Essay On Founding Fathers

Important founding fathers were Deist and not Christians as most people believe. According to David L Holmes, author of The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, “Deism is what is left of Christianity after casting off everything that is pecu-liar to it. The Deist is one who denies the Divinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement of Christ, and the work of the Holy Ghost; who denies the God of Israel, and believes in the God of nature” (Holmes 39,40). Now that we know the definition of Deism, we can affirm that some founding fathers were Deists. Starting with Thomas Pain, the English-American philosopher, and revolutionary, who, although did not signed any important document in the foundation of the United States, historians attribute him to be the
In Pain’s words “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. My own mind is my own church.” And if this was not clear enough, in the same work, The Age of Reason he exclaims “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.” Another important figure that was an open Deist was Thomas Jefferson. In the book Six Historic Americans by John E. Remsburg, in page 74 there is letter that Jefferson wrote to Dr. Woods which says “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and dot find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies” (74). This certainly shows what Jefferson though about Christianity and proves his Deism. Not to mention that Thomas Jefferson was the founding father who drafted the Declaration of