April 12 - Founding Fathers

April 12 – Founding Fathers

I would have to say that one of the most inaccurate views of our founding fathers is that they were Christian and based our democracy on Christian principles. While most of them believed in God, they were not evangelical or even orthodox Christians in reality. One of the prevalent forms of religion among the founding fathers was called Deism.

Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe, but believe that reason and nature show this to be true and there is no need for faith or religion. Most deists tend to reject the intervention of God into human affairs or into the world and with this reject the idea of miracles and revelation.

Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, called Jesus’ miracles “vulgar ignorance … and fabrications.” Benjamin Franklin didn’t think it was important to consider Jesus’ divinity and publicly proclaimed his doubt with it. The Declaration of Independence refers to ‘Nature’s God,’ which is clearly teaching of Deism.

Deism came about as a result of the Enlightenment. Scientists were making great strides toward understanding how life worked, philosophers were questioning man’s interaction with the world and reason rather than faith began to be emphasized, creating a clear divide.

For hundreds of years, God’s truth as found in Scripture was the only possible response to the question “What is truth?” But, during the Enlightenment, doubt was created surrounding the Ancient truths. They didn’t seem to be working so people set them aside and declared that truth was whatever worked for them at the time, an idea which still permeates society.

These were the Deists and though they had very different ideas from the Christians, they respected and honored the idea that religious faith was a personal issue and one that could not be determined by the state. The third article of the Bill of Rights stated, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

While we take this for granted, this was an entirely new concept. Until this point in history, the state had always had an established religion and anything that smacked of difference would be shut down and its leaders persecuted. When America was still simply colonies of England, the Anglican Church was the State Church and with the Revolution, it was disestablished in the colonies and had to be re-established as one of many different forms of worship.

Today, we may take great offense at the government enforcing this right in ways that we think take away our right to proclaim our religion, but the safety that this third article of the Bill of Rights has granted to anyone within our borders to practice their religion without fear of persecution is one of the great decisions made by our founding fathers.