Here is a good read that I came upon that I want to share with all, but especially those who insist that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation. I am hard pressed to imagine how that view can be reconciled with the information in this piece. All opinions are welcome
Here are 5 founding fathers whose skepticism about Christianity would make them unelectable today
Error | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum ( selected excerpts)
To hear the Religious Right tell it, men like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were 18th-century versions of Jerry Falwell in powdered wigs and stockings. Nothing could be further from the truth.
1. George Washington. The father of our country was nominally an Anglican but seemed more at home with Deism. The language of the Deists sounds odd to today’s ears because it’s a theological system of thought that has fallen out of favor. Deists believed in God but didn’t necessarily see him as active in human affairs. The god of the Deists was a god of first cause. He set things in motion and then stepped back.
2. John Adams. The man who followed Washington in office was a Unitarian, although he was raised a Congregationalist and never officially left that church. Adams rejected belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, core concepts of Christian dogma. In his personal writings, Adams makes it clear that he considered some Christian dogma to be incomprehensible.
As president, Adams signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated, “[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion….”
3. Thomas Jefferson. It’s almost impossible to define Jefferson’s subtle religious views in a few words. As he once put it, “I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.” But one thing is clear: His skepticism of traditional Christianity is well established. Our third president did not believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. He was hostile to many conservative Christian clerics, whom he believed had perverted the teachings of that faith.
Jefferson once famously observed to Adams, “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
4. James Madison. Jefferson’s close ally would be similarly unelectable today. Madison is perhaps the most enigmatic of all the founders when it comes to religion. To this day, scholars still debate his religious views.
Madison was perhaps the strictest church-state separationist among the founders, taking stands that make the ACLU look like a bunch of pikers. He opposed government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military. As president, Madison rejected a proposed census because it involved counting people by profession. For the government to count the clergy, Madison said, would violate the First Amendment.
5. Thomas Paine. Paine never held elective office, but he played an important role as a pamphleteer whose stirring words helped rally Americans to independence. Washington ordered that Paine’s pamphlet “The American Crisis” be read aloud to the Continental Army as a morale booster on Dec. 23, 1776. “Common Sense” was similarly popular with the people. These seminal documents were crucial to winning over the public to the side of independence.
So Paine’s a hero, right? He was also a radical Deist whose later work, The Age of Reason, still infuriates fundamentalists.
There you have it folks!!
It's amazing that you Stalinist perpetrate the same lies regardless of how many times you are exposed.
George Washington a Deist? Uh, no.
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The Faith of George Washington
Posted by Brian Alarid, With
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George Washington, the first President of the United States, is our nation’s greatest and most beloved leader of all time. His faith has been the subject of debate for many generations. Some have tried to portray him as a Deist, while others maintain that he was a devoted Christ-follower until the end of his life.
So was George Washington a Christian, a Deist, or an agnostic? The best way to answer that question is to examine his actions, his words, and the testimony of people who knew him.
His Actions
By his actions, Washington proved himself to be a committed Christian and churchgoer. He served for many years as a vestryman, a non-clergy member of his church’s leading body. Records from Truro Parish, an Episcopal Church, indicate that he was actively involved in helping oversee church business and was financially generous to his church.1
For more than fifteen years, he served in various voluntary leadership roles in his church. While he was President and toured the nation, he attended church services in every city he visited, sometimes as often as three times a day.2}
The Faith of George Washington
But you'll keep lying because you are a Stalinist and without a shred of integrity.
