Faith of Our Fathers: Liberal Lies About Founders' Beliefs

CBN ^ | October 13, 2003 | Dale Hurd

[Between the Lines]

A lot of accepted 'facts' about our Founding Fathers are not only wrong, they are outright lies and distortions of the truth.

When big national debates erupt in America, maybe over the California recall, or the Ten Commandments controversy in Alabama, the Founding Fathers usually get dragged into it, and they're usually misquoted and misused by liberals.

What would the founders have thought about the California recall? It's mob rule, liberals have said; not at all what the founders would have wanted. Not true, according to a leading authority on the founders.

Historian David Barton said, "The Founding Fathers would not have problems with recall. They believed that above all things that individuals should be accountable to the people at all times. They actually were having annual elections at the time of the Constitution, so it was a revolutionary thought to have two-year elections for members of congress. There was a lot of debate at that time saying, 'oh, those terms are too long, we don't need two years for members of Congress. We need to face every year.' So they don't have trouble with elections, and even frequent elections."

The California recall was almost de-railed by three liberal judges. Another liberal myth is that the courts are the final authority. But the Founding Fathers said that view is one of the biggest threats to liberty.

Thomas Jefferson wrote this to William Jarvis: "You seem to consider the judges as the final arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one that would put us under the despotism of an oligarchy."

Jefferson also said, "If our nation be destroyed, it would be from the judiciary."

The courts have systematically stripped religion from the public square, most recently in the Alabama Ten Commandment's case. That's based on another myth about the founders, the separation of church and state.

Barton said, "The Founding Fathers had no mindset of the separation of church and state in the way that we know of today. Their mindset was very narrowly defined. James Madison himself defined it when they wrote the First Amendment. We don't want a national denomination telling us what we all have to be...as they had in Great Britain, we're not going to have the federal government make us all Catholics, or all Anglicans, or all anything else. But the same people who did that, who gave us the First Amendment that has that form of separation also -- first act of Congress when they moved into the Capitol -- established that the Capitol building would serve simultaneously as a church building. So the largest church building in Washington, D.C. was one that met in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Over 2,000 people a week went to church there and these are the same guys who gave us the First Amendment."

Church in the Capitol Rotunda? But I thought the Founding Fathers were deists, agnostics and atheists. Another myth.

Barton said, "The Founding Fathers were overwhelmingly Christian…I love to spend time on the least religious founders. You have Franklin, as governor installs the Bible and Christianity in the public schools of Pennsylvania. Franklin was the man who made sure we had prayer at every session of Congress and that we had paid chaplains to do so."

Author Walter Isaacson said, "As he got near the end of his life, he said, 'I have to look back and say that Providence has been good to us and we really must praise Providence at all times and the work of the Lord."

Yeah, but what about Jefferson, the famous agnostic?

Barton said, "Jefferson expressed some doubts about the divinity of Christ. But what is never pointed out about Jefferson is the fact that he said that he expressed those doubts when he was in France and part of the time after he got home. And he said in those years he had studied the writings of David Hume, an atheist philosopher… so you have a period where Jefferson was anti-Christian, anti-religious. But at the end of his life, he never considered himself anything but an orthodox Christian…he thought of himself as a true Christian.

And George Washington never actually said he was a Christian, right? That's what some liberals are saying.

Barton said, "George Washington laid his hands and prayed for healing for people within the family and…Washington never missed church even though it was a five-hour ride to and from church on horseback or carriage. Never missed church, always read the Bible every day, always prayed everyday."

In the words of Washington's daughter Nelly, "You might as well question Washington's patriotism as to question his Christianity."

James Rees is the executive director of Mount Vernon, George Washington's home.

He said, "It's impossible to overstate how much George Washington's character and leadership formed this country and enabled it to stay the course to become the great country we are today."

But how could George Washington be any kind of example? He owned slaves. Walter Williams is a syndicated columnist, author and professor of economics at George Mason University.

Williams said, "Many of the founders, including Washington and Jefferson, although they had slaves, thought it was an abomination and hoped it would come to an end."

Barton said, "George Washington was given his slaves when he was 11 years old. That's how institutionalized slavery was…Washington released his slaves, released all his slaves…there's a real anti-slavery tone with the Founding Fathers. When we did separate from Great Britain in 1776, more than half the states abolished slavery --New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. Not every state did, you had four in the south that kept it. But you have a huge majority of Founding Fathers that were anti-slavery. Never owned slaves."

But the truth doesn't seem to dent the liberal view that America is a source of evil in the world.

Conservative author Dinesh D'souza said, "What other country in the world would have defeated Japan and Germany in World War II and rebuilt those countries. What country in the world goes to fight with another country, in this case Afghanistan, and in the middle of the fight is distributing food and rations to avert starvation among the civilians on the other side. No empire in all of human history has ever done this."

