Listing Jefferson’s quote “I tremble for my country when I think that God is just” is hardly a ringing endorsement of his deism, much less atheism.
The statement “founded as a Christian nation”, or any other religion, is nonsense without stretching the definition of “founded” to ridiculous lengths. The Founders were primarily Christian, yes, just as most Americans are today, but we were not “founded” as a Christian nation. The nation was founded on the principles of diversity, tolerance, and non-establishment.
Concede what? The idea that we are a Christian Nation is reading history to make it come out your way. Like now, there were atheists, non believers and others around too.They all had input.
What do you think your cites prove? You’re using them, one can only assume" as evidence that the founders held a certain opinion about the role religion should play in government. Right?
I was responding to ITR Champion. My point is, the Founding Fathers weren’t all Deists, but certainly the Revolution was a product of the broader Enlightenment in European culture. The Enlightenment-influenced Founders (including the Deists among them) may or may not have truly supported slavery, but it is certainly true that they failed to do anything about it, and left the issue for future generations, who had to fight a huge, bloody war about the issue.
But the main point for this thread is:
Poster 1: The Founders didn’t want religion and government entangled, based on what they said and wrote. Poster 2: Yeah, but the Founders also wrote a Constitution that allowed slavery–so much for President Obama! Poster 3: Except that the parts about slavery have all been changed. The parts about religion haven’t. What was written into the original Constitution regarding slavery no longer applies, but what was written into the original Constiution (and Bill of Rights) [concerning religion] still governs.
I skimmed the list; that’s why. That’s ultimately irrelevant though, since the quotations from Adams and Madison do not indicate any deistic slant.
First of all, which Adams are you talking about? If you mean John Quincy Adams (not a founding father, BTW), your link simply quotes his views on Jefferson. It says nothing about his own views regarding deism. On the other hand, if you mean John Adams, then the quotations in question would merely express his disdain for traditional Christianity. They fall far, far short of proving that he was a deist.
Ditto for Madison. The quotations that are ascribed to him express a desire for a certain level of separation between religion and government. Again, this is a far cry from showing that he was expressing deistic views.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that both of them were indeed deists. All this shows is that a tiny handful of the founding fathers espoused deistic views. The vast majority gave no such indications; indeed, most of them were avowed church members. To say that your list constitutes “Quotes from the Founding Fathers” is only a half-truth at best.
Cherry picked quotations selected by a group with an agenda is not “allow[ing] them to speak for themselves.”
The question in the OP was not merely separation of church and state but the prevalence of deists and their influence on contemporary vs current beliefs. We already have the list of founders wiith their ostensible religious beliefs along with some more nuanced observations about Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.
Any claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, (as opposed to as a nation with an overwhelmingly Christian population), is clearly nonsense, but it is not made more nonsensical by quote mining in an absence of actual context.
Christians tend to confuse the founding fathers with the pilgrims.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard people say “The founders of our country came here for religious freedom,” nor can I tell you how many times that is used as a preface to explain why their religion is right and the rest are wrong.
Often, when I explain that the founding fathers weren’t that religious and didn’t “come here” for any specific purpose, but they seceded from England because of unfair taxes and lack of representation, and that religion had nothing to do with any of it, they look at me as if I were reciting verses from the satanic bible.
It was the puritans who wanted religious freedom. Freedom to hang and crush people with stones if they suspected them to be witches.
I grew up going to church 3 times a week and all of my schooling until 9th grade was at christian schools. Every facet of American history was presented to me in some pro-christian spin, such as how Washington would stop in the middle of battle and pray, or how “many” native Americans were converted to christianity by the colonials. The rest, though, were godless savages who worshiped dirt.
I’m sure this is true of all religions. My experience with christianity is that it’s a lot of self-affirmation. Darwin converted on his deathbed, many chinese are secret christians, etc etc etc. If it’s not that, it’s the complete opposite (playing victim). Teaching evolution is just one of many senseless attacks against god-fearing christians, etc etc.
Best example of both points I can think of is this:
Laminin is a type of protein that exists in the human body. Some famous pastor noticed that the molecular diagram of laminin looks like a cross, and began a mini-meme that this is something special. What that something special is, they can’t say, but just the fact is good enough for them. Something in the body looks like a cross under an electron microscope, therefore god exists(?).
When that started gaining momentum, a warningwas put on Laminin’s wikipedia article that christians were probably going to start adding references to this within the article, and without a notable source it didn’t belong there. What followed was a massive religious debate (“we’re being persecuted”) and a flood of edits and revisions.
Obligatory: not all christians are like this, many are perfectly wonderful human beings. Etc etc.
Replace “pray” with “take Communion” in DtC’s post & he’s right. For some reason (I wonder if perhaps due to an overly rigourous view of judging oneself as worthy), George Washington did not take Communion.