He was on "Fresh Air" yesterday to talk about the book. Here's a link to 38-minute audio.

Second, not a single one of the main Founders actually believed in the divinity of Jesus, which is the central tenet of the Christian faith. Score one for the secular left. —Paul Glastris

More interestingly (Waldman was on Fresh Air last night) is that the evangelicals of the day were the primary supports of the separation of church and state believing this was the only way to ensure better protection for all forms of Christianity (in those days meaning primarily protestants). Prior to independence, religiously the colonies looked a lot like the Balkans or even Iraq with each colony having a de facto protestant sect.

Jews and Muslims did not figure in this at all, and Catholics very little.

Jefferson was in no way a Christian. Adams certainly was, but TJ -- no way.

I have no idea why people are so insecure in their religion that they have to have it enforced by the state. They don't trust their God to take care of things?

Interesting, Paul, thanks for the recap. Since I haven't read Waldman's actual work yet, this is a purely rash impression on my part, but it sounds like these conclusions would actually count as more of an overall win for religious conservatives, rather than a draw. Their argument might be that even if the Founders weren't strictly devout, they counted themselves as culturally Christian--and that cultural Christianity, with all of its values, is what the conservatives want to promulgate more than any official state creed.

Just like to point out...

Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen were both Deists. Not only did they not "consider themselves Christians" they vehemently despised Christianity.

100 REASONS NOT TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON

heard steve interviewed on fresh air yesterday. anyone who believes that america is some sort of divinely inspired nation ought to read the jefferson bible. it's an odd take on christianity and certainly not one that a fundamentalist would embrace.

*

The key religious distinction between the average secular modern and the founders would be in what they would have called natural law. They believed that the key moral tenets in the universe were created by God (disagreements about what God were possible) and set into the fabric of the universe. They believed these moral tenets were discoverable by human beings (though often imperfectly) and that mortal law which disagreed with natural law was ultimately not valid.

This thought process has echos in progressive thought which can be seen if you look closely at what most progressives mean when they appeal to 'justice' or 'social justice'.

But calling that thought process natural law has fallen into disuse largely (in my view) because of the fact that slave-owners in the South attempted to use natural law rhetoric to justify slavery. This seems like an unnecessary abandonment of a useful concept, as abolitionists also appealed to natural law--it is a good framework about which to talk about things.

Sez mhr:

Josef Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tze Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceausescu, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim ll Sung, Feliks Dzershinsky, and dozens more of their comrades. ...All were atheists.

At the risk of violating Godwin's law, I'll point out that Adolph Hitler was a Christian.

I fail to understand of what relevance is the religiosity or lack thereof of the Founding Fathers. They did not write a religious document, they posited the separation of religion and state (so that we would not have a state religion and the head of government a de facto head of the state and the state religion).

All the rest is a vain attempt to make it OK to create a state religion or to impose religion on other people.

Sorry, folks, that one won't fly.

"First, all the Founders saw themselves as Christians and believed that God in one way or another guides human affairs. So, score one for the religious right. Second, not a single one of the main Founders actually believed in the divinity of Jesus, which is the central tenet of the Christian faith. Score one for the secular left."

Believe in a god but not in the divinity of Jesus. That's pretty much textbook Deism right there, which is distinctly not christian, regardless of if the founding fathers thought of themselves as christians. They just weren't.

regardless of whether or not the Founding Fathers were Christians, devout or not (and among the 100+ or so men who signed the Declaration of Independence and attended the 1787 Constitution Convention I'd be surprised if there weren't more than a few), the fact remains that they had the opportunity to create a "Christian nation" and took deliberate great pains to not do so - going as far as declaring that the Constitution of the nation that they did create was established for a bunch of different reasons, none of which had anything to do with religion, Christianity, or otherwise. They certainly had their opportunity, if it was as important to them as the religious right wants us to think, and they purposefully chose not to - going out of their way to exclude references to God, and to exclude religious tests as a condition for public office.

Considering that the model at the time was of state religions which specifically included both a "divine right" to rule by kings, and which restricted public office to those of the official religion as in Great Britain, and since a major tenet of Christianity is the singular primacy of the Christian God (the First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."), it is very easy to make the case that regardless of the individual beliefs of the Founders, they most definitely did not create or intend to create a "Christian nation".

