I think we all know that the founders generally believed in God but that doesn't really have any bearing on whether or not we're a Christian nation.

Some of the founders probably also believed in phrenology. What's it to us?

Since you're here, I wanted to ask if you're proud to host a Web site where prudes call brides sluts just for having tattoos?

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/02/the-brides-a-slut-they-call-it.html.comments.html

Don't bother asking him questions; he's too ignorant even to know that invocations of Providence were quite routine among 18th-century Deists. In any case, it is a simple truth, which a historically challenged buffoon like Waldman will never have the ammunition to seriously dispute, that orthodox Christians of any denomination were a distinct minority among the Founding Fathers. As to Washington in particular, see
http://www.virginiaplaces.org/religion/religiongw.html

It's easy to gin up evidence when one's livelihood is aided by this.

George Washington would leave the Church when communion was offered, and inducted most of the officer corps into the Masons, who were explicitly Deist.

Adams was a Unitarian, and at times described Christianity as a perversion of the teachings of Jesus.

Oh for fucks sake, how often do we have to discuss religion and politics here at TPM Cafe?

Golis, dude, I know you can find someone else to bring in for a discussion. Why not someone who's written book that isn't directly aimed at a popular audience?

Getting tired of this shit.

Obama did a great job on this subject in a speech he gave back in 2006 on religion in politics:
(excerpt)

"While I've already laid out some of the work that progressive leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what conservative leaders need to do -- some truths they need to acknowledge.

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it."

It is a great speech.
Transcript is here
http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal/index.php

Video is here:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid463869411/bctid416343938

If this is a Judeo/Christian nation, founded on Judeo/Christian principles, as many say it is, then why aren't there exhortations in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Preamble, the Founding Father's writings, etc. to; read your bibles, or, to go to church on Sunday, or, tp display the 10 commandments on private and public property?

Mr. Waldman,

Though I appreciate the perspective you present, the discussion is entirely academic, which I realize is stating the obvious. The Founders' religious beliefs matter not, it is the intent of the language of the First Amendment which matters.

Jefferson explains clearly in his autobiography that at its very foundation our nation was created under God - not under Christ. This is particularly evident in Jefferson's report of debate in the Virginia General Assembly (the oldest legislature of the U.S.) during its work of reviewing and rewriting the colonial legal code, to a form more appropriate "to our republican form of government", an undertaking mandated by legislation proposed by Jefferson.

A Committee of the Assembly composed of "Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Wythe, George Mason, Thomas L. Lee and myself", Jefferson wrote, had divided the colonial code into statutes deriving from different historical periods "from the Magna Carta to the present", to review and recommend appropriate revisions. The Committee (minus Mr. Lee who had died shortly after appointment) reported and recommended 126 different bills to the General Assembly on June 18, 1779, one of which, drafted by Jefferson, addressed religious freedom.

"The bill for establishing religious freedom", Jefferson wrote, "I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that 'coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion', an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word 'Jesus Christ', so that it should read 'Jesus Christ the holy author of our religion.' The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew, the gentile, the Christian, and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."

Jefferson's "bill for establishing religious freedom", as recrafted by Madison, became the First Amendment religious guarantees.

The problem at the core of this "Christian nation" debate is that many Christians believe Jesus to be God, and fail to understand that there are many of us who do not share their belief.

The real debate is not about what the founders believed, but about whether what they believed should have influence over what we believe today.

Is the constitution a living document... a bare outline that finds meaning through contemporary judicial application? Or is "original intent" the key to its meaning?

Likewise by analogy, do the beliefs of the founding geezers (ha ha) matter in interpreting the constitution today... or do they have "a voice but not a veto."?

I think the answer from a liberal perspective is clear.... the past has a voice, but not a veto over change.

You also have to consider what the founders believed in comparison to what their compatriots believed, and I have a sense that they were more open minded than some, even if some of them were "orthodox" protestant believers. So translating their belief system forward would mean not transferring their specific Christian beliefs forward as the proper framework for understanding the separation of church and state and the Constitution, but rather transferring forward their relative liberality compared to their compatriots and their society.

The concept will elude religious literalists, but the more astute will understand my meaning.

There's a reason why the Supreme Court uses the term 'ceremonial deism' in referring to things like 'In God We Trust' on the currency. As men of their time, the Founding Daddy-ohs were versed in classical, biblical and historical invocations to a higher power, and their phraseology took forms that were bequeathed to them. (As destor23 notes, there is not exactly the same literary and linguistic heritage for those who believe in a non-interventionist deity or no deity at all to draw upon.)

That Franklin, three decades older than Washington, Jefferson or Adams, was less influenced by the high Enlightenment of the mid-1700s is hardly surprising: he was attracted to deism in its early English varieties, then drifted away from it. And if this cherry-picking of quotes is an indication of the book, Simon, I'm afraid to say that you've not immersed yourself deeply enough in the eighteenth century.

Yes, the beliefs of the Founding Fathers are not easy to delineate. But to set them aside a monolithic and contrived 'Deism' with the doctrinal certainty of a denomination, is a mighty high straw man. Varieties of deism occupied one end of the spectrum of belief that flourished outside the constraints of the established church, and that end of the spectrum was well represented in Philadelphia.