Bush said the same in a recent speech, "Our enemies sent other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice made long ago on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life."

Finally, today is Columbus Day, and a lot of liberals say we shouldn't be celebrating a genocidal maniac who is on par with Hitler.

As one liberal said, "Both of them were genocidal. Both of them were for the extermination and liquidation of a people--and a people who stood in the way of aggrandizement."

Columbus was brutal, but the empires he encountered were no less brutal. Some practiced human sacrifice on a huge scale. And Columbus historian Claudia Bushman says Columbus is still a worthy national symbol.

Bushman said, "I think Columbus was a very brave, intrepid sailor, that he was willing to try something no one else was willing to do. That he had vision far beyond others of his fellow man. On that basis he can be considered a great man. "

So, happy Columbus Day, America, and don't believe what some liberals are saying about this great nation.

[Sacajaweau]

I avoid Jefferson. He writes one thing and a few days later, writes an explanation of what he wrote a few days before which interprets the matter differently than one might think. He appears to be constantly in conflict with himself.

Read Madison!!

[Support Free Republic]

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[Huck]

I completely agree with you. The only problem with Madison is that his English is a challenge to untangle. His thinking was waaaaay too nuanced to be practicable by mere mortals. But his ideas are all laid and and amazingly consistent all the way into the Nullification crisis.

I am dubious of anyone peppering an article with teensy little Jefferson quotes. Real understanding takes much more time and effort than that.

[CobaltBlue]

David Barton holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oral Roberts University and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Pensacola Christian College.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/aboutus/bio/

[truth_seeker]

I've read that Columbus was an outstanding businessman, who assembled the financial, political and technical resources to go someplace new.

It is speculated he assembled alternative route information, including the Nordic explorers, that got to North America, who left maps.

[jess35]

David Barton has on occasion resorted to shoddy scholarship. He's had to retract several spurious quotations (under intense pressure) that he claimed came from the FF. He's just as agenda driven as the anti-religion crowd.

[Between the Lines]

David Barton holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oral Roberts University....

I read the link. He sounds like a good guy to me. What is your point?

[HenryLeeII]

"When we did separate from Great Britain in 1776, more than half the states abolished slavery --New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. Not every state did, you had four in the south that kept it. But you have a huge majority of Founding Fathers that were anti-slavery. Never owned slaves."

I don't understand this quote. Did Barton mean the importation of slaves? There were certainly more than four states in the South that allowed slavery after 1776, and in the year that Washington died, 1799, there were slaves in New York.

[f.Christian]

To: CobaltBlue

Are you French ?

fC ...

When are evolutionists -- liberals - atheist - wiccans ... going to find their own country --- lesser aclu america !

rm7 ...

To: Hermann the Cherusker

**Your claiming of those Deists as Protestants proves my point that Protestantism doesn't really care what a man believes, and certainly not if he believes in Christ or not, so long as it is not Catholicism. **

Thank you for the opportunity to post this. Note only one Catholic..

Denominational Affiliations of the Framers of the Constitution

Dr. Miles Bradford of the University of Dallas did a study on the denominational classifications that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention accepted for themselves. Contrary to myth, the following list, published by Bradford, indicates that only 3 out of 55 of the framers classified themselves as Deists.

Note: only those Denominations whose Confessions of Faith were expressly Calvinistic at this time have been identified as "Calvinist" denominations. While many "Old-School" Lutherans and "Whitfield" Methodists at this time would have identified themselves with a Calvinistic view of Predestination, their affiliation has for the sake of charity been assumed to be non-Calvinist.

New Hampshire

* John Langdon, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* Nicholas Gilman, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist

Massachusetts

* Elbridge Gerry, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Rufus King, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Caleb Strong, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* Nathaniel Gorham, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist Connecticut
* Roger Sherman, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* William Johnson, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Oliver Ellsworth, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist

New York


* Alexander Hamilton, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* John Lansing, DUTCH REFORMED -- Calvinist
* Robert Yates, DUTCH REFORMED -- Calvinist

New Jersey

* William Patterson, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* William Livingston, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Jonathan Dayton, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* David Brearly, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* William Churchill Houston, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist

Pennsylvania


* Benjamin Franklin, DEIST
* Robert Morris, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James Wilson, DEIST
* Gouverneur Morris, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Thomas Mifflin, QUAKER
* George Clymer, QUAKER
* Thomas FitzSimmons, ROMAN CATHOLIC
* Jared Ingersoll, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist

Delaware

* John Dickinson, QUAKER
* George Read, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Richard Bassett, METHODIST
* Gunning Beford, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Jacod Broom, LUTHERAN

Maryland

* Luther Martin, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Daniel Carroll, ROMAN CATHOLIC
* John Mercer, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James McHenry, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Daniel Jennifer, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist

Virginia


* George Washington, EPISCOPALIAN (Non-Communicant)
* James Madison, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* George Mason, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Edmund Randolph, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James Blair, Jr., EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James McClung, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* George Wythe, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist

North Carolina

* William Davie, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Hugh Williamson, DEIST
* William Blount, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Alexander Martin, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Richard Spaight, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist

South Carolina

* John Rutledge, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Charles Pinckney, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Pierce Butler, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Charles Pinckney, III, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist

Georgia

* Abraham Baldwin, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* William Leigh Pierce, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* William Houstoun, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* William Few, METHODIST

327 posted on 09/30/2003 9:47 PM PDT by RnMomof7



fC ...

