The Dark Truth About Thomas Paine's Religion

[00:00:00]What if one of the men who built America didn't believe in the America his churches preached?

[00:00:08]Late at night, alone in the White House, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, the man who wrote all men are created equal, sat with a Bible, a razor blade, and a mission.

[00:00:24]He wasn't reading it. He was cutting it apart.

[00:00:29]Jefferson believed Jesus was one of history's greatest moral teachers, but he rejected the miracles, the resurrection, and the divinity entirely.

[00:00:40]So, he did something that would have destroyed any modern politician. He removed every supernatural event from scripture and rebuilt it as a rational, philosophical text. No virgin birth, no resurrection, no divine son of God.

[00:01:00]He called it The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. And here's what almost nobody knows. For nearly a hundred years after his death, the nation's Congress printed this edited Bible and gave a copy to every new member of Congress on taking office.

[00:01:21]The nation's founders didn't just separate church from state. One of them edited God out of the book entirely, and the government quietly agreed.