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CHURCH AND STATE SEPARATION |
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___________________________________________________________________________ The principle of the separation of church and state is that the state shall not legislate concerning matters of religious belief. In particular, it means not only that the state cannot promote one religion at the expense of another, but also that it cannot promote any belief which is religious in nature. Religions can still have a say in discussion of purely secular matters. For example, religious believers have historically been responsible for encouraging many political reforms. Even today, many organizations campaigning for an increase in spending on foreign aid are founded as religious campaigns. So long as they campaign concerning secular matters, and so long as they do not discriminate on religious grounds, most atheists are quite happy to see them have their say. That is as long as what they do/say is from the seats of their temples and pulpits, and not from/through the seats of governance. _____________________________________________________________________________
www.infidels.org/library/historical/franklin_steiner/presidents.html www.dimensional.com/~randl/founders.htm www.cesame-nm.org/Viewpoint/contributions/milner.html www.atheistsunited.org/html/pamphlets/Morris/Founding.html
For more information on Church State Separation see the links above because the article below is the only church/state article that will ever appear on this site. RID's focus is primarily religious criticism and atheism, not Church-State Separation. Despite this, RID can help bring about the dissolution of the Church with such criticism and therefore cause separation through eradication.
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DEISM and the "Founding Fathers"
June 25: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge finds the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional--thank 'god.' According to Bush, however: "The Declaration of God in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't violate rights. As a matter of fact, it's a confirmation of the fact that we received our rights from god, as a proclamation in our Declaration of Independence." The president said the country needs "common sense judges who understand that rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench." What about someone's freedom to be free from religion? As far as I can tell, the rights, and beauty of the rights of this country, were created by rational men, not a god. And many of those men were Deists. The pledge was created by Francis Bellamy in 1892. In 1954, the phrase 'under god' was added to the pledge during the Red Scare of McCarthyism. The following year our county's beautiful original motto: "from many comes one" (E Pluribus Unum) was changed to 'in god we trust' and the Treasury started branding our money with it as well. This may not be unconstitutional like the pledge, but why stop there. I feel sorry for some of the teachers that have recite the pledge daily, knowing that some of them don't agree with it, and others that know some of their students would rather not either. Ultimately, coercive worship of the flag is fascism, not patriotism, because patriotism is a voluntary act of freedom, not forced compulsion. June 27: The U.S. Supreme court finds the use of school vouchers to divert public funds to private (including parochial) schools in Milwaukee to be "constitutional." So...what about that "Wall of Separation?" Deism is a rejection of revealed religion or religion by the testimony of others, the foundation of Christianity. Theology can be divided into two classes: natural, which seeks knowledge of God through reason, and revealed, which requires faith in revelation (this is according to the Christian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas, some theologians do not believe in the natural class). Deists reject belief in anyone else's accounts of 'talking to god' or being revealed visions or revelations of any sort from a god or gods. In Deism, knowledge is held more important than belief, reason more important than faith, revelations are ignored, and nothing is sacred enough to escape the light of inquiry and doubt. Meaning critiques of the Bible, Jesus, god theories, miracles and revelation are fair game and a tenet of Deism. The Deistic god is a god of nature that is not at all involved in this world or human affairs. Impersonal. To let some Deists (which I am not) do some explaining, here is what they have to say: from www.Deism.com/:
What is the basis of Deism? Reason and nature. We see the design found throughout the known universe and this realization brings us to a sound belief in a Designer or God. Is Deism a form of atheism? No. Atheism teaches that there is no God. Deism teaches there is a God. Deism rejects the "revelations" of the "revealed" religions but does not reject God. If Deism teaches a belief in God, then what is the difference between Deism and the other religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.? Deism is, as stated above, based on nature and reason, not "revelation." All the other religions make claim to special divine revelation or they have requisite "holy" books. Deism has neither. In Deism there is no need for a preacher, priest or rabbi. All one needs in Deism is their own common sense and the creation to contemplate. Do Deists believe that God created the creation and the world and then just stepped back from it? Some Deists do and some believe God may intervene in human affairs. For example, when George Washington was faced with either a very risky evacuation of the American troops from Long Island or surrendering them he chose the