-Caveat Lector-
Founding Father Quotes on Religion
Introduction
The following quotations from several of the
Founding Fathers of our Nation are from private correspondence rather than from
public speeches or pronouncements, and thus give a better view of what they
really thought about such things (and what they didn't want to say to the
uneducated, superstitious and misled citizenry complete with pitchforks, tar,
feathers, and a deep and abiding respect for the "mercy" of the Lord). We can
clearly see that they had no intention or desire to place the new nation under
the tyranny of any religion, dogma or theocratic regime. All their works were to
the end of protecting liberty of conscience and freedom and equality for all
mankind.
We have Fundamentalists today, insisting that this
nation was founded on Christianity. It was not, although the moral and ethical
values common to many of the world's religions were espoused in the founding
documents. Almost to a man, the Founding Fathers were Deists, as opposed to
Theists, realists and well educated, opposed to tyranny in any form, whether the
tyranny of secular governments or the tyranny of ecclesiastic theocracies,
cults, orders and sects. The Fundamentalists of all nations would establish
tyrannies over their fellowman, insisting that "their way to God, their way of
governance, is the ONLY way".
From the writings of M. Scott Peck, in his book
"Farther along the Road Less Traveled", page 107, is the following:
"How are we to interpret the Bible? Although they
place such importance on it, the fundamentalists, in my experience, strangely
misuse the Bible. Actually the term "Fundamentalist" is a misnomer. The more
proper term is "inerrantists", those who believe that the Bible is not only the
divinely inspired word of God but the actual transcribed, unaltered word of God,
and that it is subject to only one kind of literal interpretation, namely
theirs. Such thinking, to my mind, only impoverishes the Bible."
In essence and actuality, the "Inerrantists" of all types, creeds, and politics, both ecclesiastic and secular, would attempt to establish tyrannies of uniformity based upon their particular narrow view. To counter such claims of the "Inerrantists", and in support of the First
Article of Amendments to the Constitution for the United States, and the
inherent right of all mankind to the freedom of their spiritual convictions, the
following quotes of the men most responsible for the founding and establishment
of our Nation, the United States of America, are presented for your study and
enlightenment. They are not presented as a threat to any persons' particular
spiritual beliefs, but in support and protection of them. It is hoped, however,
that each individual will seek within for an honest appraisal of their own
motives for so believing, and honestly evaluate their practice of the Truth of
their particular religion, their relationship to their Higher Power, with
themselves and with their fellowman everywhere in the world.
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine John Adams Thomas Jefferson James Madison Geo. Washington -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First, from the pen of Benjamin Franklin, printer, writer, philosopher, scientist, statesman and diplomat, eldest and revered member of the Continental Congress, and signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for the United States. "I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did." --- Benjamin Franklin, letter to his father, 1738 "I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or
requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
--- Benjamin Franklin, from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20,
1728
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean
real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long
prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much
less capable of pleasing the Deity."--- Benjamin Franklin, Works, Vol. VII, p.
75
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in
Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors,
and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution
extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first
Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church,
but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell
into the practice themselves both there (England) and in New England."---
Benjamin
Franklin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Secondly, from the pen of the most active writer and pamphleteer of his
time, who almost single handedly with his writings, fomented the Spirit of
Independence in the Citizens of the 13 Colonies, Thomas Paine, on Deism...
Every person, of whatever religious denomination he may be, is a DEIST in the first article of his Creed. Deism, from the Latin word Deus, God, is the belief of a God, and this belief is the first article of every man's creed. It is on this article, universally consented to by all mankind, that the
Deist builds his church, and here he rests. Whenever we step aside from this
article, by mixing it with articles of human invention, we wander into a
labyrinth of uncertainty and fable, and become exposed to every kind of
imposition by pretenders to revelation.
