Founding Fathers

• Faith of our Founding Fathers
• A. Background
• B. Who Are the Founding Fathers

• C. Religion and the US Founders

• D. Reason, Truth and Mankind
• E. Opinion and Conscience
• F. Who are the People?
• G. Good Humor and Good Manners
• H. United States as an Experiment
• I. Logic
• J. Conversation and Discourse

C. Religion and U.S. Founders

Detailing the religious faith of a large group is a mammoth undertaking. In regard to specific religious beliefs, each person requires a separate study and even then we are still guessing. I don’t count myself as knowledgeable when it comes to the specific religious beliefs of U.S. Founders. The follow are comments and references on religion and religion in our founding era that help throw some light on the issue.

Using ancient Greek and Roman stories and ideas gave American colonists a neutral ground where they could formulate their discourse. They were free to criticize Caesar whereas they would have been in trouble if they had censured King George III.

In speaking of the Greeks and Romans, most American colonists saw the ancient world through the eyes of Cicero, Livy, Plutarch, Addison, Steele and popular plays. In pinpointing ideas of God and religion among U.S. Founders, it is important to remember that their minds were steeped in Greek and Roman ventures.

Reason is the Mystagogue to Theology: "(Plutarch)…gives us in a few words…the principle by which he proposes to bring order out of chaos and to establish a hierarchy of values. He says, ‘Reason is the mystagogue to Theology.’ These three terms need a little enlargement. Reason is not to be written with a capital letter; in this passage it does not mean the Reason that is the supreme ruling principle of the universe, as e.g. in Stoicism;…. It means the procedures of thought employed by an intelligent man, who…is able to note relationships, to detect similarity and dissimilarity, to draw inferences and to be consistent. Reason of this kind is to work at the accumulated knowledge and experience of men and to sort it out into order. The definition seems to determine in advance the direction in which Reason will move–to Theology. Reason therefore cannot help establishing an order or scale of values in which goodness or God is the highest term; that is to say, the good is rational. By Theology Plutarch means the highest conceptions of which man is capable about the nature of goodness, or, as he says, of God and his activities in the universe; and from the human point of view the most important part of his nature and activity is his dealings with man and man’s relation to him."

"The third term is ‘mystagogue’, a technical word borrowed from the Mystery Religions. An aspirant to initiation was placed under the care of a guide and teacher, whose function it was to prepare him for the supreme moment of full initiation; this he did by instruction, by prescribed courses of training, by preliminary rites of purification. Through these stages of progressive education he led his pupil, disclosing more and more of the inner meaning of the cult; just before the last stage he left him; the rest–the moment of revelation when the initiate would see the beatific vision–this he left to God himself. Plutarch could not have chosen a better word; for he means that Reason working on the accumulated knowledge and experience of men, will conduct a seeker up the steps towards an understanding of God and his Goodness; from that point Reason can take him no further; direct knowledge of God and communion with his spirit is for God and the soul."

"(This) is a practical plan applied by Plutarch himself and evident to anyone who reads him. Simply put, in his own studies and in his teaching he tested, by means of ordinary commonsense and against a criterion of the highest religious and moral ideals of which his sensitive nature was capable, all the mythologies and religions and practices and creeds and doctrines and habits and codes which had come down to him in the literature and philosophy and social life of his beloved Greece, and anything else which might reach him from the east or the west through his travels and his friends. Through this vast field of knowledge he moves with reverence, one of the great marks of his character; for he believes that no manifestation of the human spirit and its workings is without significance." [R471 p75-76 Barrow 1967]

"I have ever thought that the wise men in all ages have not much differed in their opinions of religion—I mean, as it is grounded on human reason; for reason, as far as it is right, must be the same in all men; and truth being but one, they must consequently think in the same train. Thus it is not to be doubted but the religion of Socrates, Plato, and Plutarch was not different in the main, who doubtless believed the identity of one Supreme Intellectual Being, which we call God." [R431vi p xx]

"But as long as it [Puritanism] remains alive, its real being was not in its doctrines but behind them; the impetus came from an urgent sense of man's predicament, from a mood so deep that it could never be completely articulated. Inside the shell of its theology and beneath the surface coloring of its political theory, Puritanism was yet another manifestation of a piety to which some men are probably always inclined and which in certain conjunctions appeals irresistibly to large numbers of exceptionally vigorous spirits." [B117/p4]

"God -- being truth itself -- cannot deceive…" [B46 p338]

This short book, popular in England and among U.S. Founders, represents an aspect of the ethos of the time. 20 editions suggest its popularity. According to Steele, the Christian Hero was a man who avoided the extremes of Caesar’s autocracy on one hand and Cato’s diehard traditions on the other hand. The Christian Hero walked the middle ground. It was Steele’s first prose work. He revised it several times.