more risky evacuation. When questioned about the possibility of having them annihilated he said it was the best he could do and the rest is up to Providence. Do Deists pray? Only prayers of thanks and appreciation. We don't dictate to God. How do Deists view God? We view God as an eternal entity whose power is equal to his/her will. The following quote from Albert Einstein also offers a good Deistic description of God: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God." Is Deism a cult? It's impossible for Deism to be a cult because Deism teaches self-reliance and encourages people to constantly use their reason. Deism teaches to "question authority" no matter what the cost. Unlike the revealed religions, Deism makes no unreasonable claims. The revealed religions encourage people to give up, or at least to suspend, their God-given reason. They like to call it faith. For example, how logical is it to believe that Moses parted the Red Sea, or that Jesus walked on water, or that Mohammed received the Koran from an angel? Suspending your reason enough to believe these tales only sets a precedent that leads to believing a Jim Jones or David Koresh. What's Deism's answer to all the evil in the world? Much of the evil in the world could be overcome or removed if humanity had embraced our God-given reason from our earliest evolutionary stages. After all, all the laws of nature that we've discovered and learned to use to our advantage that make everything from computers to medicine to space travel have existed eternally. But we've decided we'd rather live in superstition and fear instead of learning and gaining knowledge. It's much more soothing to believe we're not responsible for our own actions than to actually do the hard work required for success. Deism doesn't claim to have all the answers to everything, we just claim to be on the right path to those answers. SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS? Many of them were Deists. And their Deism, that is non-Christian, ideology afforded America the pluralism it was founded on in order to obtain FREEDOM FROM GOVERNMENT IMPOSED DOGMA, including "under god." The point is: a Secular State is the best method of insuring that we all have Freedom of Conscience as established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And luckily, the Enlightenment and the 'rationalism' of Deism, afforded the founding fathers with the common sense to separate religion and government so that we may all be free--the reason England was abandoned to begin with. They realized, no one should be bothered by or forced to acknowledge the ideology of someone else, and everyone should be free in their own place/space and time to think and do as they please as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others' freedoms. In other words, religious philosophies are a private, not public, matter. The excerpts below are from Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and
Thomas Paine.
(taken from: “Quotations that Support the Separation
of Church and State” compiled by Ed and Michael Buckner, Published by
the Atlanta Freethought Society, 1993.
A limited number of
changes and additions to the original compilation were made (they are
noted with this font)). Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826;
author, Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for
Religious Freedom; 3rd U.S. President, 1801-1809) Convinced
that religious liberty must, most assuredly, be built into the structural
frame of the new [state] government, Jefferson proposed this language [for
the new Virginia constitution]: “All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious
opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious
institution”: freedom for
religion, but also freedom from religion.
(Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 38. Jefferson
proposed his language in 1776.) Where
the preamble [of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom] declares,
that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our
religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting the words “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
Mohammedan, the Hindu and Infidel of every denomination.
(Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography; from George Seldes, ed., The
Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363) In
the Notes [on the State of Virginia] Jefferson elaborated his views on
government’s keeping its distance from all religious affairs and
religious opinions. “The
legitimate powers of government,” he wrote, “extend to such acts only
as are injurious to others. But
it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no
God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” (Edwin S.
Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 42-43. ) .
. . “shake off all the fears of servile prejudices under which weak
minds are servilely [sic] crouched. Fix
reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal for every fact, every
opinion. Question with
boldness even the existence of a god because, if there be one, he must
more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
You will naturally examine first the religion of your own country.
Read the bible then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor in one
scale, and their not being against the laws of nature does not weigh
against them. But those facts
in the bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with
more care, and under a variety of faces.
Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration
from god. Examine upon what
evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so
strong as that it’s [sic] falshood [sic] would be more improbable than a
change of the laws of nature in the case he relates. . . .