That's pretty much textbook Deism right there, which is distinctly not christian, regardless of if the founding fathers thought of themselves as christians. They just weren't.

Exactly. Waldman has no idea what he's babbling about, and has had his ass handed to him on the TPM comment threads.

Most of the links in this post are bad. All but the beliefnet.com link contain a "mailto" prefix.

First, all the Founders saw themselves as Christians and believed that God in one way or another guides human affairs. So, score one for the religious right. Second, not a single one of the main Founders actually believed in the divinity of Jesus, which is the central tenet of the Christian faith.

Look, these were intelligent men. Surely Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, etc. knew quite well that if they didn't believe that Jesus was divine, then they weren't Christians. They all had copies of the Book of Common Prayer, could probably recite the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds by heart, and had to know that they couldn't speak those words honestly any more.

Not only would Pat Robertson and James Dobson not consider them Christians, but neither would I, despite being a much more left-leaning and generally relaxed sort of Christian than my fundie brethren.

Anyway, what you're describing is a group of Deist Unitarians, in terms of actual beliefs and attitudes.

Paul Glastris: WERE THE FOUNDING FATHERS REALLY CHRISTIANS?

Irrelevant. They knew full well what they were doing when they wrote in the Constitution that there would be no religious test for office, and when they wrote the 1st Amendment.

P.S. Good luck finding a synagogue in America that doesn't have a copy of President Washington's letter welcoming the first Jewish community to America.

But calling that thought process natural law has fallen into disuse largely (in my view) because of the fact that slave-owners in the South attempted to use natural law rhetoric to justify slavery. This seems like an unnecessary abandonment of a useful concept, as abolitionists also appealed to natural law--it is a good framework about which to talk about things. Posted by: Sebastian

Maybe, but I think our scientific understanding of the natural world has moved us well beyond this. Think how the writings of the semi-tortured "soul" of Charles Darwin, modern physics, and carbon dating changed things. Natural law is almost a romantic notion for the Age of Reason.

Oh, nuts to that! I've learned nothing from this place today!

Allow me to explain this to you--men of the late 18th Century didn't really give two flips of a powdered wig about God--they cared about Mammon, and for good reason. Religion was the thing used to keep the hoi polloi in line. Thinking, brilliant men of the time had to establish monetary policy and develop banks and currencies. There was no time for "religion." Washington, for example, meticulously recorded his financial transactions but rarely, if ever, brought up God. He would have been laughed at, and Washington didn't relish being laughed at.

The greatest Founding Father--Alexander Hamilton--worshipped monetary policy. Economics! The development of an industrial base! Freeing ourselves from the dependence on British manufacturing.

Let's have no more talk about "religion" unless we're talking about the Religion of Money, which is the only one I care about.

Bah, I'm tired of you, too.

I've been following the Walden discussions at TPM and find Walden ascribes certain beliefs to who classes of persons, "progressives" and "conservatives" so that he can then debunk the notions he ascribes. It's ridiculous.

It seems to me that important question is what was, and is, the intent of the First Amendment guarantees. Jefferson, the architect of the First Amendment, makes it absolutely clear in his autobiography.

The following is excerpted from a report on the subject I produced in 1996.

Thomas Jefferson explains clearly in his autobiography that at its very foundation our nation was created under God - not under Christ. This is particularly evident in Jefferson's report of debate in the Virginia General Assembly (the oldest legislature of the U.S.) during its work of reviewing and rewriting the colonial legal code, to a form more appropriate "to our republican form of government", an undertaking mandated by legislation proposed by Jefferson.

A Committee of the Assembly composed of "Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Wythe, George Mason, Thomas L. Lee and myself", Jefferson wrote, had divided the colonial code into statutes deriving from different historical periods "from the Magna Carta to the present", to review and recommend appropriate revisions. The Committee (minus Mr. Lee who had died shortly after appointment) reported and recommended 126 different bills to the General Assembly on June 18, 1779, one of which, drafted by Jefferson, addressed religious freedom.

"The bill for establishing religious freedom", Jefferson wrote, "I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. 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 the word 'Jesus Christ', so that it should read 'Jesus Christ the holy author of our religion.' The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew, the gentile, the Christian, and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."