The Persian shows the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the lawgiver of Persia, and
calls it the divine law; the Bramin shows the Shaster, revealed, he says, by God
to Brama, and given to him out of a cloud; the Jew shows what he calls the law
of Moses, given, he says, by God, on the Mount Sinai; the Christian shows a
collection of books and epistles, written by nobody knows who, and called the
New Testament; and the Mahometan shows the Koran, given, he says, by God to
Mahomet: each of these calls itself revealed religion, and the only true Word of
God, and this the followers of each profess to believe from the habit of
education, and each believes the others are imposed upon.
But when the divine gift of reason begins to expand itself in the mind and
calls man to reflection, he then reads and contemplates God and His works, and
not in the books pretending to be revelation. The creation is the Bible of the
true believer in God. Everything in this vast volume inspires him with sublime
ideas of the Creator. The little and paltry, and often obscene, tales of the
Bible sink into wretchedness when put in comparison with this mighty work.
The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm
his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his
own existence?
There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be
found in any other system of religion. All other systems have something in them
that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at
all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.
But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful
structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the
creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and
at the same time proclaim His attributes.
It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God
in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness
extended over all His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while
it calls forth our gratitude to Him. It is by forgetting God in His works, and
running after the books of pretended revelation, that man has wandered from the
straight path of duty and happiness, and become by turns the victim of doubt and
the dupe of delusion.
Except in the first article in the Christian creed, that of believing in
God, there is not an article in it but fills the mind with doubt as to the truth
of it, the instant man begins to think. Now every article in a creed that is
necessary to the happiness and salvation of man, ought to be as evident to the
reason and comprehension of man as the first article is, for God has not given
us reason for the purpose of confounding us, but that we should use it for our
own happiness and His glory.
The truth of the first article is proved by God Himself, and is universal;
for the creation is of itself demonstration of the existence of a Creator. But
the second article, that of God's begetting a son, is not proved in like manner,
and stands on no other authority than that of a tale.
Certain books in what is called the New Testament tell us that Joseph
dreamed that the angel told him so, (Matthew i, 20): "And behold the angel of
the Lord appeared to Joseph, in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear
not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of
the Holy Ghost."
The evidence upon this article bears no comparison with the evidence upon
the first article, and therefore is not entitled to the same credit, and ought
not to be made an article in a creed, because the evidence of it is defective,
and what evidence there is, is doubtful and suspicious. We do not believe the
first article on the authority of books, whether called Bibles or Korans, nor
yet on the visionary authority of dreams, but on the authority of God's own
visible works in the creation.
The nations who never heard of such books, nor of such people as Jews,
Christians, or Mahometans, believe the existence of a God as fully as we do,
because it is self-evident. The work of man's hands is a proof of the existence
of man as fully as his personal appearance would be.
When we see a watch, we have as positive evidence of the existence of a
watchmaker, as if we saw him; and in like manner the creation is evidence to our
reason and our senses of the existence of a Creator. But there is nothing in the
works of God that is evidence that He begat a son, nor anything in the system of
creation that corroborates such an idea, and, therefore, we are not authorized
in believing it.
What truth there may be in the story that Mary, before she was married to
Joseph, was kept by one of the Roman soldiers, and was with child by him, I
leave to be settled between the Jews and Christians. The story however has
probability on its side, for her husband Joseph suspected and was jealous of
her, and was going to put her away. "Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and
not willing to make her a public example, was going to put her away, privately."
(Matt. i, 19).
I have already said that "whenever we step aside from the first article
(that of believing in God), we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty," and here
is evidence of the justness of the remark, for it is impossible for us to decide
who was Jesus Christ's father.
But presumption can assume anything, and therefore it makes Joseph's dream
to be of equal authority with the existence of God, and to help it on calls it
revelation. It is impossible for the mind of man in its serious moments, however
it may have been entangled by education, or beset by priestcraft, not to stand
still and doubt upon the truth of this article and of its creed.
But this is not all. The second article of the Christian creed having
brought the son of Mary into the world (and this Mary, according to the
chronological tables, was a girl of only fifteen years of age when this son was
born), the next article goes on to account for his being begotten, which was,
that when he grew a man he should be put to death, to expiate, they say, the sin
that Adam brought into the world by eating an apple or some kind of forbidden
fruit.
