not only evidence for God, but spiritual lessons that can teach us how to love, appreciate, and care for one another.  Many Deists consider Jesus to be a great teacher, perhaps an extremely enlightened person who had keen insight into how to relate to God as a Father and to humanity as brothers and sisters. Deists also strongly believe in Jesus’ social gospel of helping others. And many Deists, though not all, believe in some sort of afterlife, another subject that Christianity focuses on.  If Christianity consisted only of the central teachings of Jesus concerning loving God and others, many Deists might consider themselves to be Christians. But Christianity has added many, many other doctrines to its religion over the years that go far beyond what Jesus taught, and Deists find many of these added doctrines to often be irrational, superstitious, and sometimes harmful. Because of all the “extra baggage” that Christianity currently has, most Deists would probably not choose to self-identify as Christians.

As I mentioned in Part 1, Deism in America began in the Church, within Christianity. But it also had a bit of a “love/hate” relationship with Christianity that has not quite abated. Deists affirmed, along with Christians, that God is our Creator and that the creation is good and shows God’s handiwork. And it also often affirmed the central teachings of Jesus about loving God, loving others, and making our world a better place. But it didn’t agree with the Church that all knowledge was confined to the Bible. It didn’t agree with the Church that we had nothing left to learn about ourselves or our universe other than what the Church or the Bible says. Deists embraced the “new knowledge” of the Enlightenment, advances gained in the fields of science, medicine, astronomy, sociology, and even psychology. Deists strongly felt that God was the source of all truth and that God has continued to lead us into truths that people in the Bible days just weren’t privy to. Can you imagine trying to explain to a Roman soldier or a Jewish peasant how an inoculation shot works? Deists embraced these advances in the sciences and in the arts, even in theology (how we think about God), and felt that humanity needed to grow up and out of some of the superstitions of the past.    The Church, to a large degree, was extremely slow in accepting any new knowledge. It felt that everything God wanted us to know was either found in the Bible (for Protestants) or found in the Vatican (for Catholics) or found in the Church Fathers (for Eastern Orthodox). Granted, the Church has made some strides over the last few decades, but let’s be honest, it only recently allowed for inter-racial marriages and it still is opposed to gays “because the Bible says so.” Deists don’t feel that all knowledge is confined to the Bible or the Church. They feel that God teaches us through everything in life and that we should never stop growing. Our beliefs, think most Deists, should come from what we think, given the information and wisdom available to us now, not just residual knowledge held onto simply because people 2000 years ago believed they knew all truth.  So this is where the relationship between Deism and Christianity can sometimes be strained. Deism accepts and incorporates new knowledge wherever it finds it, using reasoning as a measuring stick to judge truth. Christianity looks primarily to the past for what it believes is truth, to the way people thought and believed from 2000 to 4000 years ago. If you were sick, would you want to go to a doctor that only had the medical training from the first century? Or would you want a doctor with the latest in medical training? Similarly, if you want to understand God, would you consider only what people 2000 years ago had to say? Or would you want to consider other sources? Granted, some things from the past, many things in fact, are worth holding onto. But not if it no longer makes sense (like keeping women out of church pulpits) or if it is superstition (like believing God impregnates people) or if it is harmful, as many of the supposed commands of God in the Bible are.  Nevertheless, Deism usually does not wish to be “anti-Christian”. Christianity is a good religion, as far as it goes. But not everything in Christianity is good. And Deism wants to be known more for what it is for than what it is against.