Were the Founding Fathers "Deists" and "Infidels?"

Supporters of the "separation of church and state" like to tell us that the Founding Fathers were all "unitarians" and "deists." What are the facts?

If "deism" is the belief in a "Clockmaker God" who winds up the creation and lets it run according to impersonal "natural law," never getting involved, never answering human prayer, never changing what man has done in a direct and supernatural way, then it can be confidently asserted that not a single Signer of the Constitution was a deist. It would be difficult to name a single Founding Father who did not believe that God answered the prayers of every single legislature of every single state and granted America independence and secured her unalienable rights. E-mail me if you can name one single Signer of the Constitution who denied that God miraculously intervened in human history to create the United States of America.

Thomas Paine and the Age of Reason

Thomas Paine is sometimes grouped with the Founding Fathers. Your daily newspaper might reinforce this view with editorials like this:

It would be difficult to name a single one of the Founding Fathers who approved of Paine's Age of Reason, his famous tract attacking religion in general and evangelical Christianity in particular. Even less-than-evangelicals like Benjamin Franklin and the "Unitarians" all denounced Paine's book.

Before Paine published his Age of Reason, he sent a manuscript copy to Benjamin Franklin, seeking his thoughts. Notice Franklin's strong and succinct reply, and keep in mind that those on all sides of the religion question would concede Franklin to be one of the least religious Founders:

Far from opposing "the God of the Old and New Testaments," Adams defended the Bible as the basis for government in a Christian nation:

This was, in fact, the basis for the system of government in America, as Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson on June 28, 1813:

Elias Boudinot, President of Congress, even published the Age of Revelation -- a full-length rebuttal to Paine's work. In a letter to his daughter, Susan, Boudinot described his motivations for writing that rebuttal:

John Jay, co-author of the Federalist Papers and the original Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was comforted by the fact that Christianity would prevail despite Paine's attack:

Yet, even Thomas Paine cannot be called an atheist, for in the same work wherein he so strongly attacked Christianity, Paine also declared:

The Founding Fathers simply were not atheists -- not even one of them. As Franklin had earlier explained to his European hosts while in France:

While members of the Supreme Court have held that government cannot show "respect" for religion, Franklin says the opposite.

Deism and Infidelity

As has been shown elsewhere, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that references to God (which permeate our history and government) do not refer to the God of the Bible. Our national motto ("In God We Trust"), the Pledge of Allegiance ("One nation, under God"), and oaths in our courtrooms ("So help me, God") have been declared by the Supreme Court to have "no theological meaning." They are examples of "ceremonial deism."

But the Founders were not "deists." Franklin called himself a "deist," but used the word in a sense quite different from the way most Americans think of that term today.

Throughout Europe and even America, the disillusionment that followed upon the end of the Wars of Religion had brought some toleration with it—but also apathy or indifference of spirit. Scientific and metaphysical speculation, late in the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth, had weakened Christian belief among many of the educated. Christian churches often seemed dull and smug, and many clergymen were content to collect their stipends but not eager to perform their duties. In much of Europe, a confused popular resentment against established churches began to stir; quite as serious was the contempt for Christianity that grew among not a few members of the upper classes. Anti-Christian feeling was one of the forces that would explode in Paris in 1789, and thereafter would sweep across other European nations. Men must believe in something more than themselves; and if the Christian churches seemed whited sepulchres, men would seek another form of faith. So it was that during the first half of the eighteenth century, in England and America, the mode of thought called Deism made inroads upon the Christianity of the Apostles' Creed.

