Free Republic

Many historians call the Founding Fathers "Deists," and many of them were not true Christians -- after all, Thomas Jefferson tore all the miracles out of the Gospels! But judging by the Declaration of Independence, our Founders were more religious than many think: our founding document mentions God no less than four times.This is not to say America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation -- the federal government has never had an established religion. But the Jewish and Christian understandings of God deeply influenced the founding generation, and that influence radiates from the Declaration of Independence.Here are the four...

Thomas Paine and the Age of Reason Thomas Paine is sometimes grouped with the Founding Fathers. Your daily newspaper might reinforce this view with editorials like this: Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Paine and most of our other patriarchs were at best deists, believing in the unmoved mover of Aristotle, but not the God of the Old and New Testaments.[1] It would be difficult to name a single one of the Founding Fathers who approved of Paine's Age of Reason, his famous tract attacking religion in general and evangelical Christianity in particular. Even less-than-evangelicals like Benjamin Franklin and the "Unitarians" all denounced...

How liberals and atheists have misinformed people about the Founding Father's religiuos beliefs. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19238913&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623508&rfi=6

In nearly every interview about my book, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism,I am asked whether I am an atheist or an agnostic. The bias--a profoundly American bias--implicit in this question is that only an "unbeliever" would want to write a historical work about the secular influences on the founding and development of our nation. [...] What we ought to be talking about are decent human values that can be subscribed to by Americans of any faith or no faith. I could not care less whether any elected official believes in God: I care about what he or she does...

Are the theocons taking over?By William Rusher Thursday, October 26, 2006 There's not a lot of argument about it: For better or worse, The New York Times is far and away the most influential newspaper in the country, and probably in the world. The news sections of the major television networks sound like, and probably are, the handiwork of producers who get the lion's share of their information, not to mention their opinions, from that morning's front page of the Times. And its Sunday Book Review section is as close as many of America's leading thinkers and opinion-makers ever...

A common and false impression about America’s Founding Fathers is that they were deists -- that is, they believed in a "watchmaker" God who set the universe in motion and then stepped aside to let it run itself. The deist god lacks the interest, or the power, to intervene in human affairs. Michael Novak, a celebrated theologian and author, convincingly rebutted this misconception in his book, "On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding." In "Washington's God," Novak and his daughter Jana turn their attention to the religious beliefs of America's first and greatest President. The...

Opinions vary on the topic, between those with religion and those without. They vary between the politically motivated--those who believe in morality based self-governance versus those who seek man’s dominion over men through man-made, man-interpreted and man-enforced laws. They even vary among believers, some of whom believe in an unwritten separation of church and state versus others who believe only in that which was actually written into our Constitution by the founders. If you are looking for a debate, few topics will so readily attract opposition. Is it a question of faith or historical fact? It’s hard to get folks...

Misquoting Our Founding Fathers    TO THE SOURCE How many times have your heard that "Our founding fathers were not Christians! They were deists!"? It is an absurd assertion. It conjures up images of clandestine gatherings in Philadelphia's Independence Hall where one by one Washington and Jefferson and Adams et al swear allegiance to some obscure deist creed and pledge to set America on the course of eradicating Biblical belief from all corners of the land. Sure some of our nation's founders were deists. Consider the grumpy pamphleteer Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason: "I do not believe in...

Sometimes recognizing a problem requires finding the right words to name it. Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton have coined a phrase that describes perfectly the dominant American religion: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Those authors are researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and have written up their findings in a new book: Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press). After interviewing over 3,000 teenagers, the social scientists summed up their beliefs: (1) "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over...

March 26, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Jefferson, Madison, Newdow? By KENNETH C. DAVIS DORSET, Vt. When Michael Newdow stood before the Supreme Court on Wednesday and made the case for atheism, he probably didn't win many converts. But his quixotic crusade to rid the Pledge of Allegiance of the words "under God" is a peculiarly American act of courage. And somewhere the spirits of Jefferson, Madison and Franklin may well be smiling. Few questions have inspired as much myth and misconception as the place of God in America. For example, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit...

So Much For Deists Col. Robert Pappas 12/21/2002 The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the term "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional has prompted heated debate. Much of that debate has centered on whether or not the Founding Fathers were Christian; whether they were influenced by their faith as they forged the Constitution; and, whether or not they sought to exclude religion from the national political landscape. First, the Founders were overwhelmingly Christian and their intent is well and clearly stated in the plain language of the Constitution, the "Congress shall make no law...