And so it was Jefferson, perhaps the leading political theorist of his time, who, some 10 years before the U. S. Constitutional Convention, produced a draft of the constitution for the new state of Virginia, which Madison later crafted into the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Jefferson's Virginia "Bill for Religious Freedom", eloquently transformed by Madison, became the 1st Amendment guarantees of religious freedom. Madison was the craftsman - Jefferson was the architect.

In the ensuing years the Supreme Court has many times supported it church/state decisions by quoting Jefferson. From Taylor v United States (1879), the Court's first decision under the religion clause, to Everson v Board of Education (1947), in which the Court used Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor in declaring "The first amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state. The wall must be kept high and impregnable".

The guarantees of religious freedom for each of us, including "infidel(s) of every denomination", were the creation of two prominent Virginia planters who chafed under the collar of the state established Anglican church, profession to which, in many colonies, was required for a citizen to vote or hold office, and financial support of which was mandatory and often coerced. Jefferson and Madison worked with George Mason and Patrick Henry and with Baptists and Presbyterians to finally, in 1786, disestablish the state church through the adoption by the Virginia General Assembly of Jefferson's "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom". Disestablishment soon spread through the South, and ended in Massachusetts in 1833 with the separation of the authority of the Congregationalist church from that of the civil government.

The facts are clear; some simply won't allow space within their ridged ideological constructs for even a glimpse, some dismiss them as corruptions of “liberal judges."

Modern evangelicals and other conservative Christians would not consider people (even dead people) who do not believe in the divinity of Jesus to be "Christian," so it's hard to score that one for the religious right. They even have a hard time accepting Catholics and Mormons, who do believe in it.

Who would have suspected that the architects of one of the greatest political triumphs in history, the composers of the Bethoven's Symphony of nation building, would not have fallen for a fairy tale?

P.S. Good luck finding a synagogue in America that doesn't have a copy of President Washington's letter welcoming the first Jewish community to America. Posted by: alex

Washington, with an eye to maintaining good relations with the French, also put an end to the practice of burning the Pope in effigy, which was apparently a common activity on Guy Fawkes Day.

Second, not a single one of the main Founders actually believed in the divinity of Jesus, which is the central tenet of the Christian faith. Score one for the secular left.

Wow, that's a pretty strong statement. So, not one of the founding fathers was, in one very meaningful definition of the word, a Christian. But more broadly, by the cultural tradition, etc., they were all Christians. That's what the conclusion sounds like to me.

"Waldman has no idea what he's babbling about, and has had his ass handed to him on the TPM comment threads."

No, Steve LaBonne, what distinguishes the views quoted from the Founders from Deism is the role of Providence. Does the Creator the Founders believed in guide and actively intervene in human affairs, or, having ordered the universe, leave it alone to grind its clockwork? The Deist doctrine is the latter, hands off; the quoted affirmations of a robust Providence square better with Christian orthodoxy.
As for the hostile TPM commenters, they showed enough rudeness, dogmatism, and ignorance that they needn't have mattered to Waldman at all.

Wow, that's a pretty strong statement. So, not one of the founding fathers was, in one very meaningful definition of the word, a Christian. But more broadly, by the cultural tradition, etc., they were all Christians. That's what the conclusion sounds like to me. Posted by: Swan

No. Adams was a practicing Christian, which was apparently no end of irritation to Jefferson. Washington supposedly attended church about once a month (sort of like Reagan and Bush the Elder). I think most of them were Masons as well, which comes with it's own ritualistic baggage of course.

No, Steve LaBonne, what distinguishes the views quoted from the Founders from Deism is the role of Providence.

Waldman specializes in setting up straw men of his own invention and knocking them down.

Re Jeff II, Adams was a Unitarian, hence not a Christian at all in the Nicene Creed sense (which I regard as a necessary test if the word "Christian" is actually to mean anything.)

I agree that the whole argument about the Framers' religious beliefs misses the point. As a post to the TPM Cafe column correctly observed, the only relevant issue is what the Framers did. And what they did when they drafted the Constitution was to consciously exclude religion as a source of law or public policy. This is clear from the text of the First Amendment. As Thomas Jefferson explained in his January 1, 1802, letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, the purpose of the Establishment Clause was precisely to create "a wall of separation between church and state." This intent is also clear from the plain language of Art. VI, cl.3, prohibiting religious tests as a qualification for public office. And it is clear from James Madison's "detached memoranda expressing his opposition to the appointment of chaplains to the House and Senate as a violation of the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses. There, Madison wrote "Is the appointment of chaplains to the Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution and with the principle of religious freedom? In strictness, the answer on both points must be in the negative." Bottom line -- the Framers of the Constitution didn't want religion within a country mile of government.