Deism was neither a Christian schism nor a systematic philosophy, but rather a way of looking at the human condition; the men called Deists differed among themselves on many points. (Thomas Paine often was called an atheist, but is more accurately described as a rather radical Deist.) Deism was an outgrowth of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientific speculation. The Deists professed belief in a single Supreme Being, but rejected a large part of Christian doctrine. Follow Nature, said the Deists (as the Stoics had said before them), not Revelation: all things must be tested by rational private judgment. The Deists relied especially upon mathematical approaches to reality, influenced in this by the thought of Sir Isaac Newton. For the Christian, the object of life was to know God and enjoy Him forever; for the Deist, the object of life was private happiness. For the Deists, the Supreme Being indeed was the creator of the universe, but He did not interfere with the functioning of His creation. The Deists denied that Old and New Testaments were divinely inspired; they doubted the reality of miracles; they held that Jesus of Nazareth was not the Redeemer, but a grand moral teacher merely. Thoroughly rationalistic, the Deists discarded all elements of mystery in religion, trying to reduce Christian teaching to a few simple truths. They, and the Unitarians who arose about the same time, declared that man was good by nature, not corrupt; they hoped to liberate mankind from superstition and fear.

Ben Franklin, by this account, was no deist. He believed that God directly -- if not "miraculously" -- intervened in the "natural" functioning of the universe. See his remarks at the Constitutional Convention.

What is important to see is the negative connotation in the word "deist." Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language shows how "deism" came to be equated with "infidelity":

Webster then quotes Patrick Henry, from Wirt's Sketches, to the effect that "deism . . . is but another name for vice and depravity. . . . " A "deist," thus, is

Freethinkers and infidels were under severe legal restrictions in the years immediately following the ratification of the Constitution. There is little evidence that the Founding Fathers intended to minimize those restrictions. Black's Law Dictionary defines an "infidel" as

It is clear that the legal restriction most in view in this definition is the qualification to take a solemn oath. An "infidel" was deemed unable to take an oath. An oath witnessed to the existence of a God Who would judge falsehood. Every oath was thus a "test oath."

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.

—To Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse. (1822) The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Albert Ellery Bergh. 20 vols. Washington: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1907. (Memorial Edition) vol. 15, p. 383.

I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus—very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its Author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great Reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were He to return on earth, would not recognize one feature.

—To Charles Thomson. Bergh 14:385. (1816.)

In 1844, a case came before the U.S. Supreme Court [Vidal v. Girard's Executors, 43 U.S. 126 (1844)] in which a Frenchman, suspected of being a "deist" or "infidel," wanted to build a school quite different from most -- one in which the teachers would not be clergymen. His will left millions of dollars to the City of Philadelphia to build a school in which "no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever" should be allowed in. He stipulated that "only the purest principles of morality" should be taught, by which he obviously meant Secular Humanism/No Bible.

(I say this is "obvious" because of the opprobrium with which the atheistic French Revolution was viewed in America. Both the City of Philadelphia and Girard's heirs suspected that by this provision he wanted to exclude the Bible from the school and to prohibit Christianity from being taught.)

Both the City of Philadelphia and Girard's heirs conceded that an atheistic school such as this would be repugnant to the Christian law of this country. This is one of the arguments raised before the Supreme Court by Daniel Webster:

One has to exercise a little historiographic wisdom here. What kind of world was it back then the a man of Daniel Webster's stature (called "the Defender of the Constitution") could rise before the US Supreme Court and cite Bible verses as the basis for setting aside probably the largest devise of its kind in the history of the New World?

Webster argued that the single anti-Christian provision of Girard's will should force the entire will to be set aside. But courts will attempt to salvage a will by removing any clause offensive to public policy. This is what the City of Philadelphia argued. They granted that the atheistic school clause was anti-Christian and therefore unlawful, but they argued that Webster should have

The City agreed with Webster that this was a Christian nation and that the Bible must be taught in schools. Giving a tortured interpretation of the Frenchman's will, the City argued:

So here we have two parties before the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that a clause in a will requiring a Bible-free school cannot be enforced in America because this is a Christian nation. If the ACLU's version of history were true, the Supreme Court would have laughed these lawyers out onto the street. Nobody after Everson can make arguments like this before the Court. (But then, the case which took prayer out of schools in 1962 did not cite a single judicial precedent. The doctrine of "separation of church and state" required a wholesale revision of American history. The Holy Trinity case, of course, cited this 1844 case to prove that America was a "Christian nation.")

