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.

In addition to many excellent criticisms of this polemic disguised as scholarship, and in addition to the obvious point that there are no "Christian principles" enshrined in the Constitution, I want to point out that there is one major way in which Christian thought did affect the drafting of the Constitution. Christian thought held that all men are selfish and corrupt, and that given power they would inevitably and invariably seek to use this power for selfish and corrupt ends. The major purpose of the Constitution was to structure a governmental system so as to preclude such abuses of power in the government that was being created; the Bill of Rights was an added and vital insurance policy (which people like Scalia and Alioto evidently have never bothered to read). Today, whether it is Bush or some Bible thumper or one of the many dishonest corporate executives, we are presented with claims to the effect that the claimants are inherently GOOD, empowered by God and not capable of being corrupted, and that they should therefore be trusted without any supervision or accountability. This pseudo-Christianity (at best) is at the heart of much that is wrong with this glaringly corrupt society.

The Constitution was absolutely intended to be a living document. That's why they inserted the amendment process. So to think that they intended for the initial framework to be inviable is fallacious.

I think the basic argument here is: did the framers put in the establishment clause with the intention for the United States to be a secular republic? That is a very difficult question to make convincing arguments on either side.

Jefferson, for example, re-wrote the bible by eliminating the miracles of Jesus from the text and leaving only the basic message. How do you interpret that in the context of the current argument?

Washington, according to popular convention, ad-libbed "so help me God" when he was sworn in as President. Franklin's writings frequently reference God. And has anyone read the Declaration of Independence?

Sifting through the tea leaves to determine intent may not be an impossibility. The framers quite obviously didn't want the government to be dominated by a church. In order to meet that requirement, is it at least *possible* that they concluded America MUST be a secular society?

Think about that for a second...

Is it possible that the framers came to this very conclusion? The establishment clause clearly shows that they did not want a national religion or denomination. The only logical way to prevent that is to exclude it from the republic vis-a-vis a secular government.

Many of the founding fathers didn't have a problem with slavery, or with the fact that women couldn't vote.

The entire idea of using history to justify present day policies is dishonest. However the US was "founded" it has moved on since then and established 200 years of law based upon experience and precedence.

Those who fall back on history are being selective in more than just cherry picking the parts that support their thesis.

The trend over time has been to grant more rights to larger segments of the population, religions, by their very nature are elitist and selective. Why would we want to use this as a basis for a truly democratic and egalitarian society?

Here's what I want to know: How many of you have been consistent in your religious beliefs to date?

Further, how many of you would enjoy having your life picked apart by people trying to make meaning of their own?

Sure, the second question is part of the price of fame, but the point is that it really doesn't matter what the Founding Fathers were like, what they liked, and how they acted. Even if we somehow had recordings of every event of their entire lives, what is important is what they achieved.

By the same token, what is important now--and at any time--is what we shall achieve. If all we manage to do is to put forth compelling arguments about the past, we owe a profound apology to posterity.

Maybe Washington had very religious times in his life. Maybe Franklin was a closet evangelical fundamentalist. It is possible that Jefferson worshiped Cthulhu in his inner sanctum.

Someone, please, explain to me how this has any bearing whatsoever on how we govern ourselves. They laid out the most flexible and general practice plan for a secure and stable democratic republic, and they only mentioned religion once: the government shall not dictate which religion the people must practice.

That one's obvious, after what they'd seen happen in England.

Normally I find the debates here to be interesting. This one's irrelevant. Do any of you really mean to say that if, say, Washington's lifelong religion could be distilled into some label, that we could therefore inform our decisions 200+ years hence?

I think that any of those practical men would be ashamed of such a witless pursuit.

Martin Luther King was an ignorant Christian FREAK for imagining much less believing that there is such a thing as moral reality!!! What a MORON!!! Just as bad as Ghandi!

And don't get me started on Jimmy Carter, Elie Wiesel and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Quaker idiot.

Don't these dullards know that believing in any values period, regardless of what magic er I mean "religion" one practices (if any) is always a matter of faith, because there is no empirical way in which to prove that anything is right or wrong. Anyone who even contemplates the alternative is stupid.

PS: Steven Waldman is clearly a hypocrite, a wolf in sheep's clothing, intellectually dishonest, and much much more because he doesn't condemn all people of faith just like I do. AMEN!

I'd like to suggest a real username for "username 1000". How about "strawmen aplenty"? That would fit.

There are now over 70 comments, nearly all taking Waldman to task for his wildly strawman argument. Most of the comments--even the ruder ones--are on the money. Waldman is cherrypicking quotes that prove absolutely nothing. As one of the commentators with a particular penchant for irony noted, "Thank god I am an atheist!" Right! But even the quotations were not selective, so what? They certainly conformed to cultural norms, irrespectively of whether they were Deists, non-Deists, Christians or Unitarians, or secular humanists. Waldman inserts himself into the argument without any ability to resolve the alleged dispute. His comments are ahistorical.

Jefferson's non-establishment act is particularly important, as was Madison's oratory skills put in its defense. It is essential to note that, although an opportunity existed to establish a particular religion--or, more specifically, a particular denomination--as dominant and, perhaps, official, Virginia and then the United States rejected this opportunity out of hand. Irrespectively of whether the Founding Fathers were or were not Christian, they intentionally and explicitly rejected the idea of a Christian nation. This is what the fight is about. It is not about Deism.