Does it really matter if the "Founders" where Christians or worshipped turkeys?

Whatever their various religious beliefs they didn't put any of them into the Constituion, the founding document on how the country was to be run, and that is the most important thing.

Jeff II, you can go to church without believing in Jesus Christ as the savior. The tradition of the Bible is as compelling and persistent as it is because there's a lot of worth in both the Old and New Testament that's there regardless of whether you actually believe Jesus was divine or that God really spoke to the ancient Israelites the way the Bible says he did. Jefferson and Adams certainly shared a lot of morality that's in the Bible, and they probably found a lot of wisdom in the Bible, even if they also found a lot of stuff in it they were skeptical of or just couldn't believe. So, I think even if Adams felt he didn't believe in Christ, he had a reason to go to church that went beyond just patronizing his neighbors, but that also probably consisted at least partly of a communion with them as well, based upon their common moral values that are captured in the Bible.

This isn't to say that the Bible is the final word on those moral values, or that the Bible isn't 75% bullshit, and just happens to include a lot of morality and wisdom that almost any decent person, regardless of their religious belief or whether they call themselves an atheist, can agree with. I've always argued that Christian values were the foundation of, say, Locke, and that they they were sort of necessary as background values for men like Locke and Hume to come to the conlusions about government and society they came to- conclusions which ultimately proved in turn foundational to our modern society. Some may find this ironic, since Locke worked so hard to disprove the divinely-based justification for government, but I think that fact/anecdote proves my above points all the more.

Researching Steve LaBonne's response to my comment, I came across this chestnut.

* * * * *

John Adams, the second U.S. President rejected the Trinity... and became a Unitarian. It was during Adams' presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli, which states in Article XI that:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arrising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (Charles I. Bevans, ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America 1776-1949. Vol. 11: Philippines-United Arab Republic. Washington D.C.: Department of State Publications, 1974, p. 1072).

This treaty with the Islamic state of Tripoli had been written and concluded by Joel Barlow during Washington's Administration. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on June 7, 1797; President Adams signed it on June 10, 1797 and it was first published in the Session Laws of the Fifth Congress, first session in 1797.

http://www.adherents.com/people/pa/John_Adams.html

* * * * *

Interesting in light of our current ME entanglements.

Stick that up your ass John McCain, Ted Haggee, Shrub, Pat Robertson, etc., etc., and everyone posting here accusing Walden of setting up strawmen.

The founding fathers lived over 200 years ago, when claiming to be anything but a Christian could get you killed. Of course they claimed to be a Christian. Yesterday's cautious Christian is today's agnostic.

Jeff II, you can go to church without believing in Jesus Christ as the savior.

No, you can't, you moron! You'll burn in HELL if you do.

Seriously, are you the stupidest kid who ever graduated from Law School? Shouldn't you be looking for a job in a place where you don't have to operate a microwave and sweep french fries out of the channel that feeds cooking oil into the drain?

The very act of taking the Communion of the Body of the Christ means you have made yourself one with the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit don't take no guff off no college boys, let me tell you that.

And if the founding fathers were slave-owners (ahem Jefferson) then....

What's a Christian who doesn't believe in the divinity of Jesus?

I've always supposed a Unitarian.

But from the campaign, I've learned it can also be a Mormon.

Most of whom "Christians" would not consider Christian.

"Christian" is obviously a word whose meaning has evolved over time.

I personally think Jesus (either a man or a fictional character) said a lot of good stuff that if followed can lead to a good life, whether or not one believes that his totally human body did not start to decay within three days in the Jerusalem heat so that it could somehow be reanimated.

Perhaps this affirmation of the philosophy of Jesus is what the Founding Fathers meant when they said they were "Christian."

You know, this is idiotic. The wingnuts base their claims that America is a "Christian nation" on the believer status of the founding fathers. Some progressive and libertarian people get caught up in this argument and say "No they weren't. They were Deists."