Do not be frightened from this enquiry by any fear of it’s [sic]
consequences. If it ends in a
belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the
comfort and pleasantness you feel in it’s [sic] exercise, and the love
of others which it will procure you.
If you find reason to believe there is a god, a consciousness that
you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast
additional incitement. If
that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that
increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you
will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.
In fine, I repeat that you must lay aside all prejudice on both
sides, and neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person,
or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and
you are answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision”.
. . . (Thomas Jefferson,
letter to his young nephew Peter Carr, August 10, 1787.
From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of
the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller,
1965, pp. 320-321.) “I
am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a
legal ascendancy of one sect over another.” (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26,
1799. From Gorton Carruth and
Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York:
Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499.) Jefferson
and The Wall “I
contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus
building a wall of separation between church and state.”
(Thomas Jefferson, as President, in a letter to the Baptists of
Danbury, Connecticut, 1802; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 369) “All,
too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the
majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be
reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws
must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.”
(Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1801;
from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey:
Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364.) Jefferson’s
Mistrust of Clergy “History
I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a
free civil government. This
marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as
religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.”
(Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813;
from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New
Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370) “The
clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the
machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the
civil and religious rights of man.” (Thomas Jefferson, as quoted by Saul K. Padover in
Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, New York, 1946, p. 165, according to Albert
Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious
Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline
Press, 1991, p. 48.) “In
every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in
return for protection to his own. It
is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by
deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest
religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to
all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.
(Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814; from
George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel
Press, 1983, p. 371) Across
the ages, clergy have been interested [according to Jefferson] not in
truth but only in wealth and power; when rational people have had
difficulty swallowing “their impious heresies,” then the clergy have,
with the help of the state, forced “them down their throats.”
Five years later, he [Jefferson] wrote of “this loathsome
combination of church and state” that for so many centuries reduced
human beings to “dupes and drudges.”
(Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 47. According
to Gaustad, the first quotes are from a letter from Jefferson to William
Baldwin, January 19, 1810; the
second source is a letter from Jefferson to Charles Clay, January 29,
1815.) The
University of Virginia
Jefferson
wanted to make William and Mary an institution of the state of Virginia,
but they would not break with the Church
so he started UVA. Furthermore, not even a class in theology was to be
offered at UVA: “A
professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the
University of Virginia]." (Thomas
Jefferson, letter to Thomas
Cooper, October 7, 1814. From
Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492.) He
[Jefferson] rejoiced with John Adams when the Congregational church was
finally disestablished in Connecticut in 1818; welcoming “the
resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberty,” Jefferson
congratulated Adams “that this den of priesthood is at length broken up,
and that a protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace American history
and character.” (Edwin S.
Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation,
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 49.) Jefferson’s
Deistic Rejection of Christianity “And
the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme
being as his father in the womb of a Virgin Mary, will be classed with the
fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. . . . But we
may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United
States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding.”
(Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 11 April 1823, as quoted
by E. S. Gaustad, “Religion,” in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas
Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1986, p. 287.) .
. . Jefferson expressed himself strongly on that larger apocalypse, the
Book of Revelation, in a letter to Alexander Smyth of 17 January 1825: it
is “merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of
explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.”
Apocalyptic writing deserved no commentary, for “what has no
meaning admits no explanation;” therefore, apocalyptic prophecies
associated with Jesus deserved and would receive no attention from
Jefferson in his Life and Morals of Jesus.
(E. S. Gaustad, “Religion,” in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas
Jefferson: A Reference
Biography, New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986, p. 287.) To
conclude this discussion of the religious clauses of the First Amendment,
let’s talk some more about Thomas Jefferson and his “wall.”
Some TV preachers, as well as writers, politicians, and, worst of
all, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, have sought to pull down the
wall by disparaging Jefferson’s influence on the First Amendment.
A popular bit of historical revisionism that floats around these
days goes something like this: Jefferson
served as ambassador to France during the writing of the Constitution and
the Bill of Rights. He had no
hand in their preparation and passage because he was out of the country.
