wasteofo2 said:
I actually wasn't joking, I've heard infinite "Fox News Reports" emphasizing exactly how religious the founding fathers were, citing every example of them saying anything like "We're doing God's work with this great American experiment in liberty", etc.
From John Adams:
The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. 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.
-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" (1787-88)
From Thomas Jefferson:
[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom ... was finally passed, ... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821
From and concerning George Washington:
Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others.
-- George Washington, letter to the Religious Society called the Quakers, September 28, 1789
I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges, himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more.
-- The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in an interview with Mr. Robert Dale Owen written on November 13, 1831
From Benjamin Franklin:
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
-- Benjamin Franklin [quoted by Victor J. Stenger in Has Science Found God? (2001)]
This Political Description of a Hypocrite, may (for ought I know) be taken for a new Doctrine by some of your Readers; but let them consider, that a little Religion, and a little Honesty, goes a great way in Courts. 'Tis not inconsistent with Charity to distrust a Religious Man in Power, tho' he may be a good Man; he has many Temptations "to propagate publick Destruction for Personal Advantages and Security:" And if his Natural Temper be covetous, and his Actions often contradict his pious Discourse, we may with great Reason conclude, that he has some other Design in his Religion besides barely getting to Heaven.
-- Benjamin Franklin, quoted in The New England Currant (July 23, 1722)
And from Thomas Paine:
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794)
While effectively all of the founding fathers professed some sort of faith in a Creator, and many (most?) also declared an abiding reverence for Jesus, many of them also had a pronounced disgust for sectarianism, clergy, and organized worship, and almost none of those considered to be the chief architects of the American state corresponds to the current common idea of a "Christian" in an unproblematic way.