In point of fact this is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether they opposed established religion because they were atheist/agnostic or because there were conflicts across Christian sects. The constitution is sufficient. There can be no established religion, de jure or de facto.

What they believed is beside the point. What they recognized, and the constitution reflects, is that any role the government has in establishing a religious preference should be proscribed.

I read what Waldman had to say. If there is a point, it eludes me. There's a Cliff Notes account of the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers and a nod to deeply religious people who believed, as a religious matter, in separation of church and state. I'm sure many people didn't know this stuff, on the general principle that most people don't know jack-shit, but Waldman adds exactly nothing to the existing fund of readily-available human knowledge on the subject. I can't tell what question he's trying to answer or what problem he's trying to solve.

Jeff II, you can go to church without believing in Jesus Christ as the savior. The tradition of the Bible is as compelling and persistent as it is because there's a lot of worth in both the Old and New Testament that's there regardless of whether you actually believe Jesus was divine or that God really spoke to the ancient Israelites the way the Bible says he did. Posted by: Swan

Your statement is very much like what Adams and others who had a hand in crafting the constitution felt about religion in general and Christianity in particular, and I find nothing intellectually offensive about it. The most fun I've had in a house a worship in the last year was attending my first bar mitzvah (whose father happens to be a lapsed Catholic) - enormous amounts of warmth and openness.

But this kind of thinking is alien even repulsive to the "religious" right and is part and parcel of the conflict they have with non-believers, non-Christians or what have you. You are far too magnanimous and open-minded compared to the "religious" right's view of what constitutes a true Christian and how their brand of Christianity belongs at the center of American life, and at the exclusion of all other "faiths," religious or secular.

Paul Glastris wrote: "Steve Waldman [is] founding editor of beliefnet.com and the author of a terrific new book, Founding Faith."

CJColucci wrote: "Waldman adds exactly nothing to the existing fund of readily-available human knowledge on the subject. I can't tell what question he's trying to answer or what problem he's trying to solve."

I expect that Waldman is basically trying to sell books and promote his website, thereby increasing the ad revenue that it can generate.

Very often it seems that the criteria for publishing a book is not whether it adds anything to "the existing fund of readily-available human knowledge on the subject" but whether it is marketable. A book on the religious beliefs of the "founding fathers" will probably sell pretty well, regardless of its quality or accuracy or whether it has anything new to say.

The Founding Fathers believed in religious freedom, which means secular government.

The real question is whether persons zealous in their religious beliefs are good Americans. Can they refrain from trying to force their dogma on others? Will a Supreme Court packed with Catholics kneel to Rome? Anti-abortion forces try to avoid first amendment issues by calling themselves "social conservatives." Libs go along with it because of their PC notions of diversity and assimilation, i.e., lib hero JFK ended for all time speculation about the dual loyalty of Roman Catholics. God forbid we should question the loyalty of "neo-conservatives" like Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith.

If Waldman's book is anything like the insipid crap he's spewing over on TPM, I doubt I'll find his book "terrific."

The real question is whether persons zealous in their religious beliefs are good Americans.

I'm quite zealous in my worship of the ancient oak tree on the hill, and I'm a good American. At least until the tree starts demanding the blood of a virgin at the full of the moon...

I've got it-- since the Founders rejected Christ, then perhaps our nation is a fundamentally Satanic one, inspired and protected by the Devil.

Just kidding-- but I just wanted to ruffle some feathers that deserve to get ruffled, since they belong to people who so persistently try to push a big heaping pile of crap on all the rest of us by trying to browbeat and intimidate us.

I personally think Jesus (either a man or a fictional character) said a lot of good stuff that if followed can lead to a good life, . . . Posted by: Cal Gal

Not to diverge too irresponsibly or annoyingly from the topic at hand, but that's always been one of my bugbears about Christianity - the lack of any reliable record that Jesus Christ even existed. I mean if "the Church" can arbitrarily move his birth from September/October to December in an effort to rope in a few more pagans, . . .

I would appreciate it if anyone can point me to a definite source regarding this. I

More interestingly (Waldman was on Fresh Air last night) is that the evangelicals of the day were the primary supports of the separation of church and state believing this was the only way to ensure better protection for all forms of Christianity (in those days meaning primarily protestants). Prior to independence, religiously the colonies looked a lot like the Balkans or even Iraq with each colony having a de facto protestant sect.