Therefore, his metaphor about the “wall of separation” is
misplaced and ill-informed because he was living in France and was out of
touch.
Tommyrot!
Thomas Jefferson was James Madison’s mentor.
Madison as the chief architect of both the Constitution and the
Bill of Rights drew heavily from Jefferson’s ideas and kept in regular
contact with his fellow Virginian even though the latter lived in France.
Volumes of correspondence exist between the two men as they
discussed the day’s crucial events.
Jefferson understood that the First Amendment created a separation
between church and state because he, more than most of the Founders, gave
form and substance to the nation’s understanding of how the two
institutions should best relate in the new nation.
Some politicians, lawyers, and preachers subject us to mental
cruelty when they disparage Jefferson’s interpretation simply because he
lived in France during the years of the Constitution’s framing.
(Robert L. Maddox, Baptist minister and speech writer and religious
liaison for President Jimmy Carter, Separation of Church and State:
Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad Publishing,
1987, pp. 67-68.) Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
freedom of press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress of grievances.
(Amendment 1,The Constitution of the United States.) James
Madison (1751-1836;
principal author, U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights;
4th U.S. President, 1809-1817) “Religious
bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble
enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect.”
(James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774, as
quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 37.) On
Feb. 21, 1811, Madison vetoed a bill for incorporating the Episcopal
Church in Alexandria and on Feb. 28, 1811, one reserving land in
Mississippi territory for a Baptist Church.
(James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents
[Washington, 1896-1899], I, 489-490, as cited in a footnote, Elizabeth
Fleet, “Madison’s Detatched Memoranda,”
William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4
[October, 1946], p. 555.) Madison
and Military/Government Chaplains Chaplainships
of both Congress and the armed services were established sixteen years
before the First Amendment was adopted.
It would have been fatuous folly for anybody to stir a major
controversy over a minor matter before the meaning of the amendment had
been threshed out in weightier matters. But Madison did foresee the danger that minor deviations from
the constitutional path would deepen into dangerous precedents.
He took care of one of them by his veto [in 1811] of the
appropriation for a Baptist church. Others he dealt with in his “Essay on Monopolies,”
unpublished until 1946. Here
is what he wrote:
“Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress
consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious
freedom? In strictness the
answer on both points must be in the negative.
The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an
establishment of a national religion.
The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for
the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion,
elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the
national taxes. Does this not
involve the principle of a national establishment . . . ?”
"The appointments,
he said, were also a palpable violation of equal rights.
Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain?
“To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his
sect is small, is to lift the veil at once and exhibit in its naked
deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or
that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.”
The problem, said the author of the First Amendment, was how to
prevent “this step beyond the landmarks of power [from having] the
effect of a legitimate precedent.”
Rather than let that happen, it would “be better to apply to it
the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex [the law takes no account of
trifles].” Or, he said
(likewise in Latin), “class it with faults that result from carelessness
or that human nature could scarcely avoid.”
“Better
also,” he went on, “to disarm in the same way, the precedent of
Chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect them into a political
authority in matters of religion.”
. . . The deviations from constitutional principles went further:
“Religious
proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts are
shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed.
Although, “recommendations only, they imply a religious agency,
making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers.”
(Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning,
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965, pp. 423-424.
Brant gives the source of “Essay on Monopolies” as Elizabeth
Fleet, “Madison’s Detatched Memoranda,”
William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4
[October, 1946], pp. 554-562.) “And
I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has
done, in shewing that religion & Government will both exist in greater
purity, the less they are mixed together.”
(James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822;
published in The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed. by Saul
K. Padover, New York: Harper & Bros., 1953.) George
Washington (1732-1799;
“Father of His Country;” 1st U.S. President, 1789-1797) The
following year [1784], when asking Tench Tilghman to secure a carpenter
and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate, he [Washington] remarked:
“If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or
Europe. They may be
Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.”
