Good points but you did not answer my question, what did our founding fathers want? Not a trick question, I really want to know what you think.
I don't remember many sermons but one I do. Pastor got up in the pulpit and the first thing he said was he could prophecy. Got my attention and made me a little worried at that point. You would have to know the pastor and situation to understand why he got my attention. Anyway, he said he could prophecy like Jonah. Jonah went to the people of Nineveh and said in essence, “If you don't change your ways, something bad is going to happen to you.” My pastor then went into some detailed examples and concluded that we can can also prophecy in the same way and SHOULD.
In that regard, I think prophecy is still alive and well. And, maybe like Jonah, I don't think the people are going to change. But then Jonah was wrong.............
They said what they wanted.I can speculate-as well as any but can give concrete example of why I believe what I have read. They -the Founders- wanted to govern a free people -wanted to form a new thing a republican form of democracy under God.
and they set about the fashioning by deliberation—and I note that first Congress -as its first act invited Rev.J.Duche
to perform divine Services Sept.7,1774 -a sectarian service -that some like John Jay of New York and Mr.Rutledge of S.C.
had opposed(much for the same reason Christian Statesmen fail to come together today) they seem to have believed they were “too divided in religious sentiments.” Yet they seemed unanimous in their agreed action to thank Mr.Duche for the divine services and for the “excellent prayer” (a prayer that closed “all this we ask in the name and through the merits of of Jesus Christ,Thy Son and our Savior,Amen”
A prayer the modern secularists would insist was somehow unconstitutional’today and one they would have us believe would have been unconstitutional when given had that Congress been under our Constitution.