THE FOUNDING FATHERS WERE DEISTS, NOT CHRISTIANS

Thomas Paine, pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the War of Independence: "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of . . . Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

George Washington, first president: He had the characteristic unconcern of the 18th century Deist for the forms and creeds of institutional religion. Although he often referred to Providence as an impersonal force, remote and abstract, he never declared himself to be a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a Universalist who denied the existence of Hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.

John Adams, second president: Drawn to the study of law but facing pressure from his father to become a clergyman, he wrote that he found among the lawyers "a noble air and gallant achievements" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces." Late in life, he wrote, "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?"

It was during Adams' presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI:

"The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence: "I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote, "The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and preeminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."

James Madison, fourth president and Father of the Constitution: Madison was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have 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."

Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention: "As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion . . . has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble." He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his time, as a Deist, not a Christian.