slesh wrote:
It is well documented that each of the founders were profound Christian men.
O'Donnell may not have come across the right way, but her point on the founders is correct.
To borrow from Bill Schultz
We
Just
Fucking
Did
This
http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2006/How ... ec-06.htmlAccording to his major biographer, Douglass Southall Freeman, there is "no evidence [
George Washington] expressed personal belief in any credal religion.
Like Washington,
Ben Franklin was clearly outside the Christian tradition virtually all of his life. An establishment of religion made no sense to him; he was a Deist and not a church-goer.
All
Thomas Jefferson scholars agree that Jefferson was not a believer in Christianity in any ordinary sense. Like most of the Founders, Jefferson believed in an overriding Providence that guided the affairs of the United States. But he valued intellectual and religious freedom far more than Christian dogmatism, and strongly believed that government had no authority to mandate religious conformity.
As a youth
James Madison may have had some interest in religion but the evidence is skimpy. Certainly religion was not of any significance in Madison's mature life and there is no evidence Madison ever joined a church.
John Adams was certainly a religious man, but not an orthodox Christian. David McCullough, in his enormously popular biography of John Adams, says Adams was a "devout Christian," but there are only five brief references to Adams' religion in his 751 page biography. These refer to his reluctance to travel on the Sabbath, his baptism, the connection between religion and morality, and that Adams visited several Christian churches as he moved around the nation's capital.
Alexander Hamilton had no formal church affiliation although he was somewhat religious as a student at King's College (now Columbia University).
Gouverneur Morris, the most frequent speaker in the Convention and the man who penned the final draft of the Constitution, was strongly opposed to the union of church and state. There is no evidence he believed in, belonged to, or attended any church.
James Wilson, who spoke more times than anyone except Gouverneur Morris, was a Deist. Wilson was the dominant figure in the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, holding the floor for days. Wilson became America's foremost legal scholar and helped to move the country from a jurisprudence based on authority of rules to one based on the consent of the people. One of the best educated men in America, Wilson studied at St. Andrews, Scotland, and, like Tom Paine, was inclined to follow where reason lead. Wilson also thought natural law had a "deistic origin" rather than a religious basis.
George Mason of Virginia was also a frequent speaker (136 times) at the Convention and was "largely responsible for the proposal of a bill of rights by the First Congress of the United States. He joined Madison in his call for the disestablishment of the Anglican religion in Virginia and the separation of the church and state in the United States. He also famously refused to sign the Constitution at the Convention because, among other things, it did not include a bill of rights. Mason was a Man of the Enlightenment and, like Wilson, showed no interest in religion. In fact, there is not a single reference to religion in all three volumes of his papers.
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