Professors Donald S. Lutz and Charles S. Hyneman published an article inAmerican Political Science Review, 1984, titled "The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late 18th-Century American Political Thought."
They examined nearly 15,000 writings of the 55 writers of the U.S. Constitution, including newspaper articles, pamphlets, books and monographs, and discovered that the Bible, especially the book of Deuteronomy, contributed 34 percent of all direct quotes made by the Founders.
When indirect Bible citations were included, the percentage rose even higher.
Who were the Founding Fathers? American historian Richard B. Morris, in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, identified the following seven figures as the "key" Founding Fathers:
ReplyDeleteJohn Adams
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
John Jay
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
George Washington
Of these, only John Jay can be considered an orthodox Christian.
Sorry, but wrong again. In my book, there is no such thing as an "orthodox" Christian. I am not. Neither are any of my friends. We think very differently but are Christians, nonetheless. Like it or not, respect for the place and value of the biblical message is everywhere in our history. That is the point of this post, and you cannot change history, here, on this blog.
DeleteThe establishment of a national religion in England is what drove our founders to America and caused them to establish this nation as free and independent. The separation of church and state is one of the cornerstones of America’s foundation. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of our founding principles. In fact, the words "Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, Creator, Divine, and God" are never mentioned in the Constitution-- not even once. Nowhere in the Constitution is religion mentioned, except in exclusionary terms.
DeleteWhen the Founders wrote the nation's Constitution, they specified that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article 6, section 3) This provision gave equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had.
The Declaration of Independence gives us important insight into the opinions of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the power of the government is derived from the governed. Up until that time, it was claimed that kings ruled nations by the authority of God. The Declaration was a radical departure from the idea that the power to rule over other people comes from god. It was a letter from the Colonies to the English King, stating their intentions to separate themselves. The Declaration is not a governing document. It mentions "Nature's God" and "Divine Providence"-- but that's the language of Deism - not Christianity.
None of the Founding Fathers were atheists. Most of the Founders were Deists, which is to say they thought the universe had a creator, but one that is not connected to the daily lives of humans, and does not directly communicate with humans, either by revelation or by sacred books. They spoke often of God, (Nature's God or the God of Nature), but this was not the God of the bible.
Jefferson's original wording in the Declaration: "All men are created equal and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable." Congress changed that phrase, increasing its religious overtones so that the religious King would better be able to relate to the Declaration: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights."
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
~Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson
You can thank me later for this history lesson. The conservative revisionists can not change these facts.
Apparently Anonymous does not believe in the Bill of Rights or their place as extensions of the Constitution. The First Amendment reads in part: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. These words or precisely why our resident Marxist opposes the First Amendment as written.
DeleteAnonymous has no clue as to how many of the Founding class were Diest, Theists, or Judeao Christian. It remains a quantitative fact, that 35% of all quotes used in our founding documents were and are from the Bible. How does that happen when the "majority of our founders were Deists and had not respect for the Bible, per se, as implied by Anonymous?"
And why does Anonymous consider the first draft of the Declaration the official Declaration? Because he can live that wording.