Notion of our Founding Fathers and Religion

[deekayfry]

This is a topic that I have found interesting and often repeated.  I first heard of this in Presbyterian Church that our Founding Fathers were Christians and believed the US was to become a nation based on Christian principles.

What I appreciate about our Founding Fathers is that they considered history and had the foresight to avoid future war, enmity, strife, and pain.  What they did was truly, truly remarkable.  They founded a mostly peaceful secular nation that not only removed religion from Government, but at the same time encouraged thriving religious freedom.  This is enshrined in one of my most favorite lines in the Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

This is truly astounding.  The amendment forbids any particular state sanctioned religion, which historically led to constant civil wars all over the world, it also allowed for any and all people of all faith to live their faith without the duress of institutionally enacted divine laws.

What do you all think?  What have you heard?  Did our Founding Fathers really intend to find a Christian Nation or more broadly a Religious Nation?  Were they influenced by history coming from Britain that had a State Religion?

What about you who are from another country or nation?  Is this vision well known, frowned upon, agreed with, or otherwise?

I know there are countries that literally have sets of secular and religious laws with secular and religious courts that often conflict.

[GAYtheist]

This is a topic that I have found interesting and often repeated.  I first heard of this in Presbyterian Church that our Founding Fathers were Christians and believed the US was to become a nation based on Christian principles.

What I appreciate about our Founding Fathers is that they considered history and had the foresight to avoid future war, enmity, strife, and pain.  What they did was truly, truly remarkable.  They founded a mostly peaceful secular nation that not only removed religion from Government, but at the same time encouraged thriving religious freedom.  This is enshrined in one of my most favorite lines in the Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

This is truly astounding.  The amendment forbids any particular state sanctioned religion, which historically led to constant civil wars all over the world, it also allowed for any and all people of all faith to live their faith without the duress of institutionally enacted divine laws.

What do you all think?  What have you heard?  Did our Founding Fathers really intend to find a Christian Nation or more broadly a Religious Nation?  Were they influenced by history coming from Britain that had a State Religion?

What about you who are from another country or nation?  Is this vision well known, frowned upon, agreed with, or otherwise?

I know there are countries that literally have sets of secular and religious laws with secular and religious courts that often conflict.

No, in fact, often they spoke out against religion.

http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/disp ... quote2.htm

[Prea]

No, in fact, often they spoke out against religion.

http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/disp ... quote2.htm

I'm sure some still were for it though
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/capital.asp

The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said, "Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers."
The exact quote is "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
Jay wrote it in a private letter to Jedidiah Morse in 1797.

[Whitney]

This should be enough to settle the issue as it is an official US document....yet pro-christian nation proponents tend to overlook or disregard this document:

Art. 11. 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 tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

source:  http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html


Prea, note how I used my own words when introducing others to quoted text?

[GAYtheist]

This should be enough to settle the issue as it is an official US document....yet pro-christian nation proponents tend to overlook or disregard this document:

Art. 11. 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 tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

source:  http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html


Prea, note how I used my own words when introducing others to quoted text?

Again... ...that is all.

[Allah]

The concept of a Christian nation is merely a political tool used to pull in the largest possible demographic.

[Tanker]

No, in fact, often they spoke out against religion.

http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/disp ... quote2.htm

I'm sure some still were for it though
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/capital.asp

The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said, "Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers."
The exact quote is "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
Jay wrote it in a private letter to Jedidiah Morse in 1797.

In legalese "should" is a recomendation but not legaly binding while "shall" means you WILL comply or face legal repercussions.

[Whitney]

In legalese "should" is a recomendation but not legaly binding while "shall" means you WILL comply or face legal repercussions.

Just commenting to support what you said...it is very true that "shall" is a lot stronger term legally than should...should is basically just a suggestion while shall requires compliance.  We have to use shall on construction documents since they are legally binding if we have to go to court.

[Recusant]

This topic was discussed in depth recently on a history forum to which I belong.  The Treaty of Tripoli, which Whitney quoted earlier, was brought up, and since it was written during Washington's presidency and signed under the presidency of John Adams, it seems to me to be a valid reflection of the thoughts of the "founding fathers."  It's mentioned, along with several other points of interest relating to this topic, on the Our Founding Fathers Were Not Christians page.  Personally, I think that page is a bit too strident and biased, though.  There is little doubt that many of the founding fathers were indeed Christian.  It might be truthfully said, though, that the majority of the most prominent among them were not.  For an examination of the beliefs of several of the most prominent founding fathers as expressed in their writings, you can look at the Religion and the Founding Fathers page from Early American History.net.

[deekayfry]

No, in fact, often they spoke out against religion.

Agree in part, like today's politicians there were those who heavily favored religion as a part of government, those dead set against it, or others that were neutral.  Although, today, you have a better chance of throwing a snowball through hell than to find a politician who denies being religious.

Generally speaking, even though I am atheist, I appreciate that our Founding Fathers enacted a constitutional amendment that saves us from a lot grief, bloodshed, wars, and pain.  Keep in mind this enactment was radical for its time.  This amendment prevented a whole alternate history that would mirror religious wars that occurred within Africa, Europe, and Asia for hundreds and thousands of years.

I am curious, too.  Do we have members from other countries, theist or otherwise, who know of this?  What about the laws from your country?

I know that their are nations that have two or more sets of laws.  For example, in some countries, there are laws that only pertain to say followers of Islam, and then laws for everyone else.

Even in India, which is the world's largest democracy, they have laws that are exclusively religious and exclusively secular.

