The only "Framer" who was clearly a a deist, was Thomas Paine. His Age of Reason makes it perfectly clear that that was his viewpoint at the end of his life (though not when he wrote his towering works, Common Sense and The American Crisis).
This is typical of the leftists; when you give an inch, they take a mile. People like Binswanger and the Ayn Rand Institute shove Tom Paine into the "atheist" category -- they take each political philosopher, and shove them one more notch to the left than they really were.
As the author on an upcoming book on Tom Paine (entitled These Are the Times that Try Men's Souls) I will cheerfully take Binswanger on, nose to nose and research to reseach.
Is he reading this thread? Binswanger, you are a liar, and should be ashamed of yourself. There, does that cover the waterfront?
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "We Are Running for Congress -- Maybe," discussion thread on FR.
i would never argue about labels, but from looking at his life and writings it is pretty clear that franklin, while a christian, was not at all dogmatic and not even particularly religious. he was a product of enlightenment rationalism and clearly rejected the type of puritan psuedo-theocracy he'd experienced growing up in new england.
you talk about selective quoting, but neo-puritans themselves are quite fond of pointing to the mere mention of God in any of the framer's writing (included, laughably, the term 'anno domino') as evidence that they were both devout and activist.