| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
21 Dec 2006 12:03:49 PM |
| Object: |
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians |
The only place I disagree with this article is that, though the first four
Presidents were either deists or Unitarians and only attended church for
social purposes, most of the other Patriots were Christians. Franklin,
Paine,
Allen and a few others were exceptions. Still, this is enough to upset the
Fundies who invade alt.atheism and is my holiday present to them.
http://www.borndigital.com/founders.htm
Excerpts with cites from:
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians
by Steven Morris, in Free Inquiry, Fall, 1995 (If you want to complain about
this article, complain to Steven Morris, who wrote it)
"The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States
as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict
the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be
a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.
This is patently untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally
Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but
rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New
testaments.
Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering
spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of
Independence:
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...Each of those churches accuse the
other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
From:
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9 (Republished 1984, Prometheus
Books, Buffalo, NY)
George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared
himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his
voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from
religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who
denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the
other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington
gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a
religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
From:
George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108,
113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)
John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law
but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he
found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievments" but among the
clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". Late in life he
wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the
point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if
there were no religion in it!"
It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of
Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the
United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian
Religion."
From:
The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19,
1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody,
p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April
19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate
Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting
letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.
Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of
Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the
United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation
of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every
understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of
Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which
might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give
employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and
pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are
within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet
explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that
nonsense can never be explained."
From:
Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W)
Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth
Jan 17, 1825, and Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp.
246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams,
July 5, 1814.
"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." -- Thomas Jefferson
(letter to J. Adams April 11,1823)
James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not
religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and
debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity
been on trial. What have 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."
From:
The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY)
quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison,
A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974,
Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious
Assessments by JM, June 1785.
Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green
Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of
Independence, said, "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own
words." In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally "denominated a
Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no
Christian." When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding
ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised "to live with Fanny
Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the
judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws
those "written in the great book of nature."
From:
Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, p. 40 (1968,
Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY.) quoting preface and p. 352 of Reason, the
Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History compiled by American Heritage
Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New York, NY.)
Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the
Constitutional Convention, said:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think
the System of Morals and his Religion...has received various corrupting
Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some
doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon,
having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now,
when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble."
He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great
Americans of his time, to be a Deist, not a Christian.
From:
Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming,
p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting letter by BF to Exra Stiles
March 9, 1790.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speaking of the independence of the first 13 States, H.G. Wells in his
Outline of History, says:
"It was a Western European civilization that had broken free from the last
traces of Empire and Christendom; and it had not a vestige of monarchy left,
and no State Religion... The absence of any binding religious tie is
especially noteworthy. It had a number of forms of Christianity, its spirit
was indubitably Christian; but, as a State document of 1796 expicity
declared: 'The government of the United States is not in any sense founded
on the Christian religion.'"
The words "In God We Trust" were not consistently on all U.S. currency until
1956, during the McCarthy Hysteria.
The Treaty of Tripoli, passed by the U.S. Senate in 1797, read in part: "The
government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian
religion." The treaty was written during the Washington administration, and
sent to the Senate during the Adams administration. It was read aloud to the
Senate, and each Senator received a printed copy. This was the 339th time
that a recorded vote was required by the Senate, but only the third time a
vote was unanimous (the next time was to honor George Washington). There is
no record of any debate or dissension on the treaty. It was reprinted in
full in three newspapers - two in Philadelphia, one in New York City. There
is no record of public outcry or complaint in subsequent editions of the
papers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contradictions in the Bible
The Flat Earth
AMERICA- Not A Christian Nation Another site with more quotes of the
founders
Debunking Fundamentalism
The Nuclear Family Meltdown
Mother Earth on the Chopping Block (The Coming Corporate World Government)
Look into the eyes of the advertising demon!
Pat Buchanan: Pit Bull in Wolf's clothing
.
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| User: "jcon" |
|
| Title: Re: The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians |
21 Dec 2006 12:28:21 PM |
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Michelle Malkin wrote:
The only place I disagree with this article is that, though the first four
Presidents were either deists or Unitarians and only attended church for
social purposes, most of the other Patriots were Christians. Franklin,
Paine,
Allen and a few others were exceptions. Still, this is enough to upset the
Fundies who invade alt.atheism and is my holiday present to them.
http://www.borndigital.com/founders.htm
Both sides of this debate try to paint the Founding Fathers with one
brush on this topic, when the truth is that the issue of religion in
politics was as hot a topic then as it is now and these men were
all over the map in their beliefs. They were also politicians who
often tailored particular statements to particular audiences (this
was especially true later in life when many of the Founding Fathers
found themselves begging for loans). This has resulted in motherlode
of quote mines, that can be used to support a variety of views.
One things we *can* be sure of is that it was a significant issue
when the Constitution was drafted, so explicit religious language
was certainly not omitted from that document through accident
or oversight.
-jc
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| User: "Kate " |
|
| Title: Re: The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians |
21 Dec 2006 02:28:01 PM |
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On 21 Dec 2006 10:28:21 -0800, "jcon" <cirejcon@yahoo.com> wrote:
Michelle Malkin wrote:
The only place I disagree with this article is that, though the first four
Presidents were either deists or Unitarians and only attended church for
social purposes, most of the other Patriots were Christians. Franklin,
Paine,
Allen and a few others were exceptions. Still, this is enough to upset the
Fundies who invade alt.atheism and is my holiday present to them.
http://www.borndigital.com/founders.htm
Both sides of this debate try to paint the Founding Fathers with one
brush on this topic, when the truth is that the issue of religion in
politics was as hot a topic then as it is now and these men were
all over the map in their beliefs. They were also politicians who
often tailored particular statements to particular audiences (this
was especially true later in life when many of the Founding Fathers
found themselves begging for loans). This has resulted in motherlode
of quote mines, that can be used to support a variety of views.
One things we *can* be sure of is that it was a significant issue
when the Constitution was drafted, so explicit religious language
was certainly not omitted from that document through accident
or oversight.
-jc
You perhaps are thinking that they mocked christianity and said how
much they dispsed it just to look good politically to some public
group?
Now isn't that just a bit naive?
.
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