IIRC, more than half of the colonies had de jure, not merely de facto, established churches in 1776, and some of the states still did into at least the first couple decades of the 1800s.

Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen were both Deists. Not only did they not "consider themselves Christians" they vehemently despised Christianity.

The same is true, IIRC, of Jefferson, though ISTR that more of his complaints about "the Christian religion" related to the idea and effects of organized religious institutions than Christianity as a set of beliefs. I don't recall of the top of my head Paine or Allen's specific complaints, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were similar.

At any rate, the Religious Right arguing that the Founding Fathers were "Christian" as if that justifies the positions advocated by the Religious Right, either in terms of personal morality or public policy, engages in equivocation since the Founding Fathers were, whether or not some or all of them were "Christian" in some reasonable sense of the word, clearly not "Christian" in the sense that the Religious Right wants people to be Christian, and did not advocate government guided by "Christian" principles in the sense that the Religious Right does.

Debating whether or not the Founders were in some sense Christian as a means of evaluating the argument of the Religious Right misses the point entirely.

Considering that the model at the time was of state religions which specifically included both a "divine right" to rule by kings, and which restricted public office to those of the official religion as in Great Britain

IIRC Britain didn't at the time (or now) strictly restrict public office to those of the official religion, but did ban those of particular religions from holding office (the most clear example, which continues now, is the prohibition on any person of the Catholic faith ascending to the throne.)

The Satanic States of America: our Iraq war serves Satan's evil aims.

Debating whether or not the Founders were in some sense Christian as a means of evaluating the argument of the Religious Right misses the point entirely.

Posted by: cmdicely

Well, not "entirely".

That the beliefs (or lack thereof) of the founders are not (or should not be) germane to the discussion of whether or not this is a "Christian nation" is to the point. They wrote what they wrote and, one can reasonably assume, meant what they wrote.

What's at issue here is less about arguments than about tactics. For those little inclined towards either research or critical thinking, the statement (or implication) that this nation was founded entirely by Christians leads to the "reasonable" assumption that they must therefore have intended that this be a "Christian nation". They just somehow didn't get around to actually saying so (the irony of anointing the founding fathers as universally Christian with a jones for Christian governance and then rendering them too inept to say what they actually meant is somehow lost on them).

The purpose of countering these "arguments" is simply to set the facts straight, as nearly as possible. As peripheral as these false assertions may be to the central debate, they are influential and readily accepted as persuasive by those who take comfort in believing them.

only one thing they ALL have in common... the founding fathers are ALL dead.

OK time to name some names. Which secular liberals argue that most of the founding fathers were agnostics, or, at "best"* deists. I have never heard or read that claim.

First, all discussion on the issue by agnostic or atheist liberals (or radicals) of which I am aware concerned Franklin or Jefferson. The founding fathers numbered more than 3 so 2 of them were not most of them. When I read Waldman's second post on the topic, I learned that John Adams died a Unitarian. I had assumed he lived and died a Congregationalist (I don't count Waldman as an atheist or an agnostic).

Second I have never heard or read the suggestion that Jefferson and Franklin were agnostic. I have heard the claim that they were deists. For example, I quote Waldman from the tpmcafé discussion "Actually I quote that passage in my book ... the same Franklin who said he was a Deist." Yes, note that Waldman agrees that Franklin said that he was a deist. Odd where those silly secular liberals get their crazy notions.

Now, before criticizing a guest at Kevin "always click the link" Drum, I should have clicked alll the link. Still I think that your summary creates a false balance between the clearly false claims of the religious right and a claim by a tiny minority of secular liberals and, indeed, tiny minorities of secular radicals and of atheist liberals.

Confessions extracted by torture should not be admissible in court. Professions of religious faith by prominent Americans in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth (and Twentieth and Twenty-First) centuries who in some ways look like nonbelievers should be treated with caution.

Is it just me, or does it look like Robert Waldmann at 9:37 PM just posted so he could throw around the names "secular liberals" "secular radicals" and "atheist liberals" (he doesn't even make an attempt to define those terms- who is "secular"? Who is a "radical"?) probably just so he can confuse people as to who is really making an argument and who is making claims on this subject?

