Not a Christian Nation

Sticking to the religious freedom theme... As a Christian and a historian I’m always bugged when my fellow believers insist that all of the Founding Fathers were devout textbook Christians who used Christianity as the basis to establish the country. That simply isn’t true.

Based on the reading I have done (others may disagree) I have found there were different religious habits among the Founders. Most of the Founders were Protestants but their practice of their religion varied. There were three categories of believers:

1. The Founders who left their Christian heritage and became proponents of the Enlightenment and natural religion called “Deism”. This belief acknowledges a creator but ignores the supernatural such as the contact between God and man. This included Thomas Paine.

2. The Founders that remained Christians and acknowledged the divinity of Jesus Christ and the supernatural events in the Bible. This included Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams.

3. The group that consisted of Founders that were in between. Practicing Christians who were influenced by “Deism”. They believed in Jesus Christ but little or none of the supernaturalism that was inherent to the teachings of the Bible. This included John Adams and George Washington on the conservative side to Benjamin Franklin and James Monroe on the skeptical left.

4. Thomas Jefferson was not a proponent of the supernatural either and even went so far as to cut and paste his own bible removing those segments.

So although the Founders were influenced by their beliefs it was not what we would call today “textbook Christianity.” Unfortunately there are far too many Christians that are teaching this oversimplistic version of history.

Many believe that the rights of religious freedom that the Founding Fathers spoke about were only regarding Christian denominations. Once again this is not true. Jews were well represented in the country to have the same freedoms and about 10-20% of the enslaved people in the country were Muslim. This also included the desire to not practice a religion by the Atheists.

George Washington expected people coming from other parts of the world to represent other beliefs. Washington sent a letter to his agent in Baltimore in 1784, asking him to acquire some qualified indentured tradesmen with specific skills to work at Mount Vernon. He wrote that, “If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia [sic], Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews, Christian of any Sect—or they may be Atheists.” All he asked was that they do good work.

I believe James Monroe captures the essence of this philosophy: “We hold it for a fundamental and inalienable truth that religion and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction not by force and violence. The religion, then, of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”

So unlike today, an equal acknowledgement appeared to be given to Christian, Jew, Muslim or Atheist. This is another lesson that we can learn from our Founding Fathers. Don’t discriminate.