It is particularly helpful to put this in international context--something that the Christianists, who are often also isolationists, loathe to do. Prior to 1776, there was only one nation that arose from the European tradition (Continental or colonial) that rejected the idea that civic participation required a religious test. This nation was the Netherlands--a place that had direct and profound influence not only on John Locke, but also on Benjamin Franklin and other "Founding Fathers". Unlike its neighbors and their colonies, the Netherlands allowed civic participation irrespectively of one's religion. However, one remnant of its Christian past remained. To be considered for office one still had to satisfy a religious test. Effectively, this provision barred the Jews and atheists from holding public elected offices.

The United States, therefore, was the first nation--of those that fall, under contemporary conservative labels, into the class of "Western Civilization"--to bar religious test for all civic participation. In fact, religious tests for office are explicitly proscribed by the Constitution. As was the case for Locke, the Founding Fathers found the principle of tolerance--again, inherited from the Dutch--to be of particular value.

Yet, Waldman would have us believe that it was all a sham. The founders really were a jolly Christian bunch who took a chance to give praise to God at every opportunity. What a crock! This claim stands history on its head.

Earth to Waldman--this is why we have a hearsay rule in law, so that someone who overhears an utterance cannot be called to testify as to its intended meaning. Yet, your entire argument is based on the thinnest hearsay. Never mind that the premise is based on something that is not in evidence.

If Waldman's thesis was a part of an academic dissertation--even at a school of theology--he'd be going back to the drawing board scratching his head. No scholar in his right mind could be persuaded by this nonsense. I am really not looking forward to more weeks of Waldman's arguments if they are anything like his first.

Chris, I just wanted to compliment you on your response. I found it very instructive.

Buck: Amen, brother!!!

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...

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

Translation: The Constitution means whatever we need it to mean to get our way.

The Calvinist tradition, in the 18th century sought to separate religion from politics. They believed that the Prince's of Germany had got religion all wrong after the first wave of the reformation. They felt that it was best that politicians stay out of the business of religion because they didn't know what they were doing.

So here we have Calvinist wanting to separate church from state, we have religious minorities wanting to separate church from state and we have Deist and Athiest wanting to separate church from state. And also we have Christ wanting to separate church from state.

Given the sorry history of combining church and state and the successful history of separating, and given our own history, why is it now that we suddenly seem to be revisiting this question?

The answer comes from the emergence of movement conservatives in Neoconservative guise.

Rich Republicans want policies that concentrate wealth and power. In a democracy these policies cannot succeed... unless you distract and confuse the electorate from voting in their own interest.

The current wave of merging Church and State then, is being driven by wealthy elite movement Republicans who provide seed money through their families' foundations to groups like the Institute for Democracy and Religion which aims to coopt mainstream Protestant religion and make is culturally and politically conservative movements. There are other groups with other intended audiences. How can you tell them? They are the strange bedfellows you see: Pat Robertson backing Rudy instead of Hucklebee - that sort of thing.

Mr. Waldman would present himself as an honest broker here for discussion purposes. But the issue only comes up in order to advance the interest of wealthy movement conservatives. The rest of us are happy to pursue, or not, our spiritual lives apart from politics. Mr. Waldman would further imply that, because I say 'bless you' after you sneeze, means that I am a theist. How absurd.

Christ was most specifically correct: sound civics does not equate to religious ethics. Of course he had other reasons... given that he was whipped, tripped and murdered as a result of politics eminating from inside of a religious hierarchy. If only Christ had been rich and powerful...

The Deists were not a uniform branch of theology that every Sunday attended a Deist church where their religion was enforced. Many did not study Diest writing but thought that that philosophy made enough sense that they could ignore the religious nonsense. Their use of words like "providence" or "God" can often be transcribed as "Mother Nature" and their writing can often be explained in terms of the metaphors that were in common usage at their time.

At that time there was no scientific explanation of how life or the world could have evolved from nothing so most Deists thought there must have been a God who created everything.

Citing the straw man claim that "the founding fathers were all Deists" is in itself a strawman.

Being a Diest at that time is similar to being a (mild) atheist today - not thinking much about religion other than rejecting it - most atheists do not join atheist groups where they work to define and elaborate their atheism. Because the would be similar to some theocratic group.

The founders understood that keeping government secular as well as under civilian control was important to its survival. There was no national anthem or pledge to a flag in their thinking. Waving the flag, and bragging about how many times you go church isn't in the best interest of this Constitution. I wish we'd pick candidates that would have a greater interest in protecting and defending the Constitution. Instead we get McCain who wants to have a military presence everywhere and shove the bill in our faces.

Waldman, two words for you and this post: Piss off!

Those quotes from Washington, Adams, and Franklin don't seem conclusively religious. Religious imagery, sure. God as a poetic device, perhaps. Genuine rock-solid Christian faith, possibly.

But the evidence you presented doesn't seem to quite connect A to B.

Your post is incorrect and irrelevant because you neglect the other two hundred fifty framers, limiting the doctrine on beliefs of a few men.

The "key founders" doctrine is a flawed system to promote your flawed agenda. What about John Witherspoon? He taught most of the framers; Governors, Senators, etc. President JQ Adams, Father of the Bill of Rights George Mason, Father of the Revolution Samuel Adams, Chief Justice John Jay, Richard Stockton, James Wilson, etc?

Could it be they were orthodox Christians? Oh yes.

OFT