The “NOT SO CHRISTIAN” Founding Fathers

Once again within the last few days I heard a radio "personality" tell his audience that America was founded as a Christian nation by our Christian founding fathers. How often are we going to allow this fallacy be repeated? What do historians have to do to convince these demagogues that Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and John Adams were not Christians.

Granted, the Puritans at Plymouth were, without doubt, Christian; but the American Revolution and the foundation of the United States occurred almost 150 years later: and its leaders who were willing to use the word "religion" in the broad sense, did not consider themselves "Christians" in the way we use the word. They are most aptly identified as "Deists"--those who believe in a Creator of the universe who set it in motion and then abandoned it to its own laws.

They obviously did not consider the Bible to be the inspired word of God. Thomas Paine, who did most to inflame the colonists to seek independence, wrote about the "fable of Jesus Christ," going on to say: "The story (of Jesus), taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene." At another point, he refers to the Bible as "a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales." I will not even bother to repeat what he had to say about the virgin birth and the divinity of Jesus.

In a letter, Thomas Jefferson refers to the Book of Revelation in this way: "It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of expanation than the incoherences of our nightly dreams." In fact, Jefferson rewrote the New Testament in order to "pick out diamonds from dunghills." He removed the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus, the Lord's resurrection and His ascension into heaven. He referred to StPaul as the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."

In addition to other secret societies, Benjamin Franklin was a member of the exclusive Hellfire Club whose purpose was to mock traditional religion. He admired Jesus' system of morals, but referred to "corrupt changes" in the Gospels and doubted the divinity of Jesus.

John Adams wrote about "the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the historyof mankind has preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced."

Although he attended church regularly, there is no other evidence that George Washington was a believer. His pastor said he could not think of "any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation..." Many tried to pin him down, but he always evaded a clear answer. His friends said he was a deist.

What the founding fathers did believe is that the separation of state and church was of the utmost importance. Whatever their theology, they knew that government was not the place for religion. We can be thankful that among all their efforts to create a great democracy, they foresaw the folly of blurring the line between church and state.

Unfortunately, in order to serve their own political interests, the demagogues will continue to refer to our founding fathers as Christians. They will conveniently disregard the fact that the "fathers" questioned the most fundamental of Christian beliefs.

(Although the above facts and quotations can be found in a wide variety of sources, I relied primarily on an article by Chrsitian J. Pinto in "Veterans Today" 3/4/2010)