If you can, educate me and us

[Argie]

As far as I know, the Founders of USA where not militant anticlericalists as the jacobine french revolutionaries, but they where in favor of a secular state with a clear separation of church and state.  I wouldn´t go as far as to think they where atheists, although some of them probably were even though they never expressly said it, such as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.

deekayfry, I´m from Argentina.  Here, it is written in our constitution, and it hasn´t changed since 1863 despite several reformes and ammendments, that "the federal government supports (or sustains) the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church".  Also it is a requirement to be president of the republic to be a catholic; however it isn´t a requirement to be a catholic to hold any other public elected office, federal or provincial, these elected officials must solemntly swear over the "holy catholic scriptures" their appointment oath... only one legislature exceptionaly allowed a jewish governor to swear on the constitution, but not on the Torah.  There is a big doctrinal debate about what the "supports (or sustains" actually means:  some say it means that the federal government must economically support the Church -as a matter of fact it is the state that pays the wages for priests and parish dependents-, others say it means that the Catholic confession is the official religion of the state.  Besides the constitutional status of the Catholic Church, it also enjoys other privileges over other confessions, such as having "public entity", and tax free status over her properties.

The argentine history of the relation of Church and State is very different from the USA´s.  Partly because because of the spanish heritage and idiosincracy, partly because the local church took active involvement in the times of independence , fully supporting the revolutionary movement.  Over the years, since independence (1816), it took more than half century to sanction a constitution (1863) due to internal political conflicts, and it took much longer (1880 and afterwards) for the State to start vindicating faculties that were traditionally the Church´s, such as keeping records of births, marriages and death, or public laicist education.  Imagine it took more than 100 years since the sanction of our first constitution for the state to have legislated over "civil marriage" (1960), and another 30 years to legislate over divorce.  Today the Church´s power is very limited indeed, but it still holds an influence over a large part of the population, and still government has a hard time with isses such as sex education, abortion, gay civil union or marriage, not to mention the constant harrasment the Church exercises by critiquing every government...

[Whitney]

None of the founding fathers publicly identified as "atheist" http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_F ... igion.html

While a 4 of them were Unitarian or deist (John Adams, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin) the rest claimed to be from various christian denominations.  Most founding fathers, if not all, were members of the Masonic lodge; which many Christians today would probably consider cult-like and sacrilegious due to their use of astrology and weird rituals.

I personally think that it is even more obvious that the US was not founded as a Christian nation when a group obviously composed of mostly Christians didn't include the 10 commandments as part of law, didn't mention Jesus, and left out the Creator/God from the constitution all together (some people are a bit too dense to realize that the Declaration is not the constitution and even it only mentions "nature's God" and "Creator"  very deist terminology.  Then on top of all this included wording to form a separation between government and religion.

And for those Christians who want to include religious laws in our government...which denomination do we use as a basis?  I know most who complain would sure be pissed if we chose Catholicism as the basis and almost everyone would be upset if the gov chose Pentecostal.  The wall protects the religious freedom of Christians just as much (or more) as it does atheists.

[pinkocommie]

I dislike it whenever anyone tries to bring up what the founding fathers personally believed as some kind of proof of how they wanted this nation to run.  Just because a Christian takes part in creating a government, that doesn't stand as proof that the person was intending to create a Christian government.  If I, an atheist, start a club where I say everyone can join and be equally heard, I would be pissed if I found out that years later people were trying to make it a specifically atheist club simply because I was atheist and I started the club.  That logic makes no sense to me.  Like Whitney said, the treaty of Tripoli spells it out pretty clearly - this is NOT a Christian nation, nor is it an atheist, Jewish, Pagan, Deist or anything else nation, this is supposed to be a nation where everyone can believe or not believe whatever and it has as little effect as possible on the political landscape.

[Martin TK]

I think all of the "founding fathers" were "Christians" during their times because it would have been political suicide to have not been.  Surely, if any of them had said they were atheist, there is no telling what would have happened to them.

Look at today's politicians, I firmly believe that Obama is an atheist, and yet, he says his administration will appeal the recent court ruling against a national day of prayer.  Why would a man who taught constitutional law, NOT see that a national day of prayer is counter to the separation clause?  The answer is very simple, he wants to be re-elected in 2012 and to NOT have his administration appeal the ruling would be used against him in the coming elections.

To me, atheists are today where homosexuals were 50 years ago, and when, as a group, we come together for more than just debate, we will be able to demand equal representation in government.  Then, there will be more pressure on government to repeal or refrain from, laws that go against the separation of church and state.  If we do not do more to fight against this, there is an Evangelical Movement afoot that wants to bring back Christian Law and they have a kooky leader in Sarah Palin....

[Tanker]

Shortly after the constitution was written a local church had some serious concerns over the wording of the constitution namely the section on religious freedom. Luckey for them they could ask the primary Author Thomas Jefferson. This corespondence is where the phrase "seperation of Church and State" comes from or more acurately a "wall of seperation" between state and church. I don't understand people who try to interpret the constitution "for" Jefferson. When he did that quite well and inarguable for himself. The man who wrote it also claerly explained it there should be no argument the author was clear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Separation_of_Church_and_State_in_the_United_States

From a religious website

http://www.schoolprayerinamerica.info/1separationchurchstate.html

What is there to argue about. Jeffeson Directly told the Danbury Baptists EXACTLY what he meant by

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

He meant in no uncertain terms Religion and government shall always remain seperate.