# Our Founding Fathers and Christianity. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 12, 2019, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745 "2019-12-12T11:54:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/41 "2019-12-30T22:21:50Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > But we don’t live in the Antebellum Era, the Constitution has been repeatedly amended since the adoption of its first ten amendments, and in particular the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that, as the [United States Supreme Court put it](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/), “…a provision of the Bill of Rights that protects a right that is fundamental from an American perspective applies equally to the Federal Government and the States”. The OP asks if the country was founded on Christianity, not what the amendment process was nearly a hundred years later and what the Supreme Court said two hundred years later. Even if we concede that the entire Bill of Rights is applicable to the States because of the 14th amendment (even though the left wouldn’t have applied the 2nd amendment, but that’s another thread) it cannot be argued that the 1st Amendment is far stricter on the states than on the feds. This idea of no religion in public schools or government property would have been absurd at the founding and should be equally absurd today. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/42 "2019-12-30T22:30:33Z")
No one is arguing that the First Amendment should be “far stricter on the states than on the feds”. We are only arguing that the post-Reconstruction Era Constitution’s protections for individual rights should be _equally_ strict on the federal government and on the states. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/43 "2019-12-30T22:36:25Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Good, so you agree with me that the founders, while not basing a government strictly on Christianity, nonetheless would have had no problem with religious displays on government property, and that they further recognized that they were establishing a government in which individual states could compel Christian worship? > > If we can agree on that, then I won’t quibble about the “founded on the Christian religion” statement because it is technically true. I only object when the statement is used for nefarious statements that are wholly disconnected from history. “Nefarious statements”?? As in, “[wicked or criminal](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nefarious)”? WTF are you talking about? Anyway, all of your discussion of the states is utterly irrelevant to this thread, so I’ll step away. It’s not just technically true, it’s also actually true that this country was not founded on the Christian religion. You say that there are parts of the Constitution that came from the Christian bible but then failed to back that up, and instead changed to talking about the states. As I mentioned above, this isn’t a fruitful debate, since you’re not actually debating my points or sticking to this subject, so I’ll bow out. **MEBuckner** , thanks for doing the heavy lifting! I love your point about states outlawing Christianity! ETA: Can you stop with your bullshit broad brush “the Left” asides? It adds exactly nothing to the conversation and just makes it yet another bullshit partisan slog. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/44 "2019-12-30T23:21:40Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > No one is arguing that the First Amendment should be “far stricter on the states than on the feds”. We are only arguing that the post-Reconstruction Era Constitution’s protections for individual rights should be _equally_ strict on the federal government and on the states. None of the reconstruction amendments placed any restrictions on the federal government. Not a one. You could argue that the 13th amendment prevented any sort of federal legalization of slavery (which was never contemplated), but the 14th and 15th applied to states only. Nothing in those amendments could reasonably be argued that a restriction of federal power in the BOR was more restricted. > [@RitterSport](#): > > “Nefarious statements”?? As in, “[wicked or criminal](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nefarious)”? WTF are you talking about? > > Anyway, all of your discussion of the states is utterly irrelevant to this thread, so I’ll step away. It’s not just technically true, it’s also actually true that this country was not founded on the Christian religion. You say that there are parts of the Constitution that came from the Christian bible but then failed to back that up, and instead changed to talking about the states. > > As I mentioned above, this isn’t a fruitful debate, since you’re not actually debating my points or sticking to this subject, so I’ll bow out. **MEBuckner** , thanks for doing the heavy lifting! I love your point about states outlawing Christianity! > > ETA: Can you stop with your bullshit broad brush “the Left” asides? It adds exactly nothing to the conversation and just makes it yet another bullshit partisan slog. My whole point which you have failed to acknowledge or accept is that I have never argued that the United States is a theocracy. However what really is beyond debate and I wish you would simply accept is that the United States was founded by a Christian populace and lived by Christian principles. As such, displays of Christianity at the courthouse or on government property were prevalent and continued to be for nearly two hundred years. This was so undisputed as to not be necessary to discuss it in a constitution which merely discusses the balance of power between states and a new national government it created. If this new government was meant to prohibit religious displays on government property or otherwise require abject neutrality or hostility towards any displays of religion in this new society, it seems odd that they continued to allow states to do that and so much more. This nonsense and LOLs about how the states could outlaw Christianity illustrates my point. In a Christian society, you do not have to worry about such a thing so you fail to address it. If you would agree that “not founded on Christianity” does not equal “no religious displays on government property,” then we are good. But you want to equate them. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/45 "2019-12-30T23:39:03Z")
Let me know if you want to re-engage on the topic of this thread, and please bring the cite for the section of the Constitution that was “inherently Christian”. Until then, bye! ---
**Author:** ![rosecoloredboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/53a042/32.png) [@rosecoloredboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rosecoloredboy)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/46 "2019-12-31T05:23:05Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > [George Washington was an Anglican](https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/religion/8-facts-about-george-washington-and-religion/). Jefferson and Franklin were deists as was the pamphleteer Thomas Paine, but if I recall correctly, all three said that Jesus Christ was the greatest and wisest person ever, or something along those lines. They only denied the divinity of Christ, so the question of whether they were Christians would depend on who’s drawing the line. > > Among signers of the Declaration of Independence, most were members of Christian denominations. For some their religion was unknown. Only a handle were known to be deists. [Full list here](https://www.usconstitution.net/declarsigndata.html). IMO if you don’t believe Jesus is God, you aren’t a Christian. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/47 "2020-01-01T21:24:49Z")
> [@rosecoloredboy](#): > > IMO if you don’t believe Jesus is God, you aren’t a Christian. And if you do, you’re a Paulist, since Yeshua bir Miryam aka Jesus never claimed divinity, and Saul / Paul, the torturer and death-squad leader who founded Xianity, never quoted his supposed lord. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/48 "2020-01-06T07:44:01Z")
> [@rosecoloredboy](#): > > IMO if you don’t believe Jesus is God, you aren’t a Christian. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/49 "2020-01-06T20:29:05Z")
There’s a popular saying that is centuries old that often gets attributed to various people, Lord Beaconsfield is one. When people are inclined to ask another what is their religion, some reply, _A religion of wise men._ And when asked further what that may be, one replies, _Wise men never tell._ There are many times when George Washington was pressed to say one way or the other what his personal religious beliefs were. If he was some kind of Christian, I think it would have benefited him politically to do say so. However, if he was a Deist, he had to be more careful, more so for total unbelief, it wouldn’t have been wise to say so (see what happened to Thomas Paine for just being a Deist). I think he went to his grave never showing his hand. The Mt. Vernon site does use Franklin Stenier on occasion with some authors, something I wished they would have went to more, because he tracked down many of the popular sources trying to Christianize Washington posthumously. He also relied on his best source of all, George Washington’s personal diaries which he started writing at age 13, and often daily entries up until his death. His diaries are also on-line at the Library of Congress, although a difficult read due to his cursive style. I found Franklin Steiner on-line, and here is the entry on George Washington that is only a 20-30 minute read:[George Washington-The Vestryman Who Was Not A Communicant](https://infidels.org/library/historical/franklin_steiner/presidents.html#1) ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/50 "2020-01-06T21:32:50Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Good, so you agree with me that the founders, while not basing a government strictly on Christianity, nonetheless would have had no problem with religious displays on government property, "The fair inference is that there was no common understanding about the limits of the establishment prohibition, and the dissent’s conclusion that its narrower view was the original understanding, post, at 2–3, stretches the evidence beyond tensile capacity. What the evidence does show is a group of statesmen, like others before and after them, who proposed a guarantee with contours not wholly worked out, leaving the Establishment Clause with edges still to be determined. And none the worse for that. Indeterminate edges are the kind to have in a constitution meant to endure, and to meet “exigencies which, if foreseen at all, must have been seen dimly, and which can be best provided for as they occur.” McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844 (2005). ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/51 "2020-01-06T23:32:26Z")
> [@rosecoloredboy](#): > > IMO if you don’t believe Jesus is God, you aren’t a Christian. Well, you are not a \*mainstream \*Christian. A Divine Nature of or in the Christ is a common theme to most Christianities. But are Jehovah’s Witnesses Christian? They do not consider Jesus to be God but just a Very Importand Dude in the Heavenly Court. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/52 "2020-01-07T00:22:11Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Well, you are not a \*mainstream \*Christian. A Divine Nature of or in the Christ is a common theme to most Christianities. But are Jehovah’s Witnesses Christian? They do not consider Jesus to be God but just a Very Importand Dude in the Heavenly Court. For precisely that reason a great many Christians of other denominations deny that the JWs are Christians. This is essentially a semantic argument about the “correct” definition of the word _Christian_ and, as such, (a) can have no conclusive answer, and (b) is both boring and unimportant. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745/53 "2020-01-07T03:58:52Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > This is essentially a semantic argument about the “correct” definition of the word _Christian_ and, as such, (a) can have no conclusive answer, and (b) is both boring and unimportant. Oh, the answer is quite simple. Believe what _ **I** _ believe and you’re okay, mate. Believe anything else and you’re a tool of Satan or, at best, a heathen scumbag bound for eternal immersion in a hot acid bath. Venus must be Hell, with immortality. See; simple! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-founding-fathers-and-christianity/844745.md?page=2)