But though this is the creed of the Church of Rome, from whence the
Protestants borrowed it, it is a creed which that Church has manufactured of
itself, for it is not contained in nor derived from, the book called the New
Testament.
The four books called the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which
give, or pretend to give, the birth, sayings, life, preaching, and death of
Jesus Christ, make no mention of what is called the fall of man; nor is the name
of Adam to be found in any of those books, which it certainly would be if the
writers of them believed that Jesus was begotten, born, and died for the purpose
of redeeming mankind from the sin which Adam had brought into the world. Jesus
never speaks of Adam himself, of the garden of Eden, nor of what is called the
fall of man.
But the Church of Rome having set up its new religion, which it called
Christianity [but which in truth is Athanasianism/Constantinism], and invented
the creed which it named the Apostle's Creed, in which it calls Jesus the only
son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary; things of
which it is impossible that man or woman can have any idea, and consequently no
belief but in words; and for which there is no authority but the idle story of
Joseph's dream in the first chapter of Matthew, which any designing imposter or
foolish fanatic might make.
It then manufactured the allegories in the book of Genesis into fact, and
the allegorical tree of life and the tree of knowledge into real trees, contrary
to the belief of the first Christians, and for which there is not the least
authority in any of the books of the New Testament; for in none of them is there
any mention made of such place as the Garden of Eden, nor of anything that is
said to have happened there.
But the Church of Rome could not erect the person called Jesus into a
Savior of the world without making the allegories in the book of Genesis into
fact, though the New Testament, as before observed, gives no authority for it.
All at once the allegorical tree of knowledge became, according to the Church, a
real tree, the fruit of it real fruit, and the eating of it sinful.
As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft
supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent
with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.
The Church of Rome having done this, it then brings forward Jesus the son
of Mary as suffering death to redeem mankind from sin, which Adam, it says, had
brought into the world by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But as it
is impossible for reason to believe such a story, because it can see no reason
for it, nor have any evidence of it, the Church then tells us we must not regard
our reason, but must believe, as it were, and that through thick and thin, as if
God had given man reason like a plaything, or a rattle, on purpose to make fun
of him.
Reason is the forbidden tree of priestcraft, and may serve to explain the
allegory of the forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may reasonably suppose the
allegory had some meaning and application at the time it was invented. It was
the practice of the Eastern nations to convey their meaning by allegory, and
relate it in the manner of fact. Jesus followed the same method, yet nobody ever
supposed the allegory or parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son,
the ten Virgins, etc., were facts.
Why then should the tree of knowledge, which is far more romantic in idea
than the parables in the New Testament are, be supposed to be a real tree? The
answer to this is, because the Church could not make its new-fangled system,
which it called Christianity, hold together without it. To have made Christ to
die on account of an allegorical tree would have been too barefaced a fable.
But the account, as it is given of Jesus in the New Testament, even
visionary as it is, does not support the creed of the Church that he died for
the redemption of the world. According to that account he was crucified and
buried on the Friday, and rose again in good health on the Sunday morning, for
we do not hear that he was sick. This cannot be called dying, and is rather
making fun of death than suffering it.
There are thousands of men and women also, who if they could know they
should come back again in good health in about thirty-six hours, would prefer
such kind of death for the sake of the experiment, and to know what the other
side of the grave was. Why then should that which would be only a voyage of
curious amusement to us, be magnified into merit and suffering in him? If a God,
he could not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as a man his death
could be no more than the death of any other person.
The belief of the redemption of Jesus Christ is altogether an invention of
the Church of Rome, not the doctrine of the New Testament. What the writers of
the New Testament attempted to prove by the story of Jesus is the resurrection
of the same body from the grave, which was the belief of the Pharisees, in
opposition to the Sadducees (a sect of Jews) who denied it.