Aren't you really gaming the subject? Today, when "progressives" refer to Deism they commonly believe it to mean a belief in God without the accompanying baggage of organized religion. But in the 18th C the term referred to a belief in a God who played no role in our day to day lives BUT who, before he stepped back, laid down a system of natural laws that we were all beholden to.

You seem to confuse these natural laws with the idea of a God who intervenes in our day to day lives: a central facet of almost every fundamental and militant religion. Neither Washington nor Jefferson would have made this mistake and you probably know this from your research. Its these natural laws and their effect on our lives that the Founders spoke of when they referred to Providence and Blessings, not God's intervention at opportune moments.

Sir, Franklin refuted you in his own autobiography.

"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the Dissenting way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."

You did, however, find an episode when Franklin found it useful to quote the Christian Bible. Likewise the deist (or Unitarian, which at the time of the founders was basically the same thing) Adams found it politically useful to denounce the deist Paine for his impiety.

This was a ridiculous post. Everyone knows Adams was a devout Christian, one of the few. And Franklin became more religious late in life.

However, the majority were Deists or athiests, and your post shows nothing to the contrary. Thomas Jefferson called the Bible a "dungheap" in private letters. The Thomas Jefferson Bible was the Bible with all pages relating to Jesus' divinity ripped out.

This post is a farce.

Steven,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. A few comments:

One cannot determine the beliefs of any particular person based on a cherry-picked set of quotes. One needs to examine the writing of each Founding Father closely. The quotes above, from Washington, Adams, and Franklin only demonstrate that these were men of the late eighteenth century whose Christianity was tinged by Enlightenment rationalism. (One could make the case that Washington's phrase, "supreme disposer of events" is a deistic one, but you would have to examine all his writing.) Invocations of God and providence don't prove anything one way or the other.

Franklin himself went through several faith transformations during the course of his life, from his upbringing as a New England Calvinist, to his young adult life as an atheist (he had an atheistic tract printed but later destroyed most copies of it), to the close of his life as a man who believed in a distant but watchful non-specific deity (oops, he was a deist).

Steven is right to note that no one can put Patrick Henry in the category of Deist. Henry was an unabashed evangelical. He was also an opponent of disestablishment in Virginia, one of the events we now recognize as fundamental to religious freedom (Henry instead preferred multiple establishments).

Also note that Steven doesn't examine (at least in this post) Madison or Hamilton, two key architects of American government as we know it. The historical argument for their deistic sensibilities is very strong.

Deism was particularly strong among well-educated, well-connected elites who read extensively in the writings of European Enlightenment thinkers. The vast majority of white Americans, though, were self-professed Christians and many could probably be categorized as evangelical (though what that designation means has certainly changed over time). The real error we're making here is privileging information about the faiths of the Founders without a critical and nonpartisan examination of the faith of white Americans. (The relationship of non whites to Christianity is too big a topic to deal with here.)

I hope one of your next posts will outline the importance of separation of POWERS of church and state.

And as someone pointed out, that the founders were also not Christian Fundamentalist Evangelicals in the current sense.

"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself."
-Thomas Jefferson in his private journal, Feb. 1800

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
-Thomas Jefferson

"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
- James Madison "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

Historian Barry Schwartz writes: "George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian... He repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative." [New York Press, 1987, pp. 174-175]

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Thomas Paine

"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."
Thomas Paine

And our greatest President, though not a founding father:
Supreme Court Justice David Davis: "He [Lincoln] had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term-- he had faith in laws, principles, causes and effects."

The quotes and beliefs of the founding father that you mention don't, to my mind, conflict with Deism.

Deism says that God intervene very little if at all in the PHYSICAL world, but that leaves the SPIRITUAL world and spiritual life very open.

In other words, God works in men's hearts and transforms them even though he doesn't physically intervene in the world and that spiritual work indirectly affects the world, say by bringing a group of human beings to the TRUTH and a good resolution of issues or enough people on the side of good for the good to triumph.

So, for instance, one could be a Diest and think that God helped you win an election.

Judeo/Christian values my ass.

These are weird quotes, in that calling attention to "God" and "Providence" is hardly evidence against Deism. What else would you call a Creator if you were a Deist?

Ok, so explain to me why the Constitution makes no mention of god or ghosts or superstition? Indeed the only reference to religion is that there should be no test of religiosity for public office. The Constitution was made by men for men. No hobgoblery or death by stoning allowed.

"Ok, so explain to me why the Constitution makes no mention of god or ghosts or superstition?"

Waldman is right to point out that the reason for this is not any simple one answer, and certainly not "because the founders were not religious." The primary reasons, if you read the debates at the time, were that:

a) the founders did not see their task at the time as being of quite the cosmological import some ascribe to it: they were getting together to hammer out a power-sharing scheme, essentially
b) most had a different conception of how religion and politics interacted: i.e. politics was a sort of base worldly struggle, while religion was really unavoidably something that wasn't under at least this new federal government's purview (remember, many states at the time had their own state religious affiliations, and not always the same ones)

I think that it's possible that you don't understand what a Deist is or what Deism is. I also think it's possible that you either haven't read any of the primary works of these men or that you have misunderstood what you read or that you are deliberately distorting what you read in order to make it fit your own beliefs. And I think that trying to put their 18th century language into a 21st century Christian context is about as distorted as it gets.

Sorry, the link above is cut off.

For a reference to the figure of 17% please search "The Churching of America, 1776 - 2005" in Google books and see pages 23-24.