Rather than trying to actually respond to what people are saying, Robert Waldmann is probably resortin to this because he doesn't have anything real to say or contribute about the subject, and in fact doesn't even really know about or understand the subject-matter at all.

It seems to me that Robert Waldmann should keep his childish mini-rants to himself in the future instead of trying to say something on this website.

Many of the Founding Fathers, particularly those most directly involved in the revolution and subversive acts against the British, were Freemasons. The reason is obvious - Masons have a highly developed written code and certain secret keywords and identifying phrases (e.g. "traveling man") that allow them to pass secrets, etc. without being detected.

No, I am not some wackjob Illuminati-fearing conspiratorialist. I come from a long line of Masons. Ben Franklin, Nathan Hale, Paul Revere, George Washington and a number of others were all Freemasons. Freemasonry, at its core, takes a Deist view of the world, referring to God as "the Great Architect of the Universe". It's true - do a little more research.

It seems to me that Robert Waldmann should keep his childish mini-rants to himself in the future instead of trying to say something on this website.

It seems to me that S W A N should keep his childish mini-rants to himself in the future instead of trying to say something on this website.

I repaired it for you, thusly. Dumbass!

Franklin wasn't exactly a deist. He believed that he would meet God in the afterlife. In fact, at the beginning of the Constitutional Convention, he proposed starting each day with a prayer. It's perhaps especially telling that the other delegates didn't think this was such a good idea.

It's not clear that talk of Providence is necessarily evidence of belief in an active god rather than an acknowledgment of Fortune.

I'm not sure that it's worthwhile to try to figure out what Jefferson (or Lincoln, for that matter) actually believed. They were political animals who wrote, whether privately or for the public, with a purpose in mind.

Just read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and you'll quickly abandon the idea that he was a Christian in any sense acceptable to a modern evangelical or fundamentalist Christian. And he was elected repeatedly to positions of major trust. His deeply Christian fellow Pennsylvanians clearly were capable of valuing qualities other than dogmatic purity. When did we lose that?

Human existence was utterly imponderable before evolution came to be known. Before Darwin spiritual explanations were all that was available. It proves little about these men to say they believed in a creator.

I have a question: Are there really any TRUE Christians out there? Because all the ones I have seen are there professing to be are only there playing the part to look good to the rest of the public to help with there businesses to get more customers, etc.

Um, it can't be possible to be a "Christian" and not believe in the divinity of Christ, can it???

Isn't that the "Christ" part of "Christian"?

I bet Waldman is a Christian.

Does Waldman think they believed in the Biblical god, and believed that Christ would come one day, but that Jesus was not Christ?

The Founders were Jewish???

I've read a lot about those times in history and I wish the articles you linked to had better backed up his contention. I expect that belief.net's founder would have read more, but I don't know his agenda. I can say, though, that I don't see any sign that Waldman is taking into account the difference between what a politician may say to a religious public and what he really believes. I mean, did that really seem like an authentic demonstration of belief when all of those Democrats a few years ago stood on the steps of Congress and sang God Bless America, or whatever it was? Or just pandering to save their jobs? Jefferson rewrote the New Testament to take out the supernatural aspects --- but he didn't want it published in his lifetime. Thomas Paine wrote a book taking down religion while he was in prison awaiting death during the French Revolution. The reaction against the book was so strong that only about 5 people attended his funeral some years later in New York. And here's what an Episcopal minister in 1831 had to say about the founders: "The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity....�

As catherineD astutely points out, what a politician says (publicly) and what a politician personally believes may substantially differ. The founders who sought and attained public office were, necessarily, politicians and certainly had some concern for their careers (and their lives) in a society that was largely (albeit, for the most part informally) Christian.

Consider also that this was a brand new Republic, still essentially an experiment in governance, and strong disagreements still existed over the role and powers of a Federal government. These people were walking on glass and greatly concerned with preserving the Union. Compromises with principle were often made with this in mind. It is a theme that runs through much of James Madison's writings.

If one compares the public statements (and, often, actions) of the founders (much quoted by the Christianists) with their private statements (letters, memoirs, conversations recorded by others -- much quoted by separationists) it is apparent that they decided that an at least apparent conformity to conventional and deeply-rooted religious views was necessary not only to preserve themselves but the country itself.