The definition of an anti christ is pretty much someone who uses the power of the state to force their beliefs ... specious - esoteric - sectarian --- upon others !

Pretty much atheist - statist totalitarians ... power mongerers --- controllers - social engineers (( aclu - evo whacks )) !

Good Christians are being banned on the FR by the ..

ANOTHER - ' living ' science - gospel evolution FR cult ---

some kind of FR - pc ROYALTY - gods ... latter day SPECIAL saints!

[yankeedame]

I avoid Jefferson. He writes one thing and a few days later, writes an explanation of what he wrote a few days before which interprets the matter differently than one might think. He appears to be constantly in conflict with himself.

Amen! And preach on.

[Sacajaweau]

I wish I could clarify this further. In many cases, Jefferson was trying to be polite, always seeking "peace" when he got caught in the middle. (Sometimes, he drives me crazy).

I prefer Madison because he is direct and does not waiver and consider Madison the "Constitutional Dictionary".

That old "Define your words so I know of what you speak" comes to mind and he was the Master.

[Between the Lines]

David Barton has on occasion resorted to shoddy scholarship. He's had to retract several spurious quotations (under intense pressure) that he claimed came from the FF.

The only places on the net that question Barton are all athiest or seperation of church and state sites. And even they do not claim that he has made any retractions.

He's just as agenda driven as the anti-religion crowd.

Of course he is. Did you even see where this article came from? The Christian Broadcasting Network News.

[stainlessbanner]

An FR article from away's back Thomas Jefferson: Religious Freak

[XRdsRev]

"""""When we did separate from Great Britain in 1776, more than half the states abolished slavery --New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. Not every state did, you had four in the south that kept it. But you have a huge majority of Founding Fathers that were anti-slavery. Never owned slaves."

I don't understand this quote. Did Barton mean the importation of slaves? There were certainly more than four states in the South that allowed slavery after 1776, and in the year that Washington died, 1799, there were slaves in New York. """""

Barton is talking about the make-up of the U. States in 1776, there were only 4 "southern states" (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia) and in reality there were only 3 (in 1780's America, Virginia was not considered a "southern" state, it was part of the mid-Atlantic region along with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland).

In the east today, we use the Mason-Dixon line(Pennsylvania/Maryland boundary) as our arbitrary boundary between North and South. Historically however, Virginia and Maryland were not considered "southern states" but "mid Atlantic states". Up until the Civil War, economically and socially, Maryland & Virginia were more tied to their northern neighbors (Pennsylvania, New Jersey & Delaware) than they were to the Carolina's. For a good part of the early 19th century, one of the colleges of choice for young Southern gentlemen was Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

As for slavery in New York, I believe they adopted the same system that eventually was used in New Jersey. Slavery was abolished by law but existing slaves could be kept for a certain number of years after abolition according to certain legal qualifications.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

David Barton has on occasion resorted to shoddy scholarship.

Here's an example from this piece:

"Barton said, "The Founding Fathers were overwhelmingly Christian…I love to spend time on the least religious founders. You have Franklin, as governor installs the Bible and Christianity in the public schools of Pennsylvania. Franklin was the man who made sure we had prayer at every session of Congress and that we had paid chaplains to do so.""

Clearly Barton implies Benjamin Franklin ("The Founding Fathers . . . ", of which Benjamin is clearly one) did this "as governor." Unless I'm horribly mistaken, Benjamin Franklin never the governor of any state or province. His son, William, of course, was the last royal governor of New Jersey. He was also a die-hard Loyalist---and had a massive falling-out with his father over it---so he was hardly a Founding Father.

Whoops . . .

[f.Christian]

The founding father's via the reformation established the ' secular ' state ... liberals via atheism - evolution --- has destroyed it !

I could say exactly the same for the FR ... it's happening !

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Thanks for your input.

[CobaltBlue]

Your statement of facts with respect to Benjamin Franklin are correct. It's a ridiculous claim that should embarrass a high school student.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

I thought it sounded a little bit suspect . . .

Whoever wrote this thing, and whoever edited it, well, they're both not very careful at all. Hopefully it was just an innocent mistake, but to me it smelled like an attempt to bend history in order to make a particular point.