Paul, who was brought up a Pharisee, labors hard at this for it was the
creed of his own Pharisaical Church: I Corinthians xv is full of supposed cases
and assertions about the resurrection of the same body, but there is not a word
in it about redemption. This chapter makes part of the funeral service of the
Episcopal Church. The dogma of the redemption is the fable of priestcraft
invented since the time the New Testament was compiled, and the agreeable
delusion of it suited with the depravity of immoral livers. When men are taught
to ascribe all their crimes and vices to the temptations of the devil, and to
believe that Jesus, by his death, rubs all off, and pays their passage to heaven
gratis, they become as careless in morals as a spendthrift would be of money,
were he told that his father had engaged to pay off all his scores.
It is a doctrine not only dangerous to morals in this world, but to our
happiness in the next world, because it holds out such a cheap, easy, and lazy
way of getting to heaven, as has a tendency to induce men to hug the delusion of
it to their own injury.
But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such
times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the
Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of
conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irrationality, to afford
consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees
that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved.
He may believe that such a person as is called Jesus (for Christ was not
his name) was born and grew to be a man, because it is no more than a natural
and probable case. But who is to prove he is the son of God, that he was
begotten by the Holy Ghost? Of these things there can be no proof; and that
which admits not of proof, and is against the laws of probability and the order
of nature, which God Himself has established, is not an object for belief. God
has not given man reason to embarrass him, but to prevent his being imposed
upon.
He may believe that Jesus was crucified, because many others were
crucified, but who is to prove he was crucified for the sins of the world? This
article has no evidence, not even in the New Testament; and if it had, where is
the proof that the New Testament, in relating things neither probable nor
provable, is to be believed as true?
When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of probability, the
salvo is to call it revelation; but this is only putting one difficulty in the
place of another, for it is as impossible to prove a thing to be revelation as
it is to prove that Mary was gotten with child by the Holy Ghost.
Here it is that the religion of Deism is superior to the Christian
Religion. It is free from all those invented and torturing articles that shock
our reason or injure our humanity, and with which the Christian religion
abounds. Its creed is pure, and sublimely simple. It believes in God, and there
it rests.
It honors reason as the choicest gift of God to man, and the faculty by
which he is enabled to contemplate the power, wisdom and goodness of the Creator
displayed in the creation; and reposing itself on His protection, both here and
hereafter, it avoids all presumptuous beliefs, and rejects, as the fabulous
inventions of men, all books pretending to revelation.
-Thomas Paine, "Of The Religion Of Deism Compared With The Christian
Religion"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thirdly, from the pen of John Adams, statesman, diplomat, member of the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Vice-President under Washington, and Second President of the United States.... "As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?" --- John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816 "I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of
the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross.
Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!" --- John Adams,
letter to Thomas Jefferson
"What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian
era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope
Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in
France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the
'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the
guillotine." --- John Adams, letter to John Taylor
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.
And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or
dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate,
the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently
endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in
collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you
will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes
and hand, and fly into your face and eyes." --- John Adams, letter to John
Taylor
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fourthly, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, lawyer, philosopher, scientist
and inventor, author of the Declaration of Independence, Statesman and Diplomat,
Secretary of State under Washington and Adams, Third President of the United
States, and the mentor and the mind behind the Father of the Constitution and
quite possibly the most brilliant mind of the 18th century...or since....
"The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as
President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe
rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every
form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me:
and enough, too, in their opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800.
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He
is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest
religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all
mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." --- Thomas
Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children,
since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined,
imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been
the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half
hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." --- Thomas
Jefferson, from "Notes on Virginia"
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are
servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for
every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that
of blindfolded fear." --- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in
the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the
one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the
power and the profit of the priests." --- Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1803
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the
Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed
to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind,
and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." --- Thomas Jefferson to
S. Kercheval, 1810
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance,
of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail
themselves for their own purpose." --- Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt,
1813
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all
mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling,
fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to
themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the
human mind." --- Thomas Jefferson to Carey, 1816
"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own
country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish
in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his
biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we
have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen
from the lips of man. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of
this benevolent morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture,
which has resulted from artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects
(The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world
by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his
corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement,
regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable
object." --- Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his
doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches
the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise
of good works to redeem it.
