The Unchristian Founding of America

PEOPLO, BEING PEOPLE, view the world through rose colored glass and paint it with colors which best conform to their own biases and prejudices. We make the world in our own image, as people, and as collections of people, called cultures. Consider the founding of the United States of America. Benjamin Franklin, for instance. Franklin and his fellow founders, for the most part, conceived of God as an impersonal, rational entity who made the laws of nature, then receded into the background. An unemotional creator who got out of the way. Those wo believed that God spoke to them in books and stories, books which contained stories of an emotional deity who intervened directly in human affairs, often harshly, was not the preferred ultimate cause of Franklin and his fellow "deists", as they were, and still are called. john Adams wrote a letter to Jefferson in which he expressed concern that his son, John Quincy, might spend the rest of his life studying biblical prophecy, and another letter in which he admonished Jefferson to avoid hiring European professors for his new University of Virginia, because, as he said, European academics might be Christians, and might turn Jefferson's shiny new center of learning into a theological seminary. Adams wrote to a friend in Europe that the bible consists of "millions of fables, tales, and legends", and that the Christian religion had "prostituted" all forms of art "to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud." According to Jefferson, George Washington is an "unbeliever", and only "has believers constantly about him because he thinks it important to keep up appearances". Nobody could tell for sure what Washington's religious beliefs were, but everyone noticed that he never took communion, never genuflected, even though he as formally an Episcopalian. Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had an ongoing wager as to what the father of his country actually believed; neither ever collected on the ten dollar bet, because Washington never divulged his secret religiosity. Jefferson himself kept up appearances by attending church but instructed his teenaged nephew to "question the existence of God, because, if there is one, he must surely prefer inquiry and reason to "blindfolded fear". Jefferson thought all religions were alike, "founded on fables and mythologies, including our particular superstition, Christianity". While president, Jefferson cut a copy of the bible into pieces, and separated out the parts of scripture he thought were reasonable, and threw away those passages, most of them, he considered nonsensical. When asked what he was doing, he replied: "I am extracting diamonds from a pile of dung." He compiled the good stuff into his own little book, a copy of which can be obtained from any good university library, or from amazon dot com, for about sixteen dollars. Its called: "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", and its a good read. On his deathbed, Benjamin franklin said: "I have some doubts as to His divinity, though it is a question I do not worry much about, and consider needless to worry about, when I expect soon enough to have an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble." W hen someone asked alexander Hamilton why the framers hadn't mentioned God in the constitution, he hilariously replied: 'we forgot". The man whose writing inspired the American people to start a new country with his pamphlet "common Sense" wrote an article called "The Age of reason". Paine hated the Bible and the Christian religion more than most non believers. Even though a vast majority of colonial Americans were Christian, the founding fathers, in general, were not. they were radical revolutionaries, politically, intellectually, religiously. and yet, even today, devout Christians insist that America was founded on Christian principles, when in fact it was founded on what the framers hoped were scientific, not superstitious principles. An impenetrable wall between church and state is what James Madison wanted, and he said so in a letter to Jefferson. that's what they all wanted, because they all knew that religious liberty must be preserved, and that government must be secular, free from religious control. for their wisdom, we should be eternally grateful, here, and in heaven.