How many founding fathers were deists

From a few of these lodges developed modern symbolic or speculative Freemasonry, which particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, adopted the rites and trappings of ancient religious orders and of chivalric brotherhoods. In the first Grand Lodge, an association of lodges, was founded in England.

Freemasonry has, almost from its inception, encountered considerable opposition from organized religion, especially from the Roman Catholic Church, and from various states. Though often mistaken for such, Freemasonry is not a Christian institution. Freemasonry contains many of the elements of a religion; its teachings enjoin morality, charity, and obedience to the law of the land. For admission the applicant is required to be an adult male believing in the existence of a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul.

In practice, some lodges have been charged with prejudice against Jews, Catholics, and nonwhites. Generally, Freemasonry in Latin countries has attracted freethinkers and anticlericals, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the membership is drawn largely from among white Protestants.

Hamilton had been fairly devout as a youth, and while there is little evidence of much religiosity during the height of his career, in his final years he returned to a heartfelt and sincere Christian piety. The next category is those whose deism is ascribed on slender evidence. A regular attendee of religious services and a vestryman in his parish, Washington peppered many of his addresses and speeches with biblical references and appeals to divine providence as well a messages extolling the role of religion in public life.

And the evidence of Mason and Madison is even weaker than that for Washington. The only really plausible cases are Franklin and Jefferson. There is no doubt that both were taken with deist doctrines in their youth and that they informed their mature religious convictions. Yet neither entirely embraced the religion of nature, especially in its militant form. Franklin never accepted the divinity of Christ, but he did specifically argue for a providential view of history.

This is not to suggest that there were no deists in the founding. But these comprise a small fraction of the B-list, not the cream of the crop. Having dispatched the secularists, turn your fire on the case for a Christian founding.

First, note that while the aforementioned founders were not deists, they were far from traditional in their beliefs. Washington may not have mentioned Jesus because he doubted the divinity of Christ, a doubt that was assuredly shared by Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and possibly Mason and Madison as well.

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Moreover, it is important to point out that a country founded by and for Christians does not a Christian founding make. Within the globalization of life, three major changes were of special significance. The development of new-style empires and large state systems that came to dominate global political and military affairs. The internal transformation of the major societies, but especially the transformation of society in western Europe. The emergence of networks of interaction that were global in their scope.

These developments reoriented the global balance of societal power. In there were four predominant traditions of civilization in the Eastern Hemisphere in a position of relative parity, but by , one of these societies, the West, was in a position to assume political and military control over the whole world.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Once your students have seen the inadequacy of both current formulas, push them to rethink the relation of politics and religion in the early Republic. You might suggest that the natural religious language of the Declaration served as a neutral expression acceptable to all denominations rather than a deist creed precisely because a tradition of natural theology was shared by most Christians at the time. Deist phrases may thus have been a sort of theological lingua franca , and their use by the founders was ecumenical rather than anti-Christian.

Such ecumenical striving sheds fresh light on the first amendment and the secular order it established. This secularism forbade the federal government from establishing a national church or interfering with church affairs in the states. However, it did not create a policy of official indifference, much less hostility toward organized religion. Congress hired chaplains, government buildings were used for divine services, and federal policies supported religion in general ecumenically as does our tax code to this day.

The founding generation always assumed that religion would play a vital part in the political and moral life of the nation. Its ecumenical secularity insured that no particular faith would be excluded from that life, including disbelief itself.

Unfortunately, many recent books on deism and the Founding of the United States are polemical in intent. There are two notable exceptions however.

David L. Holmes, The Faith of the Founding Fathers makes a scholarly argument for the importance of deism in the founding, albeit by examining a handful of Virginians. Alf J. Mapp, Jr. Little work has been done on deism in early America itself besides Kerry S.

Two excellent examples are Edwin S. They believed that the main factor in serving God was living a good and moral life, that promoting morality was the central value and purpose of religion, and that religion was indispensable to society because it engendered morality. They believed that virtually all religions fulfilled that purpose — not just Christianity. That is why they allowed freedom of religion. Theistic rationalists rejected most of the fundamental doctrines of biblical Christianity, including: the deity of Christ, the Trinity, original sin, the atoning work of Christ, justification by faith, eternal punishment for sin, and the inspiration of Scripture.

There were Christians among the Founders — no deists — but the key Founders who were most responsible for the founding documents Declaration of Independence and Constitution and who had the most influence were theistic rationalists. They did not intend to create a Christian nation.

Not a single Founding Father made such a claim in any piece of private correspondence or any document. If they had, it would be blazoned above the entrances of countless Christian schools and we would all be inundated with emails repeating it. This matters today because: 1 as purveyors of truth, Christians damage their witness by promoting historical inaccuracies.

Having said that, it is important to add that this exclusion in no way devalued the importance of the Christian religion in their minds—nor should it in ours. Christianity is thriving in America, and so is Judaism, Islam, and other religions.

We should instead be grateful for the wisdom of our founding fathers who purposely devised a government and a nation based upon the Constitution that gave people the freedom and liberty to practice their religion.

This system has worked amazingly well for over years and is the envy of many countries ensnared in sectarian strife. Brian Thorn. Nicholas Rathod. You Might Also Like. Apr 1, Sally Steenland.