Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Kit--The founding fathers were Deists, not Christians. It's different.
Perhaps agnostic is a better term, but most thought that christianity was the only religion available aside from pagan or heathen religions (which even the atheists of the time feared because of the previous centuries). But deist I find lacking in specifying their belief system.
Bullshit. They were Christians, as you would know if you actually researched any of them.
Bullshit. They were Christians, as you would know if you actually researched any of them.
Now you're resorting to foul language? I've done the research, you have not. Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God.
The Founding Fathers were Deists, and men of enlightenment, not Christian and not religious.
A few Christian fundamentalists attempt to convince us to return to the Christianity of early America, yet according to the historian, Robert T. Handy, "No more than 10 percent-- probably less-- of Americans in 1800 were members of congregations."
The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy. Although they supported the free exercise of any religion, they understood the dangers of religion. Most of them believed in deism and attended Freemasonry lodges. According to John J. Robinson, "Freemasonry had been a powerful force for religious freedom." Freemasons took seriously the principle that men should worship according to their own conscience. Masonry welcomed anyone from any religion or non-religion, as long as they believed in a Supreme Being. Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Hamilton, Lafayette, and many others accepted Freemasonry.
The Constitution reflects our founders views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief. The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, "the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety."
George Washington
Much of the myth of Washington's alleged Christianity came from Mason Weems influential book, "Life of Washington." The story of the cherry tree comes from this book and it has no historical basis. Weems, a Christian minister portrayed Washington as a devout Christian, yet Washington's own diaries show that he rarely attended Church.
Washington revealed almost nothing to indicate his spiritual frame of mind, hardly a mark of a devout Christian. In his thousands of letters, the name of Jesus Christ never appears. He rarely spoke about his religion, but his Freemasonry experience points to a belief in deism. Washington's initiation occurred at the Fredericksburg Lodge on 4 November 1752, later becoming a Master mason in 1799, and remained a freemason until he died.
Little-Known U.S. Document Proclaims America's Government is Secular - The Early America Review, Summer 1997
The most convincing evidence that our government did not ground itself upon Christianity comes from the very document that defines it-- the United States Constitution.
Have you every actually read any autobiographies on the founding fathers? Have you looked into what they did? Did you look at the list I provided which showed what organizations they were involved in? Christian organizations? Hello? Hello? Is it going in one ear and out the other?
In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders cited their Creator to justify their inalienable rights. A well know battle cry of the Revolutionaries, as they descended upon British soldiers, was "We have no King but Jesus". In the Constitution they wished to secure His Blessings. They did not abandon their Christian God.
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately.
Have you every actually read any autobiographies on the founding fathers? Have you looked into what they did? Did you look at the list I provided which showed what organizations they were involved in? Christian organizations? Hello? Hello? Is it going in one ear and out the other?
Have you every actually read any autobiographies on the founding fathers? Have you looked into what they did? Did you look at the list I provided which showed what organizations they were involved in? Christian organizations? Hello? Hello? Is it going in one ear and out the other?
Yet you still ignore the main point Sky Dancer made, it's not in the original laws. As I said, regardless of their beliefs, the original laws of the US would not have been christian based at all.
Who the hell said Christianity was part of the law?
Have you every actually read any autobiographies on the founding fathers? Have you looked into what they did? Did you look at the list I provided which showed what organizations they were involved in? Christian organizations? Hello? Hello? Is it going in one ear and out the other?
Like the other advocates of republicanism, Franklin emphasized that the new republic could survive only if the people were virtuous in the sense of attention to civic duty and rejected corruption. All his life he explored the role of civic and personal virtue, as expressed in Poor Richard's aphorisms.
Franklin had been baptized and educated in a Presbyterian Church based on the doctrines of John Calvin. Franklin's wife, Deborah, retained a life-long association with Christ Church, Philadelphia. Franklin later in life rarely attended Sunday services but commented that "...Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that He made the world, and governed it by His providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter."[47]
One of Franklin's endearing beliefs was in the respect and tolerance of all religious groups. Referring to his experience in Philadelphia, he wrote in his autobiography, "new Places of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected by voluntary Contribution, my Mite for such purpose, whatever might be the Sect, was never refused."[47]
Although Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church, Franklin became disillusioned with organized religion after discovering Deism. "I soon became a thorough Deist."[48] He went on to attack Christian principles of free will and morality in a 1725 pamphlet, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.[49] He consistently attacked religious dogma, arguing that morality depended more on virtue and benevolent actions than on strict obedience to religious orthodoxy: "I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me."
In 1790, just about a month before he died, Franklin wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University, who had asked him his views on religion:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble....[8]
Like most Enlightenment intellectuals, Franklin separated virtue, morality, and faith from organized religion, although he felt that if religion in general grew weaker, morality, virtue, and society in general would also decline. Thus he wrote Thomas Paine, "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it." According to David Morgan,[50] Franklin was a proponent of all religions. He prayed to "Powerful Goodness" and referred to God as "the infinite". John Adams noted that Franklin was a mirror in which people saw their own religion: "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." Whatever else Franklin was, concludes Morgan, "he was a true champion of generic religion." Ben Franklin was noted to be "the spirit of the Enlightenment."
Walter Isaacson argues[51] that Franklin became uncomfortable with an unenhanced version of Deism and came up with his own conception of the Creator. Franklin outlined his concept of deity in 1728, in his Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion.[52] From this, Isaacson compares Franklin's conception of deity to that of strict Deists and orthodox Christians. He concludes that unlike most pure Deists, Franklin believed that a faith in God should inform our daily actions, but that, like other Deists, his faith was devoid of sectarian dogma. Isaacson also discusses Franklin's conception that God had created beings who do interfere in wordly matters, a point that has led some commentators, most notably A. Owen Aldridge, to read Franklin as embracing some sort of polytheism, with a bevy of lesser gods overseeing various realms and planets.
On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a committee that included Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States.[53] Each member of the committee proposed a unique design: Franklin's proposal featured a design with the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." This design was to portray a scene from the Book of Exodus, complete with Moses, the Israelites, the pillar of fire, and George III depicted as Pharaoh.[54]
Franklin may have financially supported one particular Presbyterian group in Philadelphia.[55] According to the epitaph Franklin wrote for himself at age 20, it is clear that he believed in a physical resurrection of the body some time after death. Franklin's actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will, simply reads "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin."[56]
Franklin's writings on virtue became the subject of much derision to some European authors, such as Jackob Fugger in his critical work Portrait of American Culture. Max Weber considered Franklin's ethical writings a culmination of the Protestant ethic, which ethic created the social conditions necessary for the birth of capitalism.[57]