So what exactly did the Girard Court hold? How did it react to these Bible-thumping lawyers before it?

After both sides argued that the anti-Christian provision of the will was repugnant to law, the unanimous opinion of the US Supreme Court was delivered by Justice Joseph Story, whose Commentaries on the Constitution were regarded as the greatest statement of U.S. Constitutional Law. The Court ruled that Christianity could NOT be excluded from the school.

Note that "deism" is equated with "infidelity." The Supreme Court said they were not to be tolerated in a Christian nation. Deism is not approved the way modern writers say the Founders did.

The Founders believed that a school which would teach Deism is against public policy. That's what the United State Supreme Court ruled in 1844. That holding cannot be made after the Everson case. Not because the Constitution requires it, but because the Secular Humanist Court now requires that atheists are not to be annoyed by prayers, Bible readings, or manger scenes in public.

The Vidal Court very wisely does not allow the will to fail, but takes millions of dollars from an apparent unbeliever and uses them to build a school which will teach Christianity. The Court looks at Girard's will, which expressly states that no clergy can even enter the school -- even as visitors -- and says, that's OK:

You cannot even IMAGINE the current Supreme Court saying anything like this. That's why the Court has had to ignore all legal precedent in formulating its doctrine of the "separation of church and state." It's not in the Constitution, nor its legislative history, nor in Court cases throughout the 19th century.

This case blows the myth of "separation" to pieces, but most Americans have had their historical memories flushed down the Orwellian Memory Hole and can't even grasp what's going on in this case. Nobody in this case believed in a "separation of church and state" as now understood, and nobody believed that the Constitution required the Bible to be removed from schools.

John Adams also recognized that the Bible cannot be removed from schools, because freedom cannot exist in chaos. We cannot separate religion and government:

Unitarianism

But wasn't Adams a Unitarian? Those who believe in the "separation of church and state" would certainly like us to believe that he was, and that Unitarians were flagrant TomPaine-type atheists who flouted their anti-religious views and led an entire nation in an anti-Christian revolt. This is far from accurate.

Unitarianism appeared in America as early as 1785; its doctrines were stated by William Ellery Channing in 1819, with the American Unitarian Association being formed in 1825. The Theological Dictionary of 1823 described Unitarians thusly:

In fact, the early Unitarians published a pamphlet entitled An Answer to the Question, "Why Do You Attend a Unitarian Church?" Notice some of the eighteen reasons:

As a further indication of the early Unitarian's reliance on the Bible, observers from that era noted "that several of the ablest defenders of Christianity against the attacks of infidels have been Unitarians." [29]

However, in 1838, Unitarianism took a radical turn when Ralph Waldo Emerson began slowly reshaping Channing's Christian teachings

The 1844 source previously quoted indicates that Emerson's heresies took time to infect Unitarianism completely. But the Unitarianism of Adams' day was not the Unitarianism of our day.

Because today's Unitarians are both non- and anti-Christian, a failure to account for the historical changes in this organization have caused many modern historians to conclude wrongly that the Founders associated with early Unitarianism could not have been Christians. In fact, they were much closer to the Religious Right in their social morality than to the ACLU.

I grant that all of the Founders were far too influenced by Enlightenment Humanism. But then, I think Pat Robertson is way too "moderate." The point is that none of them would support the present definition of "separation of church and state."

Barton's discussion of Unitarianism is found in Original Intent at pp. 304-306.

NOTES

Footnote 1. Michael McDonald, "Founding Fathers Weren't Devout," The Charlotte Observer, Friday, January 15, 1993, 7A.

Footnote 2. Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks, Ed., (Boston: Tappan, Whittemore and Mason, 1840) X:281-282, to Thomas Paine in 1790.

Footnote 3. William V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1865) III:372-73, to Thomas Paine on Nov. 30, 1802.

