Did All the American Founders Believe in God?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charlemagne_II
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Charlemagne_II

Guest
I have been reading in various writers that some of the Founders were opposed to a belief in God. But I have not been able to find a single Founder who did not. I suppose Thomas Paine is the usual suspect, but even Paine, while in England, is supposed to have written a treatise opposing atheism.

Are there any other candidates? I am not looking for candidates who were not church-goers of the traditional type.

Jefferson, for example, though he admired Jesus Christ above all other founders of religions, was not a church-goer. Yet he clearly believed in some kind of God, as opposed to no God at all.
 
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were closer to deists than theists I believe. All of the other founding fathers were Christian. I’m sure some were more devout than others. Charles Carrol was a Catholic.
 
At the Constitutional Convention, 1787, James Madison recorded the following remarks made by Benjamin Franklin to the president of the Convention:

"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel; We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Government by Human Wisdom and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.

"I therefore beg leave to move – that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.”
 
Ethan Allen to my knowledge was an atheist, but he might not be counted among the Founders. Not really up on my Founding Fathers info. I do know that America WAS NOT founded as a “Christian nation.” -This is a popular myth. But the exact religion of the Founders I don’t know.
 
They all believed in a God, and most were Christian. The idea that they were anti religon or did not believe in God is Revisionist History dreamed up by progressives to undermine religon. They often pull quotes out of context to try and prove this.

Two of the most famous incidents of this are the seperation of Church and State Quote by Jefferson and an “we’d all be better off without religon” quote by Adams. Both when taken out of context seem very anti religon, however put in their proper context within the entire document they show both men as being very religous minded.
 
Ethan Allen, like Tomas Paine, wrote against Christianity, but like Paine I think he was supposed to be more of a deist than an atheist. If anyone has references to himself as an atheist, or as supporting other atheists, I’d like to know.
 
Here is a quote from Ethan Allen that I found in his Reason, the Only Oracle of Man.

“I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism makes me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not strictly speaking, whether I am one or not.”

I suppose one could interpret this any which way, but I think he was enough of a firebrand that, if he was an atheist, he would have come right out and said so.

I would put him in the Deist/Unknown class. No doubt the atheists will claim him for one of their own because he offers the usual atheist canard that Christians are somehow lacking in intellect.
 
I would imagine that since the founding fathers are the signers of the declaration of independence, they all agree with the document when it says “unalienable rights endowed by our creator” , “The God of Nature” , and they rely on “the protection of divine providence”.
 
All of the founding fathers had a belief in separation of church and state. They believed that no church should run the government and that everyone had the freedom to believe, practice, and worship what they wanted without any interference from the government so long as your actions did not impose on the rights of others.

That’s what I know, and I think that is all that matters.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top