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Faith of the Founding Fathers
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If you don't know it already, America is not a Christian country. Not by design, not by affiliation, and certainly not by our actions towards those of other faiths. If you actually read the founding fathers, you will discover their ideas were counter to modern Christian dogma. Today most of them would be called heretics by the very churches they attended.
Benjamin Franklin, a Deist, wrote near the end of his life: As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it.
Thomas Jefferson, also a Deist, respected Jesus' doctrines. But he did not believe in his divinity, the miracles, or the resurrection. He went so far as to cut out all the miracles in the Gospels and rearrange the words of Jesus in a way he felt made more sense. This is the now-famous Jefferson Bible.
Deism is not a religion; it has no church and no official organization. It is a religious philosophy. Deists do not see Jesus as the son of God, and do not believe in the Trinity, atonement, or resurrection. Early American deists include Franklin, Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Ethan Allen. Presidents Washington, Adams, Madison, and Monroe all subscribed to Deist thought in varying amounts.
Other founding fathers were Unitarians, a faith that does not believe in the Trinity and values human reason over Biblical authority. John Adams attended the Unitarian church. Although he was not one, Jefferson believed that the Unitarian religion was the best of all and attended the Unitarian church when he was in Philadelphia.
So where am I going with this? More in the next post.
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