In light of the responses that I received from my comment piece on Justice Scalia, I thought that now again would be the time to recover a topic that I have been a student of for the past 20 years. That topic would be that not only were our founding father’s not Christians but American was not nor was it ever founded on Christianity. Many a time over the years I have encountered people who tell me to research my history better and that my views on this matter are wrong to which I always counter that it is because of my research on the history of our country and it’s origins that I believe the way that I do today.
The ideal myth that America was founded on Judeo-Christian values has been visited over and over again by the religious majority in this country. Many concluded that the use of the word God is used only by those of the monotheistic faiths and more often than not it is assumed that when the word God is used that those who have used it must be Christian. It is rare that will you read that those who use the word God are claimed to be of the Jewish faith in the popular media by the religious majority. Indeed, it is also rare that will you read that those who use the word God are of any other faith other than Christian, which seems a bit exclusive.
Now, let’s take a look at some items from the comments. Jackie stated that: The Founding Fathers were Christians. All except Ethan Allen. Read their words. They prove they are by what they said. Revisionist history books are the problem.
I‘m going to have to disagree with that view point. The selected quotes that may point to the founding father’s being Christian are excerpts that are a part of the revisionist history books. The original quotes and the totality of what each founding father wrote are what I look at.
George Washington, one of the main founding fathers, was not as most believe a Christian. Washington was a Deist. Deism is a belief in God based on reason, and is concerned with those truths which humans can discover through a process of reasoning, independent of any claimed divine revelation through scripture or prophets. Deism is not Christianity.
Washington did attend church with his wife, however he never received communion in fact he refused to receive communion which caused quite the stir back in that day. The minister of that church, who preached to Washington states: “With respect to the inquiry you make, I can only state the following facts: that as pastor of the Episcopal Church, observing that, on sacramental Sundays George Washington, immediately after the desk and pulpit services, went out with the greater part of the congregation — always leaving Mrs. Washington with the other communicants — she invariably being one — I considered it my duty, in a sermon on public worship, to state the unhappy tendency of example, particularly of those in elevated stations, who uniformly turned their backs on the Lord’s Supper. I acknowledge the remark was intended for the President; and as such he received it. A few days after, in conversation, I believe, with a Senator of the United States, he told me he had dined the day before with the President, who, in the course of conversation at the table, said that, on the previous Sunday, he had received a very just rebuke from the pulpit for always leaving the church before the administration of the sacrament; that he honored the preacher for his integrity and candor; that he had never sufficiently considered the influence of his example, and that he would not again give cause for the repetition of the reproof; and that, as he had never been a communicant, were he to become one then, it would be imputed to an ostentatious display of religious zeal, arising altogether from his elevated station. Accordingly, he never afterwards came on the morning of sacrament Sunday, though at other times he was a constant attendant in the morning.“– The Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie, in a letter to a friend in 1833, Sprague’s Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. 5, p. 394, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 25-26 and he goes on to say that: “Sir, Washington was a Deist.”– The Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie, rector of the church Washington had attended with his wife, to The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, upon Wilson’s having inquired of Abercrombie regarding Washington’s religious beliefs, quoted from John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans.
Washington also refused prayer and being read his last rights on his death bed that information comes from the writing of Washington’s personal secretary Tobias Lear who was with the man when he died. The myth that Washington was a Christian came from the book ”Life of Washington” written by the devout Christian Minister Mason Weems after Washington’s death. The famous myth about Washington and the Cherry Tree also came from that book.
Another founding father and let us not forget the man who actually wrote our Constitution, Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian either. Jefferson even went out of his way in most of his writings to question the ideals of the Christian faith. In a letter to John Adams, Mr. Jefferson writes ”It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist.” In a letter to Major John Cartwright, Jefferson expounds upon those who at the time claimed that America was a Christian nation: ”I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction at length of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary which you have adduced is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed.”
