Note to NBC: Our Nations Founders were NOT Christians! (Rant)

[Clarkie1]

O.K., I was just watching the NBC nightly news and the topic came of the Missourian legislators proposing to make Christianity the official state religion. The piece spent considerable time presenting the argument that "the proponents present as fact that our nation's founders were Christian." This LIE is not questioned in the piece, and any viewer who didn't know better would be led to the conclusion that in fact, it is a fact this nation's founders were Christians.

THAT IS A BOLD-FACED LIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[AX10]

1. NBC=Defense Contractor GE.

GE makes a shitload of money off of the right wing's policies.

[Eric J in MN]

2. Maybe they're worried that Mr. Avergage and Mrs. Average

watching at home would be distraught to learn that Thomas Jefferson didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus or an interventionist God.

[jus_the_facts]

7. Indeed....here's a great website...should be required reading for everyone

http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

...my favorite quote....

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

[electron_blue]

3. I hear this all the time and never know what to say in rebuttal

Do you have anything handy to reply with? Who are our founders and what religion (if any) were they? Would the other side agree on who our founders were?

[Clarkie1]

11. In the words of the author of the Declaration of Independence...

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789


Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814


In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814


Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820


To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820


And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823


It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (the Apocalypse), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825


Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787


Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

Edit: link
http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

[carpetbagger]

13. The short list....

Washington: Belonged to Episcopal Church when that was a prerequisite for holding colonial office. Didn't take communion, switched churches when challenged about it. Some years went to church 4-5 times only, his own ministers said he wasn't a Christian.

Jefferson: Well-known beliefs against supernatural stuff, and against some of the key tenets of the Christian religion. He also vetoed a pair of bills which would have funded two churches to provide services. Just for kicks, he published a gospel of Jesus with all the miracles taken out.

Adams: Doubtful of things supernatural, his church became Unitarian within a generation.

Franklin: Deist.

Paine: Deist at best.

Madison: Christian, at least nominally, but the separation of church and state was his baby, and he meant it.

Patrick Henry: Everything that right wing Christianity says about him is true, proving the broken watch being right twice a day theory.

Try this for starters...

http://monotheism.us/

[Coastie for Truth]

15. Jefferson

You posted

Jefferson: Well-known beliefs against supernatural stuff, and against some of the key tenets of the Christian religion. He also vetoed a pair of bills which would have funded two churches to provide services. Just for kicks, he published a gospel of Jesus with all the miracles taken out.

The local Unitarian Community "claims" him as a Unitarian --- and they use the Jefferson Bible.

[hellbound-liberal]

4. Here's some ammo for your argument...

http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/secular.html

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. Which ones were and which ones weren't?

I understand a number were Deists, something I learned here on DU. I wonder what percentage were Puritan, Church of England, etc.?

[hellbound-liberal]

8. Hey Tallahassee Grannie, check out my previous post..

It contains all of the arguments you need. I lived in Tallahassee most of my life. I now live in Maryland. I miss the canopy roads and the sink holes.(among many other things!) Tallahassee will always be my home town.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

10. Come on down and visit sometime!

I grew up closer to your neck of the woods...NJ. I graduated from the U of Delaware in 1972.

[Teaser]

6. They were Deists

Let's press the gov't to reinstate Deism as our national religion.

God wound up the universe, got bored, and left...

[Jacobin]

12. Precisely

Thomas Jefferson re-wrote the bible to take out the magical things he found idiotic.

He was profoundly against religious sects having anything to do with government

[eallen]

9. Most were. Some of the most prominent, weren't.

Jefferson and Franklin explicitly disavowed the notion of a personal god. Ethan Allen wrote a diatribe against Christianity. Paine also was famous for his rejection of traditional religion. It was a time when political leaders felt free to join in the intellectual currents, and examine, possibly to reject, Christian religion.

But there were quite a few people who deserve to be called founders. I suspect if you studied each of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, that the majority of them were Christians of one stripe or another. The traditionalists likely are correct in that simple statement. What that overlooks is the huge difference in culture, when some who rejected traditional religion in all its forms could lead this nation, and even be elected president, to now, when obiesance to traditional religion is de rigeur for any politican.

[Coastie for Truth]

14. I read Forrest Church's books (Sen Frank Church's son)

a first rate historian and Harvard DD theologian. He implies that the Founders were nominally Unitarian.

An interesting read is Thomas Jefferson's translation of the Bible - classical UU.

[truth2power]

19. Thomas Jefferson was Unitarian in theology..

but a member of his local Episcopal Church.

"Like many others of his time (he died just one year after the founding of institutional Unitarianism in America), Jefferson was a Unitarian in theology, though not in church membership. He never joined a Unitarian congregation: there were none near his home in Virginia during his lifetime. He regularly attended Joseph Priestley's Pennsylvania church when he was nearby, and said that Priestley's theology was his own, and there is no doubt Priestley should be identified as Unitarian. Jefferson remained a member of the Episcopal congregation near his home, but removed himself from those available to become godparents, because he was not sufficiently in agreement with the trinitarian theology." Emphasis added.

http://www.2think.org/tj.shtml

Look here for some famous UUs in American history:

http://www.famousuus.com/american.htm

[KittyWampus]

16. George Washington was inaugurated in full Masonic Regalia.

The country's Great Seal is based entirely on esoteric symbolism.

The New World Order refers to ESOTERIC doctrines.

To whatever degree our Founders were Christians, they were of a different sort then the extreme rightwing Fundies who, in fact, are not practising a religion but engaging in a political movement.

[WinkyDink]

17. Deism ruled the Enlightenment.

BTW, I taught 12th grade British Lit. Those seniors had not heard of "Deism" before my class.

Here's the thing, though: How many Americans conflate the Fundie Pilgrims with the Founding Fathers?

[kineneb]

18. most were Deists, all knew the history of religion

in 17th century Europe: the Thirty Years War ripped up the heart of Europe. Germany did not recover until the 19th century when Bismark finally united the various states. The FF grew up with the knowledge that state religions were dangerous to peace.

[MaraJade]

20. Some of them were, but some of them weren't. . .

the key thing is that they did not want the US to become like Europe, where the
state religion is dictated by whomever the head of state is. I am a Christian, and I
believe we would be greatly blessed if everyone agreed with the terms of Jesus'
Beatitudes, but I strongly believe in freedom from religion, where people are free to debate,
accept or reject as they see fit.

The promotion or establishment of a state religion would be disastrous.

I don't believe that people should be prevented from
talking about religion or sharing their faith, but I also believe that people have the
right to say no to faith if they so desire. This is the beauty of America.