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. I separate, therefore,
the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the latter to the
stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes
and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corruptor of the
doctrines of Jesus." --- Thomas Jefferson to W. Short,
1820
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more
dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion;
and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests
of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being
whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and
the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as
the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of
men more learned than myself in that lore." --- Thomas Jefferson to Story, Aug.
4, 1820
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin. 1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing. 3. That faith is everything, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit the faith. 4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use. 5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save." --- Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822 Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom a
slaughter-house." --- Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are
those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the
structure of a system of fancy, absolutely incomprehensible, and without any
foundation in his genuine words. 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 Minerva in the brain
of Jupiter." --- Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823
"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are,
to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only
by being more unintelligible." --- Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks, 1820
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fifthly, from the pen of James Madison, protege of Jefferson, chronicler of
the Constitutional Convention and Father of the Constitution, Fourth President
of the United States....
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on
society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on
the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen
upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the
guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public
liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just
government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." --- James
Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of
maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation.
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been
on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and
indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry and persecution." --- James Madison, "A Memorial and
Remonstrance", 1785
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And Finally we must note that George Washington, surveyor, wealthy planter,
fox hunting sportsman, officer of the Virginia Militia, General of the
Continental Army during the War of Independence, President of the Constitutional
Convention, and First President of the United States was without a trace of
"Christianism". He was so completely indifferent to its pious irascibilities
that he never appears to have made any comment on them. Indeed, he seemed,
according to the evidence, to have had no instinct or feeling for religion,
although he attended church twelve or fifteen times a year.
The name of Jesus Christ is not mentioned even once in the vast collection
of Washington's published letters. He refers to Providence in numerous letters,
but he used the term as a synonym for Destiny or Fate. Bishop White, who knew
him well for many years, wrote after Washington's death that he had never heard
him express an opinion on any religious subject. He added that although
Washington was "serious and attentive" in church, he never saw him kneel in
prayer.
Nevertheless, he believed in the stabilizing power of religion. In his
Farewell Address, which unquestionably represents his most mature opinions, the
name of God does not appear, but he had a good word for religions, to wit: "Of
all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and
morality are indispensable supports."
He considered religion a matter of policy. A few lines farther on in the
same paragraph, he states, "Let it simply be asked, where is the security for
property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert
the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And
let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained
without religion."
Washington had the inestimable faculty of being able to say nothing. He
said nothing about religion -- nothing very definite -- and as a deist was
willing to let people think whatever they pleased. As he never discussed
religion at all, and went to church only occasionally, he was considered by most
people to be a quietly religious man. It was somewhat of a shock, therefore, to
the people of Philadelphia, when the reverend Dr. Abercrombie, Washington's
pastor, criticized him from the pulpit. He told him that as President, he should
not belong to a church unless he could set a good example to others. He reminded
Washington that he never took communion, and in short, that his example was bad.
Washington listened to these reproaches in silence, and never went to that
church again. His only comment was that he did not wish to annoy Dr. Abercrombie
by his presence.
This page created Dec 28, 1997 in the Spirit of Love
by Barefoot, Post Falls, Idaho Last Revised Feb. 25, 2001 Two mighty important things, Pardn'r, LOVE And PEACE
In 1776 a nation arose which protected the rights of the sovereign citizen
from the lawless mob, by establishing a Democratic Republic. The kind of citizen
upon which America was built is the smallest most precious member, noble citizen
core cell. In the 1960s America began to be dismantled, and we began to forget
to defend our language, culture and Borders. We became a " compassionate"
democracy that made everyone special, morally equivalent, even with those
demanded rights strange appetites and lawless behaviors. Instead the poor and
disadvantaged elevated to the noble values of citizenship, virtue came under
assault and our people allowed themselves and their children to become
demoralized and dumbed down. And so the rabble multiplied, and voted their
Democratic representatives into government a democracy that almost became a
dictatorship. In the year 2001 we have become a dangerously divided
country.
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