As he told a Mennonite minister who sought refuge in the United
States after the Revolution: “I
had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum
to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they
might belong”. . . . He was, as John Bell pointed out in 1779, “a
total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited
Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another.”
(Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion,
Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 118.
According to Boller, Washington wrote his remarks to Tilghman in a
letter dated March 24, 1784; his remarks to the Mennonite--Francis Adrian
Van der Kemp--were in a letter dated May 28, 1788.) .
. .Bird Wilson, Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, was one of the
first openly to challenge in public the pietistic picture of Washington
that was being built up by [Mason Locke] Weems and his followers.
In a sermon delivered in October 1831, which attracted wide
attention when it was reported in the Albany Daily Advertiser, Wilson
stated flatly, that “among all our presidents from Washington downward,
not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than
Unitarianism.” Washington,
he went on to say, “was a great and good man, but he was not a professor
of religion; he was really a typical eighteenth-century Deist, not a
Christian, in his religious outlook.”
(Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern
Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15.) As
Bishop William Meade put it, somewhat nastily, in 1857: “Even Mr.
Jefferson, and [George] Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in
Christianity, took their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at
Williamsburg, the other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of
influence.” (William Meade,
Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, 2 vols.; Philadelphia,
1857, I, 191). (Paul
F. Boller, George Washington & Religion,
Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 26.) Unlike
Thomas Jefferson--and Thomas Paine, for that matter--Washington never even
got around to recording his belief that Christ was a great ethical
teacher. His reticence on the
subject was truly remarkable. Washington
frequently alluded to Providence in his private correspondence.
But the name of Christ, in any correspondence whatsoever, does not
appear anywhere in his many letters to friends and associates throughout
his life. (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion,
Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 74-75.) .
. . if to believe in the divinity and resurrection of Christ and his
atonement for the sins of man and to participate in the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper are requisites for the Christian faith, then Washington,
on the evidence which we have examined, can hardly be considered a
Christian, except in the most nominal sense. (Paul F. Boller, George
Washington & Religion, Dallas:
Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 90.) [on
Washington’s first inaugural speech in April 1789]
. . . That he was not just striking a popular attitude as a
politician is revealed by the absence of the usual Christian terms:
he did not mention Christ or even use the word “God.” Following
the phraseology of the philosophical Deism he professed, he referred to
“the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men,” to “the
benign parent of the human race.”
(James Thomas Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation
[1783-1793], Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1970, p. 184.) Washington’s
religious belief was that of the enlightenment:
deism. He practically
never used the word “God,” preferring the more impersonal word “Providence.”
How little he visualized Providence in personal form is shown by the fact
that he interchangeably applied to that force all three possible pronouns:
he, she, and it.
(James Thomas Flexner, George Washington: Anguish and Farewell
[1793-1799], Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972, p. 490.) As
President, Washington regularly attended Christian services, and he was
friendly in his attitude toward Christian values.
However, he repeatedly declined the church's sacraments.
Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he
waited for her outside the sanctuary. . . . Even on his deathbed,
Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed
no wish to be attended by His representative. George
Washington’s practice of Christianity was limited and superficial
because he was not himself a Christian.
In the enlightened tradition of his day, he was a devout
Deist--just as many of the clergymen who knew him suspected.
(Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American
Symbol, New York: The Free
Press, 1987, pp. 174-175.) John
Adams (1735-1826;
major leader at Constitutional Convention in 1787; 2nd U.S. President ,
1797-1801) In
his youth John Adams (1735-1826) thought to become a minister, but soon
realized that his independent opinions would create much difficulty.
At the age of twenty-one, therefore, he resolved to become a
lawyer, noting that in following law rather than divinity, “I shall have
liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested
myself.” (Edwin S. Gaustad,
Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation,
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 88.
The Adams quote is from his letter to Richard Cranch, August 29,
1756.) “Let
the human mind loose. It must
be loose. It will be loose.
Superstition and Dogmatism cannot confine it.”
(John Adams, letter to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816.
From Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
Nation, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987, p. 88.) “We
think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of
liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry
and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these
exalted privileges in fact! There
exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes
it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of
the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations.