Footnote 4. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, Ed., (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856) III:421, dairy entry for July 26, 1796.

Footnote 5. John Adams (1735-1826), (L.H. Butterfield, ed., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Press, 1961), Vol. III, p. 9. [February 22, 1756]

Footnote 6. Lester J. Capon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:339-40

Footnote 7. Benjamin Rush, Letters of Benjamin Rush, L.H. Butterfield, ed., (Princeton University Press, 1951) II:770, to John Dickenson on Feb 16, 1796.

Footnote 8. Joseph Gurn, Charles Carrol of Carrolton (NY: P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1932, p. 203.

Footnote 9. John Witherspoon, The Works of the Reverend John Witherspoon (Phila: Wm W. Woodward, 1802) III:24n2, from "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men," delivered at Princeton on May 17, 1776.

Footnote 10. John Quincy Adams, An Answer to Pain's [sic] "Rights of Man" (London: John Stockdale, 1793) p. 13.

Footnote 11. Elias Boudinot, The Age of Revelation (Phila: Asbury Dickins, 1801) pp. xii-xiv, from the prefatory remarks to his daughter, Mrs. Susan V. Bradford.

Footnote 12. George Morgan, Patrick Henry (Phila: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1929) p. 366n. See also, Bishop William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia (Phila: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1857) II:12.

Footnote 13. John E. O'Connor, William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman (New Bruswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979) p. 244, from a Fourth of July Oration in 1798.

Footnote 14. Zephaniah Swift, A System of Laws of the State of Connecticut (Windham: John Byrne, 1796) II:323-24.

Footnote 15. William Jay, The Life of John Jay (NY: J. & J. Harper, 1833) p. 80 from his "Charge to the Grand Jury of Ulster County" on Sept. 9, 1777.

Footnote 17. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (Phila: The Booksellers, 1794) p. 8.

Footnote 18. Benjamin Franklin, Two Tracts: Information to Those Who Would Remove to America and Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America (London: John Stockdale, 1784), p.24.

Footnote 20. The Papers of John Adams, Robert J. Taylor, ed., (Cambridge: Belknap Press [Harvard University], 1977-89) vol. VI p 348 to James Warren on Aug. 4, 1778

Footnote 21. Benjamin Rush, Letters of Benjamin Rush, L.H. Butterfield, ed., (Princeton University Press, 1951) II:799, to Noah Webster on July 20, 1798.

Footnote 22. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, Harold C. Syrett, ed., (NY: Columbia University Press, 1979) XXV:605-10, to James Bayard on April 16-21, 1802.

Footnote 23. Arnold, A.G., The Life of Patrick Henry of Virginia, (Auburn and Buffalo: Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1854) pp. 249-50.

Footnote 24. Samuel Adams, The Writings of Samuel Adams, Harry Alonzo Cushing, ed., (NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1906) II:381, to William Checkley on Dec. 14, 1772.

Footnote 25. Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1821 (NY: E.Bliss and E. White, 1821) p 34, from "An Inaugural Discourse Delivered Before the New York Historical Society by the Honorable Gouverneur Morris on Sept. 4, 1816."

Footnote 26. Witherspoon, Works, VI:13, from "An Address to the Senior Class at Princeton College," Sept. 23, 1775.

Footnote 27. Ibid., III:42, from "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men," delivered at Princeton on May 17, 1776.

Footnote 29. Rupp, Daniel, An Original History of the Religious Denominations at Present Existing in the United States, (Phila: J.Y. Humphreys, 1844) p. 711.

Footnote 30. James Truslow Adams, Dictionary of American History (NY: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1940) p. 345.

Were the Founding Fathers "Deists," "Freethinkers," and "Infidels?"

Thomas Paine and the Age of Reason

Deism and Infidelity

Unitarianism

NOTES

The Christmas Conspiracy

Virtue

Vine & Fig Tree

Paradigm Shift

Theocracy