Francis Hopkinson was one of America's founders -- a "Founding father." He was not a "key founder" however (meaning that he's one that most people don't remember).
He may also have been a unitarian. What I have discovered over the many years of researching America's founders personal religious views is that virtually all of were in some way formally connected with a church that had a Trinitarian creed. But we really don't know what they believed in until we dig a little deeper into the record.
Theological unitarianism was "en vogue" amongst some of the more "philosophically minded" theists.
I came upon a passage from Hopkinson where I thought he identified himself as an anti-Trinitarian. However, reading the passage in context Hopkinson appears to be speaking of someone else, perhaps a fictitious character. A "cobbler."
As he wrote:
ON my arrival in this country, I was much chagrined to find that the doctrine of the Trinity was generally received and professed; a doctrine against which I had acquired the strongest antipathy from my master, the great philosopher. However, as war raged in the country, there was no time for theological disquisitions; and as the justice of the war was clearly on the side of the Americans, I resolved to take an active part in their cause, and enlisted myself a soldier in the Pennsylvania line. I went through inexpressible toil and danger, in marches, counter-marches, skirmishes and battles, and was finally wounded at the siege of York-Town, when lord Cornwallis and his army surrendered to the allied forces of France and America.
After the peace, I supported myself by cobling and patching, and employed my leisure hours in combating the doctrine of the Trinity, and devising grand schemes for public utility.
See also here.
2 comments:
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Hopkinson wrote that about himself. Most all of them were enlightenment rationalists.
Muchas gracias por compartir esto con todos nosotros .. Marcado como favorito. es un artículo muy bonito
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