In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or
the rack, or the wheel. In
England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot
poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts,
which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious
zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last
century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but
substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any
book of the Old Testament or New. Now,
what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or
imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine
authority of those books? Who
would run the risk of translating Dupuis*?
But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at
heart. I think such laws a
great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human
mind. Books that cannot bear
examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration
by penal laws. It is true,
few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also
true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from
them. But as long as they
continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy
progress in its investigations. I
wish they were repealed. The
substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and
unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed
with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and
they ought to be separated. Adieu.” (John
Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825.
Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of
the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. From
Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the
American Experiment and a Free Society,
New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 234.) *Charles
F. Dupuis
wrote histories on comparative religion, and like all worthy comparative
religious scholars, he equated Christianity to a conglomeration of popular
pagan religions that proceeded it. (Dupuis, like many
religious scholars, also professed that the Jesus of the Bib Benjamin
Franklin (1706-1790;
American statesman, diplomat, scientist, and printer. Freethinker.) [Benjamin]
Franklin drank deep of the Protestant ethic and then, discomforted by
church constraints, became a freethinker.
All his life he kept Sundays free for reading, but would visit any
church to hear a great speaker, no doubt recognizing a talent he himself
did not possess. With
typical honesty and humor he wrote out his creed in 1790, the year he
died: “I believe in one
God, Creator of the universe. . . . That the most acceptable service we
can render Him is doing good to His other children. . . .
As to Jesus . . . I have . . . some doubts as to his divinity*;
though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never
studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I
expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.”
(Alice J. Hall, "Philosopher of Dissent: Benj. Franklin,"
National Geographic, Vol. 148, No. 1, July, 1975, p. 94.) *Perhaps
he read Dupuis as well. Thomas
Paine (1737-1809;
author of Common Sense,
the match that started the fire; key American
patriotic writer.) Paine
on Religion “As
to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to
protect all conscientious protesters thereof, and I know of no other
business government has to do therewith.” (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. As quoted by Leo Pfeffer, “The Establishment Clause: The
Never-Ending Conflict,” in Ronald C. White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An
Unsettled Arena: Religion and
the Bill of Rights, Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 72.) “Persecution
is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the
strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by
law. Take away the
law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.”
(Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791-1792. From
Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, pp. 499-500.) “Toleration
is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it.
Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of
withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.”
(Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, p. 58.
As quoted by John M. Swomley, Religious Liberty and the Secular
State: The Constitutional Context, Buffalo,
NY: Prometheus Books, 1987, p. 7. Swomley
added, “Toleration is a concession; religious liberty is a right.”) “All
national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish
[Muslim], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I
do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise;
they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.
But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally
faithful to himself. Infidelity
does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in
professing to believe what he does not believe. It
is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it,
that mental lying has produced in society.
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his
mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not
believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He
takes up the profession of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to
qualify himself for that trade he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than
this?” (Thomas Paine, The
Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From
Paul Blanshard, ed., Classics of Free Thought, Buffalo, New York:
Prometheus Books, 1977, pp. 134-135.) Paine
on the Bible “Whenever
we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and
torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than
half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it
the word of a demon, than the word of God.
It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and
brutalize mankind. (Thomas
Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book
of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494.) “Take
away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the
strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains
nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and
traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.”
(Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795.
From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of
American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494.) Paine
and Deism “The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist.” (Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494.) Well, I think the 'founders' have said enough. Examining their words we are lead to ask "how in the hell some of our presidents, and the public, get-off on calling America a 'Christian nation' when it was not founded to be so?" Oh, I forgot, it's a melting-pot where the creme curdles together above the masses they bleed and ignore, and there are also those of which they like to skim off out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Something is rotten in the states of the united. ______________________________________________________________________________ also see: http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/founders.htm and http://www.cesame-nm.org/Viewpoint/contributions/milner.html and http://www.atheistsunited.org/html/pamphlets/Morris/Founding.html |