(2840)  Tue 8 Aug 95 21:59
By: Scot Bear
To: All
Re: Re: America's Unchristian Beginnings
St:
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@EID:81ff 3028258c
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  From the Los Angeles Times, Commentary for Thursday, August
  3rd,1995, Page B9:


  AMERICA'S UNCHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS

  *** Founding Fathers: Most, despite preachings of our pious
  right,
      were deists who rejected the divinity of Jesus.

      By STEVEN MORRIS

  The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of
  the United States as part of its campaign to force its view
  of
  religion on others who ask merely to be left alone. According
  to this Orwellian revision, the Founding Fathers were devout
  Christians who envisioned a Christian nation.

  Not true. The early presidents and patriots were generally
  deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal
  Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the relevance
  of the Bible.

  *  Thomas Paine, pamphleteer whose manifestoes encouraged
  the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially
  in winning the War of Independence: "I do not believe in
  the creed
  professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by
  the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant
  church,nor by any church that I know of. Each of those churches
  accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve
  them all."

  *  George Washington, first President: He seems to have
  had the characteristic unconcern of the 18th-Century deist
  for the forms and creeds of institutional religions. Although
  he often
  referred to Providence as an impersonal force, remote and
  abstract, he never declared himself to be a Christina, either
  in contemporary reports or his voluminous correspondence.

  Washington championed the cause of freedom from religious
  intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray, a Universalist
  who denied the existence of hell, was invited to become
  an Army chaplain, other chaplains petitioned Washington
  to reject him. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment.

  On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious
  nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.

  *  John Adams, second President: Drawn to the study of law
  but facing pressure from his father to become a clergyman,
  he wrote that he found among lawyers "a noble air and gallant
  achievements" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity
  of some absolute dunces." Late in life he wrote, "Twenty
  times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon
  the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all
  possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!!'" It
  was during Adams'
  presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace
  and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "The Government
  of the United States of America is not in any sense founded
  on the Christian religion." This treaty with the Islamic
  state of
  Tripoli had been written and concluded by Joel Barlow during
  Washington's Administration.

  *  Thomas Jefferson, third President and author of the
  Declaration of Independence: "I trust that there is not
  a young man now living in the United States who will not
  die an
  Unitarian." He referred to the Book of Revelations as "the
  ravings of a maniac" and in further criticism of the Bible
  he wrote: "The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines
  of
  Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need
  explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials
  with which they might build up an artificial system which
  might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy,
  give
  employment for their order, and introduce it to profit,
  power and preeminence. The doctrines which flowed from the
  lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a
  child; but
  thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms
  engrafted on them:  and for this obvious reason that nonsense
  can never be explained."

  *  James Madison, fourth President and father of the
  Constitution: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates
  the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise," he wrote.
  "During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment
  of
  Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More
  or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy,
  ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition,
  bigotry and persecution."

  *  Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while
  commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire the country
  to pursue the War of Independence: "That Jesus Christ was
  not God is evident from his own words." Allen also wrote
  that he was generally "Denominated a deist, the reality
  of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian."
  Allen stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked
  if he promised "to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to
  the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the judge
  agreed that the God referred to was the god of nature, and
  the laws those "written in the great book of Nature."

  *  Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress
  and the Constitutional Convention: "As to Jesus of Nazareth,
  my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the
  System of Morals and his Religion... has receive various
  corruption
  changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters
  in England, some Doubts as to his divinity: tho' it is a
  question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it,
  and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I
  expect soon an
  Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble." He
  died a month later, a deist, not a Christian.

  ___________________________________________________

  Steven Morris is a professor of physics at Los Angeles Harbor
  College and a member of Los Angeles-based Atheists United.



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