And they didn’t believe that black people should be free from slavery, so there goes Obama (sorry liberals).
Jefferson did indeed make such a book, but not with the far-reaching intentions that some people think. In fact, he didn’t even refer to it as “the Jefferson Bible”. He did not intend for it to replace the real Bible or even to be used in conjunction with the real Bible. He also kept a non-altered Bible for personal use. The altered one was more of an intellectual exercise.
Indeed. Of course, isn’t that what Voyages of Discovery are for? 
Is this a Deist premise?
Wherever did you get your education concerning Deism?
Corps of Discovery.
slogans, mottos and money imprints were added later.
the original question was about the founding.
the declaration was an important document for King George and the British government. it does not have real application otherwise, a piece of history but not a governing document.
the constitution and its amendments was the structure of the government at its founding.
What other religion did the white settlers know except for Christianity? If their wording falls within a Christian framework, it is surely for that reason. But what Chrisitianity? They were trying to unite states whose founders had gone there because they were so extreme that no European Protestant nation could tolerate them or they it, as well as those who didn’t give a damn out to get rich, Catholics in Maryland (one of the more religiously tolerant states) and Freemasons of the European-Scottish Rite not reformed to suit the Anglo-German monarchy constituting 53 out of 56 signatories to the Articles.
It was an exercise in what he actually believed. he clearly, unambiguously rejected any notion of miracles, a God who intervened in the universe and the divinity of Jesus. He explicitly stated that nothing good had ever come of Christianity. He was, for all intents and purposes, an atheist in all but a (mistaken) belief that the universe must have required some kind of “creator.”
Cite that this is a DEIST belief.
I will grant that it was certainly that belief of the vast majority of white Christians at the time.
The Deist-influenced Constitution did indeed allow for slavery. It was amended. (There was also that little matter of The War.)
Since the various clauses of the Constitution dealing with religion (oaths and affirmations, religious tests, the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment) have not been amended (beyond the First Amendment itself), what the Founders said about religion and government still stands. (The Fourteenth Amendment is also key here, since although it makes no direct mention of religious liberty, it extends the protections of the federal legal system to the rights of American citizens as against state and local governments as well as Congress.)
If you want government endorsement of religon, amend the Constitution.
You know…with all this discussion, about deism etc…I have lurked on religious fundie boards…and it REALLY makes me mad when fundies are going on and on about how they think that being “neutral” on religion means that the government is anti-Christian. Um no. It simply means that the government should be neutral on religion…meaning they shouldn’t favor one system of beliefs over another. Not everyone in this country is Christian.
being neutral is favoring no one. many people thing that if fair.
though many people fairness is being on their side.
[NITPICK] The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was the structure of the government at its founding until 21 June 1788 when the AoCaPU were replaced by the Constitution. [/NITPICK]
CMC fnord!
http://www.mega.nu:8080/atheist_quotes_1.html Quotes from our founding fathers. Allow them to speak for themselves.
I’m not disagreeing with the sentiment here but I don’t understand why you single out Deism…
Slavery was supported by a wide range of folks for many different reasons.
If the Founding Folks were a panoply of religions (is this even in contention?) wasn’t there likely an influence from some/any/all of these? Further, is it not also possible that parts of the constitution were influenced by other factors (cultures/ideologies)? Wasn’t part of the point in creating this document to limit these kinds of influences on and from the government?
Several people have commented on George Washington. Before the War, Washington was an active member of the Church of England (Episcopal Church). He was a vestryman of the church in Truro, Virginia, and regularly attended and took communion there.
After the war, he apparently stopped taking communion but continued to attend for a while. Eventually he stopped going altogether.
He sounds like a Christian who gradually became non-observant, but not necessarily a Deist. As far as I know he never made any public comments about his own particular faith.
The only people who can be definitively considered as founding fathers in that list are Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Neither one of them was unambiguously deistic, for reasons that have already been covered in this thread. Moreover, they certainly do not constitute a representative cross-section of the fathers in question.
Some of those quotes come from Thomas Paine, but he was a revolutionary firebrand and can only be considered a “founding father” in the broadest sense of the term. He certainly cannot be considered to be a definitive authority on the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the legal principles by which the country was founded. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cody Stanton are not founding fathers either, for a multitude of reasons (and not just the obvious one). As for Abraham Lincoln… well, I hope that nobody seriously considers him to be a founding father, either.
In short, we cannot look to Jefferson and Franklin as proof that the founding fathers were deists. Even if we could definitively conclude that both of these men were deists (and as I said, the evidence on that matter is confused), they most certainly do not represent the fathers as a whole.
A tangent that doesn’t touch on the Deism of the founding fathers, but does touch on the role of religion in government as it was understood in early America:
In 1832 Henry Clay asked Andrew Jackson to declare a day of prayer and fasting in response to a cholera epidemic. Though devoutly Presbyterian himself, Jackson refused, saying: “I could not do otherwise without transcending those limits which are prescribed by the Constitution for the President, and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the general government.”
Jackson was echoing his predecessor Thomas Jefferson’s desire that there should be a “wall of separation” (Jefferson’s words) between church and state.
I don’t think either man would be happy to know that there is a religious invocation on the currency that bears their likenesses.
I do wonder how much of that, though, was that he was a member of the House of Burgesses, and that, by law, members had to be members of the Episcopal Church.
Not that I’m doubting that Washington was devout, but it’s just important to remember how omnipresent religion was back then, and how important, culturally, it was.