John Adams, another founding father, was not a Christian but a Unitarian. In his writing A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, he states the following: ”It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.” Mr. Adams goes further to ensure that America is not seen as a Christian nation during his presidency with the Treaty of Peace and Friendship;Treaty of Tripoli, which states in Article XI that ”the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
All in all, the list of the 55 delegates that are seen as our founding fathers only three of them were Roman Catholic, 28 were Episcopalian, 8 were Presbyterians, 7 were Congregationalist, 2 were Lutherans, 2 were Dutch Reformed, 2 were Methodists and the rest were Deists.
Along with the wrong assumption that American was founded as a Christian nation, there has been an outcry of proof citing the use of the word God in our Pledge of allegiance. The original Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and it did not contain the words ”under God” nor did it contain ”the Flag of the United States of America” the pledge as he wrote it is as follows: ”I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution changed ”my Flag” to ”the Flag of the United States of America” in 1924 during the National Flag Conference. The Knights of Columbus pushed in 1954 to add ”under God” to the pledge during the McCarthy era and Congress voted the change in.
Our national motto is not ”In God We Trust”, it is ”E Pluribus Unum” meaning ”From many, one” or ”Out of many, one” and was selected by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in 1776 for the Great Seal of the United States. During the McCarthy era ”In God We Trust” became an additional national motto when Congress declared it so in 1956.
There is a wealth on information to be found both on the net and through our Library of Congress and historical libraries of each founding father which houses the original papers that were written by them. My suggestion is that to get a well rounded view of our history that one should look into the facts of that history and not just the general and spliced views of certain web sites. I say this because of Jackie’s mention of Wallbuilders.com being an “excellent resource”.
Wallbuilders.com as it states on their website: ‘WallBuilders’ goal is to exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena.’
What this site forgets to mention is that the majority of their sources sited is spliced information and what they use is a part of the revisionist history that was created after the founding father’s died. For example when they use partial quotes taken from some of the 55 delegates but not all of them, also some of the people quoted were not even a part of the original 55 delegates. Listing Benjamin Rush’s personal bible study has no meaning of the founding of our nation whatsoever, it is the man’s personal bible study not a part of the founding of America.
The site also sources the proclamations of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Grant, Coolidge, Taft and Buchanan all interesting political leaders of their time but not a one of them founding fathers.
In response to the reference of “The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of mankind.” (Source: Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, editor (Washington, D. C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Assoc., 1904), Vol. XV, p. 383.) It is interesting to note that last part of the source as showing Albert Bergh as the editor of the statement. In fact the original and full statement from Jefferson’s paper prior to being edited is thus:
“DEAR SIR, — I have received and read with thankfulness and pleasure your denunciation of the abuses of tobacco and wine. Yet, however sound in its principles, I expect it will be but a sermon to the wind. You will find it as difficult to inculcate these sanative precepts on the sensualities of the present day, as to convince an Athanasian that there is but one God. I wish success to both attempts, and am happy to learn from you that the latter, at least, is making progress, and the more rapidly in proportion as our Platonizing Christians make more stir and noise about it. The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily say these are the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed author himself, with the horrors so falsely imputed to him. Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian. I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian.
But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be re-established, its votaries will fall into the fatal error of fabricating formulas of creed and confessions of faith, the engines which so soon destroyed the religion of Jesus, and made of Christendom a mere Aceldama; that they will give up morals for mysteries, and Jesus for Plato. How much wiser are the Quakers, who, agreeing in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, schismatize about no mysteries, and, keeping within the pale of common sense, suffer no speculative differences of opinion, any more than of feature, to impair the love of their brethren. Be this the wisdom of Unitarians, this the holy mantle which shall cover within its charitable circumference all who believe in one God, and who love their neighbor! I conclude my sermon with sincere assurances of my friendly esteem and respect.”
The above is the full text of the letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Benjamin Waterhouse June 26th 1822.
On that note, I will end this post here. Please keep in mind that the truth is for us to learn and research on our own and that in today’s climate of religious oppression in American it is better to search for that truth beyond what we are spoon fed as religious and political doctrine. A good question for us all to ask and something we really should all be asking is why are certain quotes taken and distorted by certain groups within our society and more so why do they not show us the entirety of the picture when as individuals we all have the ability to look for ourselves what that truth maybe.
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