Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians
Last updated Fourth of July, 2000

They said they were, and they acted as if they were.

The exact identity of the author of the webpage in the left-hand column is not revealed. The response in this right-hand column represents the views of Vine & Fig Tree.

So there are two questions here:

• Did the Founding Fathers call themselves Christians?

• Did they build America on Christian principles?

[1] When the Founders wrote the nation's Constitution, they specified that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article 6, section 3)   [2] This provision was radical in its day-- giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike.  [3] They wanted to ensure that no single religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had.  [4] Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention religion, except in exclusionary terms.  The words "Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, and God" are never mentioned in the Constitution-- not once.

Nobody believed that the U.S. should be an atheist (a.k.a. "secular") nation.

An oath was considered a religious act of worship, which is why atheists were not allowed to take an oath. A "religious test" meant loyalty to a specific church, which is why all the states required office-holders to be Christian, but also prohibited a "religious test." This is why as late as the 1930's, a "secular progressive" legal scholar writing in the Yale Law Journal complained that:

• Christianity Was the Foundation of Our Law
• Official Oaths Were Founded on Christian Belief
• Marriage was a Christian Legal Institution
• Sunday Laws Evidenced our Nation's Christian Character
• Blasphemy Laws Acknowledged Christianity as our Nation's Foundation
• Bible Reading and Prayer Pervaded the Public Schools

and advocated allowing atheists to hold office. It wasn't until 1961 that the U.S. Supreme Court invented the doctrine advocated by these progressive revisionists, which we read about in the left-hand column, and ruled that states could not prohibit atheists from holding office.

Anytime a Presbyterian suggested Christian language for the Constitution, the Congregationalists and the Baptists vetoed it, for fear it would lead to a Presbyterian nation. Looking back, it was unfortunate that competition between the clergy of various denominations led to the absence of Christian rhetoric in the Constitution. The federal government was prohibited from favoring they Presbyterians over the Baptists, and vice versa. Nobody believed that the Constitution was atheist ("secular"). It was generically Christian.

Not a single person who signed the Constitution believed that God "does not concern himself with the daily lives of humans." Benjamin Franklin appealed to the unanimous belief in Providence during the Constitutional Convention. "Providence" is the belief that God does concern Himself with humans, hears our prayers, and answers prayers by supernaturally and miraculously intervening in the normal course of natural events. Every single person who signed the U.S. Constitution believed in this God. Only a couple of Founders denied the divinity of Christ, a few more later in their lives, but not publicly, and not in any sense to deny that America was a Christian nation. Even those who, like Jefferson, denied the deity of Christ, still read and promoted the Bible. "The Jefferson Bible" was a book designed to teach the morals of Christ to the Indians. It still taught that Jesus would judge us for our sins.

The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if the Christian Extremists had their way with this country.

Jefferson professed to be a Christian. He was not a fan of what he called "ecclesiastical bodies," what we would call "churches." The author of this column -- fundamentalist and a theocrat -- has not been a member of any church for 20 years, and would suffer the same ignominy as Rev. Bird dished out against Washington and Madison. These men were still Christian, not atheist in religious outlook, and conservative in morals. They believed in a strictly limited federal government. In short, they would be opponents of the ACLU on every church-state issue.

The Founding Fathers are already turning in their graves over the fact that the Secular Extremists have had their way with this country, purging Christianity and morality from the public square.

http://July4th1776.org 

"For rebellion as is the sin of witchcraft."  1 Samuel, 15:23

Hasn't the columnist at left ever heard that slogan? The Founding Fathers believed that they were obeying God's commandments, not rejecting them.

Madison would not have agreed with homosexual marriages.

"Ecclesiastical establishments" are contrary to Christ's teachings. The depend upon state-initiated violence to fund clergymen. Christ would have been appalled at clergy asking Caesar to extort money from other Christians who did not want to support the clergy.

the policy of the bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift, ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions; and how small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to the light of (revelation) from coming into the Region of it; and countenances, by example the nations who continue in darkness, in shutting out those who might convey it to them. Instead of levelling as far as possible, every obstacle to the victorious progress of truth, the Bill with an ignoble and unchristian timidity would circumscribe it, with a wall of defence, against the encroachments of error.

The quotes offered by atheists have a Christian interpretation -- which is clear if the quotes are read in context. This quote has no possible atheist interpretation. There are zillions of other such Christian quotes. These quotes are conveniently ignored by atheists.

Madison's position was Christian, not atheistic.
Madison's position was anti-clerical, not anti-God.

