Enlightenment Deism

The deists were much more spiritually orientated than people think.

In the 1600 and 1700s, some of the most creative and practical people realized that God was too good and loving to only let Christians into heaven.  These people, who were called deists (from the Latin word deus or God), decided that God did not care if people went to Mass on Sunday, or celebrated communion, or accepted Jesus as their savior.  The deists thought God only wanted people to love God and treat other people kindly and benevolently.

The Christians of the time accepted what the Bible said about God.   The deists, though, wondered if an all good and wise God would appear to just a small tribe of people in the Middle East.  They denied a good and wise God would punish all of humanity with the curse of original sin because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve.  They argued a good and wise God would never have ordered the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child of their neighbors.  They could not believe that a good deity would send plagues or earthquakes to punish communities which did not worship him properly.

The eighteenth century is often called the Enlightenment, and it is thought of as a time when the forces of tolerance, reason, and science overcame the forces of intolerance, faith, and superstition.  Because the deists were leaders in questioning their societies’ Christian beliefs, the deists are seen as leading exemplars of the Enlightenment who advocated secular progress and human autonomy.  Because people look at the deists through the lens of the deists being Enlightenment figures, people who read the deists only notice the parts of the deist writings that fit into their preconceptions of deism.

This site accents some of the most important spiritual beliefs of the deists.  It discusses their deep and abiding interest in prayer.   It shows that many of them believed angels or God gave messages to people or communicated with them in other ways.  It also shows that many deists said they believed in miracles and revelations.   Many of the deists had a spiritual but not religious conception of Christianity, which they called Christian deism.  That is to say, these deists thought Jesus really only taught that if we loved God and were benevolent to our fellow humans we would go to heaven.  These deists believed Jesus’ later followers had corrupted Christianity by adding many doctrines and rituals to Jesus’ original teaching.  Some of the best-known Christian deists were Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Carl Friedrich Bahrdt.