The fathers of America, the founding fathers, the men who wrote the constitution were NOT devout Christians as so many Americans prefer to believe.  Preached from the pulpits or conservative podiums many Americans are lectured and choose to believe that following these “ardent God worshiping Christians” will save them and the country…some day!  The founding fathers are referred to, employed, adopted by fibbing politicians and doubt-dealing pundits  when trying to enforce a belief or theory. Many American Christians call the United States constitution a “sacred inspired text”.  One then needs to ask why,  which part and authored and written by whom?

“We want to impute to them our ideologies, our religion, because in them seems what we believe in” says the Utah Valley University President. However, historians who have seriously studied and researched the lives of these founding fathers claim most Americans assume, theorize, far too much about what these men really believed and how their beliefs, personal convictions, influenced the American constitution and it’s subsequent laws..

No doubt these founding fathers would have been quick to acknowledge it was an imperfect incomplete document, just remember slavery and suffrage!  The founding fathers OWNED people and Martha Washington, the First Lady of the Land, as other women, could not vote. The writers therefore cleverly allowed for future flexibility in the document. They wisely created a constitution that recognized necessary changes would and could be made as the new nation matured.

There is however  a reason why these men in the 1700s created the rules for a new country based on a strict separation of church (religion) and state (government).They had witnessed the negative influence in European countries where and when the Church and State merged. They believed that religion and government will both “exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together”. They did not want a state religion, rather the rights for all faiths which have spiritual and practical applications. The Father of the Constitution, James Madison, is responsible for the first amendment, the separation of church and state. It is he who argues of letting religion survive “on its own merits”. Madison was joined by the founding fathers warning against the peril and danger of the encroachment of Ecclesiastical Bodies in government.

George Washington was a member of the Church of England (Episcopal) and attended services near his home in Virginia. However although he accepted the philosophy of a supreme being rejected prophecy, miracles, and revelation.  He was considered a Deist.

John Adams was a Congregationalist who later changed to a Unitarian, believing in the resurrection however discarding the Trinity and that Jesus was divine.

Ben Franklin, of puritan decent, was raised an Episcopalian but identified himself, like Washington, as a Deist. He was the epitome, the embodiment, of the Renaissance Man, widely diverse in all areas of life and belief.

Thomas Paine, he too would be considered a follower of the Deism philosophy.

James Madison, who was responsible for the disestablishment of the Anglican, Church of England, in Virginia, was the owner of hundreds of slaves who worked on his plantation.

It was Madison who summarized the first amendment as ” CONGRESS SHOULD NOT ESTABLISH A RELIGION AND ENFORCE THE LEGAL OBSERVATION OF IT BY LAW, NOR COMPEL MEN TO WORSHIP GOD IN ANY MANNER CONTRARY TO THEIR CONSCIENCE OR THAT ONE MIGHT OBTAIN A PRE-EMINENCE, OR TWO COMBINED TOGETHER AND ESTABLISH A RELIGION TO WHICH THEY WOULD COMPEL OTHERS TO CONFORM.” (August 15,1789)

It was John Adams who is quoted “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?” (December 27/1816)

The American founding fathers were creative visionary wise men who believed in a God, but each in their own way.  Their individual beliefs were personal, practical, educated and  without religious passion. Their intention in the drafting of the United States Constitution was there be a written appreciation of that individual liberty, choice, to or not to, follow a faith as the citizen himself chooses without hindrance, impediment,  or the support financially and or dictate by rule of law of any government.

TRUTH:  The founding Fathers were brilliant visionaries but not divine DEVOUT CHRISTIANS!!! and as Ronald Reagan said “Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief nor will we ever.  Church and State are and must remain separate.”

Perhaps the founding fathers and those Presidents that followed might add…..BE AWARE OF THE RELIGIOUS PASSIONS OF THOSE  DEVOTED TO THE DOCTRINE ONLY THEIR BELIEF AND GOD EXISTS AND USE OF GOVERNMENT IS BUT A TOOL TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR GOAL.