Adams is writing about grief, and how it can be abused. He writes 1st, about the death of Socrates, 2d, the death of Caesar, 3d the death of George Washington, 4th, the death of Alexander Hamilton, 5th the death of "Mr. [Fisher] Ames" [I believe; whose wording of the First Amendment was adopted for the Bill of Rights], in whose cases grief was abused, and grieving people were manipulated for political purposes.

And why? Merely to disgrace the old Whigs, to glorify the Tories, and keep the funds and banks in countenance.

Adams is not condemning Socrates, Caesar, Washington, Hamilton, or Ames. Adams is condemning the abuse of grief. Then Adams adds:

6th. I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect which is due to it knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill, or might fill, the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history.
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson By Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Adgate Lipscomb, Albert Ellery Bergh, Thomas Jefferson memorial association of the United States

This isn't a criticism of Christianity, and anyone who reads Adams' letter knows that. A "rational" man respects the death of Christ, Adams says. The author at left is more like the "knavish priest." He is an unreliable reporter.

Adams said that

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were . . . the general principles of Christianity. . . . Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.

Read more here.

Adams had similar things to say about Thomas Paine, whom Adams regarded as an "insolent Blasphemer of things sacred and a transcendent Libeller of all that is good," and declared that "It is indeed a disgrace to the moral Character and the Understanding of this Age, that this worthless fellow should be believed in any thing. But Impudence and Malice will always find Admirers." (Diary, ed. Butterfield, Harvard Univ Press 1962, IV:5-6).

The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue equity and humanity, let the Blackguard [scoundrel, rogue] Paine say what he will.[4]

Adams mentions the belief that Paine's pamphlets were of major importance in the War for Independence, but he says, "I doubted it at the time, and have doubted it to this day." III:330-34.

Compare, however, Adams' proclamation as President in 1798.

Again, the atheist writer at left has violently wrenched a passage out of context.

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!” But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not ft to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell. [4]

In reality, revisionists like our commentator at left (and especially those from the Society of Separationists or the American Atheist Society) deliberately reverse Adams's position. Not only did Adams declare that it would be “fanatical” to desire a world without religion (and that such a world would be “hell”), but on May 5, 1817, Jefferson wrote back to Adams and said that he agreed!

What makes revisionism so effective is that few citizens actually take time to confirm revisionists' claims or to proclaim to the public the real facts.

WallBuilders - Newsletters - Winter 1996

Jefferson called himself a Christian.

The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it. 27

Daniel Webster similarly explained that American Christianity was:

Christianity to which the sword and the fagot [burning stake or hot branding iron] are unknown—

     24. John Jay, Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), Vol. IV, p. 491, Address to the Annual Meeting of the American Bible Society, May 8, 1823.
     25. John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), p. 17.
     26. John Adams, Works, Vol. IX, p. 121, in a speech to both houses of Congress, November 23, 1797.
     27. Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), p. 339.
     28. Daniel Webster, Mr. Webster’s Speech in Defence of the Christian Ministry and In favor of the Religious Instruction of the Young. Delivered in the Supreme Court of the United States, February 10, 1844, in the Case of Stephen Girard’s Will (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1844), p. 52.

You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.

George Washington, The Writings of Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XV, p. 55, from his speech to the Delaware Indian Chiefs on May 12, 1779.

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man:
1. That there is one only God, and He all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.…
Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian.

America was more of a Calvinist nation than an atheist nation.

• A state church officially recognized and protected by the sovereign;
• A state church whose members alone were eligible to vote, to hold public office, and to practice a profession;
• A state church which compelled religious orthodoxy under penalty of fine and imprisonment;
• A state church willing to expel dissenters from the commonwealth;
• A state church financed by taxes upon all members of the community;
• A state church which alone could freely hold public worship and evangelize;
• A state church which alone could perform valid marriages, burials, etc.

But it did not include banishing the Ten Commandments, prayer, or the Bible in public schools or government buildings. In short, it did not include the entire agenda of the ACLU in the last 100 years.

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do;

This is an act that could only be passed in a Christian State like Virginia. Go ahead and read it.

More about Jefferson's Religious Beliefs
More of Jefferson's Writings
Jefferson's Complete Writings on CD

More about Washington's Beliefs
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More about Franklin's Deism
  .

Paine's anti-Christian views were not popular in America, and had nothing to do with the law and public policy of this Christian nation.

-More of Thomas Paine's writings Online
-Buy Thomas Paine's complete works on CD-ROM
-Obtain a Bust of Thomas Paine

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