The United States of America: Founded By And For Christians?

It's time to Break It Down!

In a word, no! That could very well end this post. But since I have put forth what many, no doubt, consider a provocatively contentious premise, I will "Break It Down!"

I saw yet another poll recently that showed the number of people who believe President Obama is a Muslim, is not a Christian, or that his faith practices are unknown, continues to rise. One of the attendant assertions often accompanying this misinformed judgment is the equally misinformed notion that our Founding Fathers were Christians who, based the establishment of the United States of America on the bedrock principles of Christianity. Presumably, is is this juxtaposition that frames President Obama an an outlier to so many. 

As a practicing Christian, I have concluded it is my solemn duty and responsibility to set the record straight and disabuse any and all of that romantic, but wrong-headed belief. First, it is important to note that while there were certainly some Christians among the founders of this country, by virtually all accounts, most of the principal founders, including the first four Presidents, were Deists, also known as Free-Thinkers; a philosophy that emerged in the era known as The Age of Enlightenment.

As such, while Deists accepted the notion that a Supreme Being created the universe, they believed that reason and observation governed our world and its outcomes, not faith and or religion. They contended that said Supreme Being maintained a non-interference posture, somewhat akin to the Prime Directive popularized in Star Trek episodes and movies. Additionally, they believed in neither prophesy, nor miracles.

A review of the United States Constitution, Ratified September 17, 1787, reveals that Article 6, Section 3, states, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

The only mention of religion in the Constitution is exclusionary in nature. Moreover, the words, "Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, and God" do not appear at all; never!

While most of the men who chartered this country may not have espoused or embraced Christianity or any other organized religion, for that matter, they did promote religious freedom. In crafting and Ratifying the Bill of Rights (December 15, 1791), which comprise the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Founders ensured the first amendment documented the new Nation’s commitment to preserving the right to freely establish and practice religion (as well as to exercise free speech, to maintain a free press, to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances):

• First Amendment – Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to petition

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

President Obama, like the majority of Americans today, is indeed an adherent of the Christian Faith. However, if genuine intellectual curiosity compels you to zero in on and elevate for closer inspection the religious views of some of our Nation’s leading patriot citizens, consider the following luminaries, and the associated quotes and writing attributed to them:

• George Washington (First President)

The father of our Country was private about his beliefs, not unlike the 44th President. However, Washington was widely believed to have been a Deist.

Historian Barry Schwartz writes: "George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian... He repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative." [New York Press, 1987, pp. 174-175]

Paul F. Boller states in his anthology on Washington: "There is no mention of Jesus Christ anywhere in his extensive correspondence." [Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15]

"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."
- Letter from George Washington to Edward Newenham, 1792

"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself."
-Thomas Jefferson, in his private journal, Feb. 1800

• John Adams (Second President)

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"
-letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved-- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
-Letter to Thomas Jefferson

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
- Letter to John Taylor

"Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?"
-Letter to Thomas Jefferson

• Thomas Jefferson (Third President)

"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
- To Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
- "Notes on Virginia"

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
- Letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787

"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation [birth] of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation [birth] of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
- To John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823

• James Madison (Fourth President)

"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
- "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
- "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
-Letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
-1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches

• Abraham Lincoln (16th President)

Interviewer Opie Read once asked Lincoln about his conception of God, to which he replied: "The same as my conception of nature." When he was asked what he meant by that, he said: "That it is impossible for either to be personal."

His former law partner, William Herndon, said of him after his assassination: "[Mr. Lincoln] never mentioned the name of Jesus, except to scorn and detest the idea of a miraculous conception. He did write a little work on infidelity in 1835-6, and never recanted. He was an out-and-out infidel, and about that there is no mistake." He also said that Lincoln "assimilated into his own being" the heretical book Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.

Lincoln's first law partner, John T. Stuart, said of him: "He was an avowed and open infidel, and sometimes bordered on atheism. He went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I have ever heard."

"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession."
-Spoken by Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Joseph Lewis

• Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father)

". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
- "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", 1728

"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
- Works, Vol. VII, p. 75

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
-in Poor Richard's Almanac

• Thomas Paine (Founding Father)

"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

"The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar."

In sober reflection, it is at first blush, difficult to fathom why many contemporary religious fundamentalists have not fervently disavowed these patently irreverent 18th Century Free-Thinking radicals. Based upon their own damning words and writings, it is clear that in many of the most well-known instances, the Founding Fathers did not share the same ideals, nor any of the religious fervor of the sanctimonious, "religiously pure," and superior lot that so virulently condemn President Obama for being non-Christian.

In the past I have noted the hypocrisy laid bare in many of the arguments subjected to evaluation by the court of public opinion; chalk up another one. And the next time you hear someone boldly and fervently pitching the notion that, “The United States of America was founded by and for Christians,” smile...and appreciate the you have encountered the true meaning of the phrase “Ignorance is bliss.”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/. A new post is published each Wednesday. For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deists

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/constitution/text.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama