Jim, you can’t just declare this to be true. If your OP is going to be based on this statement, then you’ve got to provide some basis for believing it.
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin are frequently stated to be deists, but they were hardly consistent in their deism. By all indications, they either held confused beliefs or were merely deists at various points in their lives.
Strictly speaking, the term “Founding Fathers” refers to the 55 delegates of the Constitutional Convention. Out of these people, there were 28 Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians, seven Congregationalists, two Lutherans, two Dutch Reformed, two Methodists, and two Roman Catholics. (John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987) Even if you throw in Thomas Jefferson (a reasonable statement, IMO), most of these people did publicly profess to belong to non-deistic churches – and as stated earlier, he was hardly a consistent deist.
What about Thomas Paine? He was a prominent revolutionary, but not a founding father in the strictest sense. Nor was Ethan Allen. Even if we were to consider them to be founding fathers though, they would hardly be representative of the fathers in general.
I was just listening to a podcast today about Thomas Jefferson’s Deism. Apparently the Boston Globe published an editorial that went something like “Thomas Jefferson didn’t believe in evolution [this was before the publishing of the origin of species], therefore if he were alive today he would advocate teaching creationism, therefore creationism is right”.
Not only is it an absurd argument, but apparently Jefferson was a man very educated in science and something of a skeptic. He wrote theJefferson Bible which is essentially the Bible with all of the supernatural stuff removed. He thought the moral lessons were valuable, but that all the supernatural, hands-on God stuff was BS.
He believed in a god in the sense that there was probably some greater entity out there that created the universe, but not a personal god that intervened supernaturally in the world. Maybe something like Spinoza’s god.
Considering that he was a scientist knowledgable in may fields, a very well rounded intellectual in general, I have no doubt that if he lived today, with our modern scientific methods and evidence, there’s no doubt he would laugh at the idea of government sponsored teaching of creationism in schools.
Edit: And he founded the unitarian church, right? Which may be the least religious religion there is.
He did a lot of things, but he never founded the Unitarian church. The modern Unitarian church doesn’t really have one particular founder. but if you had to name one, it would be Theophilus Lindsey in Britain or William Channing in the US. Jefferson was sympathetic to the Unitarians, frequently corresponded with Unitarians on matters of religion, and attended Unitarian services with Joseph Priestley (yes, the guy who discovered oxygen), but didn’t found the denomination.
Well, Thomas Jefferson believed in some sort of God. Presumably a cite isn’t really needed for that, but I’m sure I could dig one up if anybody insists.
Thomas Jefferson, in his own words did not believe in “the immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection & visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election orders of Hierarchy etc.” Some of those doctrines which Jefferson repudiates are specific to one or the other sect of Christianity (“election” to the Calvinists, “orders of hierarchy” to the Catholics), but Jefferson disclaims belief in original sin, the deity of Jesus or any miraculous powers on his part, atonement, or the resurrection. Or the Trinity. Which pretty much does away with all of the foundational beliefs which separate Christianity from any other system of monotheism.
In that same letter (from 1819) Jefferson declares himself to be an “Epicurean”, and the ancient Epicurean beliefs about religion God or the gods sound an awful lot like what in the 18th century were called “Deists”. In another letter, from 1820, Jefferson, although professing to revere Jesus as a great moral philosopher, nonetheless goes to far as to list what he considers to be Jesus’ Biggest Mistakes, from a philosophical point of view–not the attitude one normally associates with those who consider Jesus to have been the Christ.
It is true that descriptions of Deism are sometimes a bit schematic; the American Deists seem to have had a “warmer” set of beliefs than the stereotypical claims about an absolutely cool and detached belief in a “watchmaker God” who takes no action at all–certainly American Deists seem to express a belief that the Creator endowed humans with a moral sense, and even in some sort of Divine “Providence” or plan (though not in miracles as such). But I would have to say that someone who believes in a monotheistic God, but disavows pretty much all of the specfically distinctive beliefs of Christianity, talks about his beliefs in highly rationalistic language, and self-identifies with the ancient Epicureans, fits the description of “Deist” pretty darned well.
I think what he’s trying to say is that Jefferson didn’t hold these beliefs for his entire life, which I think is safe to say. I think the work that most influenced Jefferson’s religious thinking was “Corruptions of Christianity” by Joseph Priestley (still the oxygen guy), published in 1782. I think you can date his “conversion” to Deism as a process starting in the 1780s, so that by the 1819 letter, he was a Deist in belief, even if he didn’t use the term to describe himself.
I’m not contesting any of that, MEB. I would by no means declare that Jefferson was a traditional Christian by any stretch of the imagination.
He was not unambiguously a deist, though. While he often appeared to espouse deism, he was by no means consistent in this regard. In his second inaugural address, for example, he made an appeal for prayers to Israel’s God on his behalf. As I said, it could be that he was deistic at certain points of his life, or it could simply mean that he held to some confused beliefs.
Either way, we simply cannot extrapolate from Jefferson (or even Jefferson and Franklin) to declare that the Founding Fathers were generally deists.
Well put. Religious conservatives often deliberately blur the distinction between the “public square”, meaning a place where people are free to come and go and express themselves as they pass, and the government in its capacity to make official pronouncemets.
BTW, speaking of Jefferson, it’s worth noting that the Declaration of Independence which he authored contains at least four references to God. The document ends, for example, by saying “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence…” That would be a most unusual thing for someone who believes in an uninvolved God to declare. This is further evidence that Jefferson cannot be neatly classified as a deist.
That is exactly what I was saying. Well, that and the possibility that his beliefs were somewhat confused and inconsistent.
I agree that this is a safe thing to say, as evidenced by his appeals for people to rely on the protection of divine providence in the Declaration of Independence.
Also, I disagree that someone who “disavows pretty much all of the specfically distinctive beliefs of Christianity, talks about his beliefs in highly rationalistic language, and self-identifies with the ancient Epicureans, fits the description of ‘Deist’ pretty darned well.” To be a deist is to reject the possibility of God’s involvement in the world. One can reject specifically Christian beliefs, use rationalistic language, and even self-identify with the Epicureans without necessarily precluding the possibility of God interacting with the world.
Jefferson clearly and unambiguously rejected the divinity of Jesus, all Biblical miracles, and expressed contempt for Christianity in general.
John Adams explicitly said that “The United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.”
George Washington sometimes attended church, but always declined to take part in prayers, and those close to him said they never saw him pray at all, either in public or in private.
Most significantly, there is absolutely nothing in the US Constitution that has any basis whatever in Christian doctrine – not a single idea, thought or right in the document is Christian (or “Judeo-Christian”) in origin, despite the fervent wishful thinking of the American religious right.
Well, that is that pesky matter of requiring oaths or affirmations - both of which come from differing interpretations of Gospel. This is mentioned in Article I Section 3, Article II Section 1, Article IV, and the Fourth Amendment.
Well, that doesn’t necessarily say one thing or another about Jefferson’s beliefs at the time he made the speech. It was after all, a public inaugural speech, and appeals to religion and an appeal for prayers is kind of expected at that point. Even if Jefferson didn’t believe prayers would do any spiritual good, there’s nothing to keep him from knowing that asking for people to pray for him might do him political good.
I didn’t say the Constitution was based in Christianity - I was refuting the notion that nothing in the Constitution had any basis in Christian doctrine. That is clearly wrong - oaths do and so do affirmations, which arose from the Quaker reluctance to swear to tell the truth and imply that they may tell falsehoods outside of court. Other Christians are reluctant to swear oaths because of Christ’s admonition against swearing in the Sermon on the Mount. The legal system has accommodated this in England since 1695, and this construction found its way into the Constitution in several places.
Because of its basis in Christian doctrine or because it was a part of the the body of law that the (new) nation continued to use even after it declared independence from the country where that body of law originated?
