There have been some very wise challenges to Glen Beck's attempts to Christianize the founding of the United States. Doing some research on another matter, I came upon a fascinating letter from Thomas Jefferson that sheds light on his attitudes.
Writing to William Short on 13 April 1820, Thomas Jefferson mentioned a "Syllabus" that he'd written and sent to Benjamin Rush before the latter died in 1813. He promises to send a copy to Short.
The topic of the "Syllabus" is the teachings of Jesus. I can see Glen Beck's eyes start to bug out if he were to read this, but it's not going to turn out as Glen would hope. Here's what Jefferson says:
But while this Syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in it's true and high light, as no imposter himself but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines.
I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it &c. &c. It is the innocence of his character, the purity & sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquence of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologias in which he conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes indeed needing indulgence to Eastern hyperbolism.
My eulogies too may be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I seperate therefore the gold from the dross; restore to him the former & leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and firm corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines led me to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that his part composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man.
The Syllabus is therefore of his doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other antient and modern moralists, with a mixture of approbation and disent.
So Thomas Jefferson read scripture--of course he did. Who didn't in the 18th and 19th centuries? But more important than his reading of it is the way he read it--critically, skeptically, acknowledging the merits of some parts and discarding others. That is, he didn't read it as SCRIPTURE, he read it as the moral philosophy of a thoughtful man.
This reveals an intellectual temperament--that of a Materialist--so divorced from the kind of sycophancy that Beck embraces and proselytizes.
Beck and the historical "experts" that he often has on his programs to bolster their claim of the fundamentalist Christian basis of the United States won't recognize this Thomas Jefferson. Or if they do, they'll brand him with the crime of heresy. That's the way inquisitions work.
For all of his charges that the left is practicing some kind of mind control--crypto-fascist (string of evil isms here)--it's Beck who's out to control minds, and sadly he seems to be doing a land-office business with it as well. However, we have a different model of mind in Jefferson that stands in polar opposition to the troubled mind of Beck, a glib broadcaster who seeks to squelch critical thinking and replace it with hyperbolic criticism of anything he's uncomfortable with.