Religion of the United States Founding Fathers

Unfortunately, modern American evangelical Christians have posthumously adopted the U.S. Founding Fathers as their ancestors. This is, of course, erroneous. They were anything but evangelical Christians, as can be seen in their own writings.

The most prolific writer among the Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, was a Deist bordering on agnosticism. He also penned one of the most vehement polemics against religion ever written in the Western world, Age of Reason.

President John Adams signed a treaty with the state of Tripoli, whose article XI states that the United States was not founded on Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson was so apalled by the irrational dogmatism of Christianity in his day, that he drafted his own version of the gospels, composed mainly of Jesus' positive teachings and stripped of all supernatural content; this is the so-called Jefferson Bible. Jefferson considered orthodox Christianity a bloodthirsty religion, unworthy of him.

James Madison, very much an idealist, and the chief "political theorist" of the Founding Fathers, was very much concerned that government might use religion as a weapon, or attempt to control it, and thus corrupt it. The specter of the Church of England loomed before him and his colleagues. He was an architect of the Bill of Rights, and explained the intention behind the First Amendment clause about religion, in various documents, but perhaps none better than Detached Memoranda.

Almost a century and a half before the Founding Fathers, Roger Williams, a Baptist minister persecuted by the Boston churches, had established the new colony of Rhode Island; his foremost concern, and the basis of the colony's founding, was the principle of separation of church and state. His career was known to the Founding Fathers, and it influenced them. In fact, he coined the phrase "wall of separation" which Adams, Madison and Jefferson would later use.

An English influence on the U.S. Founding Fathers was the empiricist philosopher John Locke. Locke had lived through the English Civil War, during the course of which Britain was ruled by the ruthless Calvinist preacher-turned-general, Oliver Cromwell. In his well-distributed Letter Concerning Tolerance, he pointed out an obvious fact: While once can force someone to obey the outward strictures of a religion (attend services, etc.), there is no way to actually force a person to convert, genuinely. Hence, any effort to force conversion is doomed to fail, and can only result in needless violence.

Although the First Amendment to the Constituion is usually used to support the notion of separation of church and state, it is not the only place in the Constitution where this appears. Article VI states that there shall be no religious test for any office under the United States. Although a rather minor clause, it's very specific, and hard to weasel out of.

No ... the actual truth about the Founding Fathers was that they covered the gamut of religious views in their time. They were not all Christian, nor were they all Deists, or Unitarians, or whatever. Perhaps this was their greatest strength; they weren't all the products of the same package of beliefs.

Finally, I'd like to note that a perusal of the Constitution will show that its primary purpose was to place limits on government. That is, it existed so as to prevent government from doing any more than it needed to. Thus, the First Amendment must be thought of not as keeping religion from encroaching on government, but preventing government from encroaching on religion! In other words, it exists to protect religion from governmental abuse! Religious folks, rather than feel threatened by this notion, should instead be grateful for it. The First Amendment allows you to go to church every week, have your Bible studies, etc. and do so unmolested by government.

More information about the U.S. Founding Fathers' religious views:

• Notes on the Founding Fathers - a Baptist's column dispelling many evangelicals' ideas on the Founding Fathers
• Abraham Lincoln's Views on God - doesn't deal with the U.S. F.F. but still relevant; with references
• Religious Diversity - an opinion piece about why so many people are desperate to think of the F.F. as "Christian" - desperate enough to rewrite history
• Founders' Constitution - part of a vast collection of documents by the Founding Fathers and others; this page addresses the Religion clause of the First Amendment, the rest of the site can be viewed from here with everything arranged according to the section of the Constitution
• Church/State Separation: Thanksgiving, Days of Prayer - covers the problems inherent in proclaimed "days of prayer," paying attention to the U.S. F.F. as precedents
• A Thousand Years Of Religion: To Be Alone With One's God a Christian Science Monitor article about the many difficulties in actually implementing religious-tolerance policies; we haven't really come very far over the last 1,000 years