Deism and the founding fathers of the US

Ben Franklin believed in reincarnation and he stated so many times. Thomas Jefferson was a well know agnostic. Freedom of Religion was a highly cherished of the Constitution.

Thanks NIck, I didn't know that.

Thanks NIck, I didn't know that.

A great many of the Founding Fathers were deeply religious, and a few were full-blown atheists. The religious convictions of the Founders varied considerably. New Englanders tended to be Congregationalists. Immigrants for Scotland were often Prespryterian. Quakers and Catholics came from the mid-Atlantic States. Episcapalians/Church of England was rather common in the Southern States. Off hand I can't think of any prominent Jews among those who constructed the Constitution, and there certainly were no Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims.

Some of the Founders were Deists. That is they believed in a Supreme Power, or Deity, but not necessarily the God of the Abrahamic faiths. This was a pretty popular religious view among thinkers of the Enlightenment, and the Founders were predominently products of the Enlightenment. Some were agnostics, and a small number were atheists.

The religious wars of the Reformation and Counterreformation, were still very much on the minds of the Founders when they designed the Constitution. Religious intolerance within and between the various Colonies had existed from the very beginning of English settlement of North America. No one wanted the new country to be torn apart by religious chauvinism, and everyone wanted protection from the danger that the State might impose a religion (as many European States had done) aborhent to their own consciences. The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights forbids the Federal Government from establishing any religion.

It is not unfair to say that the government of the United States was designed by men, predominently of Christian background, who had no problem with the country being fervently religious in the abstract sense, but who loathed the idea that any one sect of Christianity might reign supreme over all other sects.

Re: Deism and the founding fathers of the US


I believe most of the signers of the constitution considered themselves Deists. There was a wide range of religious representation, but many were vehemently opposed to religion in general, and to Christianity in particluar.

For example:

The Constitution of the United States

Article VI, Section 3: "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

George Washington

"The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy."

John Adams

From a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):
"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.'"

A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-88:
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. … It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [forming the U.S. government] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. …Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery… are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind"

Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11:
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, August 10, 1787:
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."

Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800
"[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man"

Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government"

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own"

Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
"One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

Jefferson's Autobiography
"[A]n amendment was proposed by inserting ?'Jesus Christ,' so that [the preamble] should read ?'A departure from the plan of 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 its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination"

James Madison

Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774:
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise"

Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Section 7, 1785:
"During almost fifteen 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 laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."

Ibid, Section 8:
"What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries"

Benjamin Franklin

From Franklin's autobiography:
"Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself "

"...Some books against Deism fell into my hands....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 quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."

Ethan Allen

From Religion of the American Enlightenment:
"Denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian."

Thomas Paine

Excerpts from The Age of Reason:

"My own mind is my own church.  All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

"Whenever we read the obscene stores (of the Bible), the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness which which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the Word of God." 

"...when I see throughout the greater part of this book (the Bible) scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name." 

"(The Christian) despises the choicest gift of God to man, the Gift of Reason; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls if 'human reason' as if man could give reason to himself."

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity"

Thanks guys.

When I've thought about what I considered to be my Christian beliefs, it actually was more deist than Christian. Now I'm agnostic.

BTW, what do you think about what they say about Deism being a non-revealed religion like Christianity? Do you think that reason leads to God, like what they claimed?

I know that Alexander Hamilton was a Presbterian and fairly religious, although not much of a church-goer. I do not believe he was a Deist, although I am not sure. I think his religious views were fairly conventional. As to the degree of his religion, the following excerpt from a letter to a friend, in which he gives a theoretical description of the girl he would find ideal to marry, may be revealing:

"As to religion, a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in God and hate a saint."

I see no obstacles to reason leading to a theistic belief. Even dyed-in-the-wool Christians who claim to have received a revelation often attempt to use reason to justify their beliefs and to explain them to non-believers. But a reasoning person may come up with a different concept of a Higher Power than the person who simply accepts the "sacred writings" (be it Torah, New Testament or Quran) as revealed divine truth.

A lot of the Founding Fathers' ideas and writings (i.e. the Declaration of Independence) were based off philosophes, or "lovers of reason." Many of the Founding Fathers took off from other Deists, so it's not incorrect to say that they themselves could be considered Deists.

The only reason I know about this is because we are currently studying the Age of Reason in World History right now. Deism is basically the belief that God created everything, then left it alone afterwords (no divine intervention, etc.) This God is referred to as the "watchmaker god," being that a watchmaker creates a watch, sells it, and never sees it again. If anything, Deism is right alongside with Theistic Evolution (which basically says that God made the Big Bang happen, then did nothing).