When the Founding Fathers included “freedom of religion” as one of the fundamental principles of our country, they were writing from a Christian point of view for the new-born Christian country, right?
Wrong.
Most of the Founding Fathers – the most famous ones – were not Christian at all; they were deists. Not only that, the ones who were Christian were Protestants, Catholics, and all other kinds of Christians, all of which were viewed as different religions at the time – as different as Jews, Muslims, and Christians are viewed today.
Finally, do not think we were a “Christian country.” And if anybody thinks our Founding Fathers didn’t intend for those religious freedoms to extend to every faith on the planet… read below. (I’ve also included a few quotes from other prominent Americans you may have heard about.)
(This comes from me reading about our President, once again, saying that certain faiths should not be considered “religions,” and thus protected by the Constitution.)
From Thomas Jefferson
And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions…. error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it…. I deem the essential principles of our government…. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; … freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
— First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
“Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed over without notice.”
— quoted from Jefferson’s Works, Vol. iv., p. 572. (Asa Green “was probably the Reverend Ashbel Green, who was chaplain to congress during Washington’s administration.” — Farrell Till in “The Christian Nation Myth.”)
To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
— letter to William Green Mumford, June 18, 1799
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
— Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82 (capitalization of the word god is retained per original)
I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
— letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1799
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
— letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803
Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
— to Richard Rush, 1813
from George Washington
If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
— letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789, quoted from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.
— letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789, in Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, Vol 1. p. 495, quoted from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.
— letter to Tench Tilghman asking him to secure a carpenter and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate, March 24, 1784, in Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion (1963) p. 118, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”
Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others.
— letter to the Religious Society called the Quakers, September 28,1789, quoted from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, also in Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, The Harper Book of American Quotations (1988)
“Sir, Washington was a Deist.”
— The Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie, rector of the church Washington had attended with his wife, to The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, upon Wilson’s having inquired of Abercrombie regarding Washington’s religious beliefs, quoted from John E. Remsberg, Six Historic Americans
“With respect to the inquiry you make, I can only state the following facts: that as pastor of the Episcopal Church, observing that, on sacramental Sundays George Washington, immediately after the desk and pulpit services, went out with the greater part of the congregation — always leaving Mrs. Washington with the other communicants — she invariably being one — I considered it my duty, in a sermon on public worship, to state the unhappy tendency of example, particularly of those in elevated stations, who uniformly turned their backs on the Lord’s Supper. I acknowledge the remark was intended for the President; and as such he received it. A few days after, in conversation, I believe, with a Senator of the United States, he told me he had dined the day before with the President, who, in the course of conversation at the table, said that, on the previous Sunday, he had received a very just rebuke from the pulpit for always leaving the church before the administration of the sacrament; that he honored the preacher for his integrity and candor; that he had never sufficiently considered the influence of his example, and that he would not again give cause for the repetition of the reproof; and that, as he had never been a communicant, were he to become one then, it would be imputed to an ostentatious display of religious zeal, arising altogether from his elevated station. Accordingly, he never afterwards came on the morning of sacrament Sunday, though at other times he was a constant attendant in the morning.”
— The Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie, in a letter to a friend in 1833, Sprague’s Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. 5, p. 394, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 25-26
“I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges, himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more.”
— The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in an interview with Mr. Robert Dale Owen written on November 13, 1831, which was publlshed in New York two weeks later, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27
“I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation further than as may be hoped from his constant attendance upon Christian worship, in connection with the general reserve of his character.”
— The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a letter to the Rev. B. C. C. Parker, dated December 31, 1832, from Wilson, Memoir of Bishop White, pp. 189-191, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 28
“Unlike Thomas Jefferson — and Thomas Paine, for that matter — Washington never even got around to recording his belief that Christ was a great ethical teacher. His reticence on the subject was truly remarkable. Washington frequently alluded to Providence in his private correspondence. But the name of Christ, in any correspondence whatsoever, does not appear anywhere in his many letters to friends and associates throughout his life.”
— Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion (1963) pp. 74-75, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church.”
“That he was not just striking a popular attitude as a politician is revealed by the absence of of the usual Christian terms: he did not mention Christ or even use the word ‘God.’ Following the phraseology of the philosophical Deism he professed, he referred to ‘the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men,’ to ‘the benign parent of the human race.'”
— James Thomas Flexner, describing Washington’s first Inaugural Address, in George Washington and the New Nation (1783-1793) (1970) p. 184, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”
“Washington’s religious belief was that of the enlightenment: deism. He practically never used the word ‘God,’ preferring the more impersonal word ‘Providence.’ How little he visualized Providence in personal form is shown by the fact that he interchangeably applied to that force all three possible pronouns: he, she, and it.”
— James Thomas Flexner, in George Washington: Anguish and Farewell (1793-1799) (1972) p. 490, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”
Andrew Jackson
I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.
— 1832, statement refusing to proclaim a national day of fasting and prayer, Correspondence 4:447
James Madison
Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.
— letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822.
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.
— letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803, quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000
Years of Disbelief have ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect.
— letter to Mordecai Noah, May 15, 1818, quoted from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?
— A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, addressed to the Virginia General Assemby, 1785
John Adams (agreed upon by all scholars to be the most “devout” Founding Father
As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries….
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation. (emphasis mine)
— Treaty of Tripoli (1797), the English version of which was carried unanimously by the Senate, signed into law by John Adams, and translated into Arabic (the original language is by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul)
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
— letter to Thomas Jefferson, from George Seldes, The Great Quotations, also from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief
Thomas Paine
Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.
— The Rights of Man
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression.
— Dissertations on First Principles of Government (July 7, 1795), as quoted by Joseph Lewis in Inspiration and Wisdom from the Writings of Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.
— The Crisis
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.
— The Age of Reason (1794), quoted from Laird Wilcox, ed., The Writer’s Rights (2002) p. 31
Abraham Lincoln
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
— Abraham Lincoln, to Judge J. S. Wakefield, after Willie Lincoln’s death (Willie died in 1862), quoted by Joseph Lewis in “Lincoln the Freethinker,” also appearing in Remsburg’s “Six Historic Americans”
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.
— quoted by Joseph Lewis in “Lincoln the Freethinker”
It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.
— chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper, quoted from Antony Flew, How to Think Straight, p. 17
When the Know-Nothings get control, it [the Declaration of Independence] will read: “All men are created equal except negroes, foreigners and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
— letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855, from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
And now, the Big One. The one that everybody quotes… incorrectly.
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
— closing the Gettysburg Address, according to the Nicolay Draft, one of two that he wrote on the day he gave the address, neither of which contain the phrase, “Under God” (quoted from a photo of the Nicolay Draft), delivered at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863 ††