"Bolingbroke was deist in the line of Herbert of Cherbury, Shaftesbury, Tindal, Toland, etc - B denounced artificial theology of Christianity -acknowledged validity of the Gospels -abhorred Old Test, in which he saw nothing but biased history of Jews -also an Anti-Platonist -had a positive hatred of St. Paul -Fathers of the Church, he claimed, dealt with "wild allegory" and "the pompous jargon of mystery" of the schoolmen was absurd. A thoroughgoing rationalist, he regarded all pretensions to metaphysical knowledge as fantastic; an agnostic, he trusted experience alone, insisting that we may learn something about corporeal but not about spiritual nature." [C1 p? Haraszti]

Jefferson wrote (to Francis Eppes 9Jan1821) "His (Bolingbroke’s) political tracts are safe reading for the most timid religionist, his philosophical, for those who are not afraid to trust their reason with discussions of right and wrong." [C1 p50]

"Voltaire recognized at once the arsenal of weapons which Bolingbroke had furnished the French -he made a cult of Bolingbroke…and palmed off under Bolingbroke’s name one of his most violent attacks on Christianity, the "Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke"" [C1 p53]

"John Adams in 1808 wrote in margin of Spirit of Patriotism, "But, My Lord (Bolingbroke), you have omitted the most essential foundation of the duty of patriotism, a belief in a future state of rewards and punishments. Without this faith patriotism can never be anything more than hypocrisy, i.e., ambition, avarice, envy, resentment, just, or at least the love of fame hidden under a masque. Your other works, in which you have endeavored to destroy or to invalidate and render dubious all the arguments of a future life, have destroyed your whole system of patriotism, the whole spirit of patriotism, and the whole idea of a patriot king, and all confidence in the sincerity of your whole public life and all your political writings. So thinks J. Adams. 1808." [C1 p62]

"The Great Awakening stemmed the tide of Enlightenment rationalism among a great many people in the colonies. One of its results was division within denominations, for some members supported the revival and others rejected it. The revival stimulated the growth of several educational institutions, including Princeton, Brown, and Rutgers universities and Dartmouth College. The increase of dissent from the established churches during this period led to a broader toleration, and the democratization of the religious experience was an impulse that fed the fervour that resulted in the American Revolution." [EnBrCD97 Awakening]

1756 August 22, Sunday [Adams age 20]

"Heard Crawford upon the Love of God. The Obligation that is upon us to love God, he says, arises from the Instances of his Love and Goodness to us. He has given us an Existence and a Nature which renders us capable of enjoying Happiness and of suffering Misery. He has given us several senses and has furnished the World around us with a Variety of Objects proper to delight and entertain them. He has hung up the Heavens over our Heads, and has spread in the Fields of Nature around about us, those glorious Shows and Appearance, by which our Eyes and our Imagination are so extremely delighted. We are pleased with the Beautyful Appearance of the Flower, we are agreably entertaind with the Prospect of Forrests and Meadows, of verdant Field and mountains coverd with Flocks, we are thrown into a kind of transport and amazement when we behold the amazing concave of Heaven sprinkled and glittering with Starrs. He has also bestowed upon the Vegetable species a fragrance, that can almost as [agreeably?] entertain our sense of smell. He has so wonderfully constituted the Air that by giving it a particular Kind of vibration, it produces in us as intense sensation of Pleasure as the organs of our bodies can bear, in all the Varieties of Harmony and Concord. But all the Provision[s] that he has [made?] for the Gratification of our sense, tho very engaging and unmerited Instances of goodness, are much inferior to the Provision , the wonderful Provision that he has made for the gratification of our nobler Powers of Intelligence and Reason. He has given us Reason, to find out the Truth, and the real Design and true End of our Existence, and has made all Endeavours to promote them agreable to our minds, and attended with a conscious pleasure and Complacency. On the Contrary he has made a different Course of Life, a Course of Impiety and Injustice, of Malevolence and Intemperance, appear Shocking and deformed to our first Reflections. And since it was necessary to make us liable to some Infirmities and Distempers of Body, he has plentifully stored the Bowels and the surface of the Earth with Minerals and Vegetables that are proper to defend us from some deseases and to restore us to health from others. Besides the Powers of our Reason and Invention have enabled us to devize Engines and Instruments to take advantage of the Powers that we find in Nature to avert many Calamities that would other wise befall us, and to procure many Enjoyments and Pleasures that we could not other wise attain. He has connected the greatest Pleasure with the Discovery of Truth and made it our Interest to pursue with Eagerness these intense Pleasures. Have we not the greatest Reason, yea is it not our indispensable Duty to return our sincere Love and Gratitude to this greatest, kindest and most profuse Benefactor. Would it not shew the deepest Baseness and most infamous Ingratitude to despize or to disregard a Being to whose inexhausted Beneficence we are so deeply indebted." [Adam’s spelling] [B19i/ p43-44; John Adams, age 20]

"The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinion at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings." [B59 p20]

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole "volume" of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." [B140 p188 Bailyn 1967 quoting Hamilton]

"Suspicion is the companion of mean souls and the bane of all good society. For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty, that there should be diversity of religious opinions among us: It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness. Were we all of one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter for probation; and on this liberal principle, I look on the various denominations amoung us to be like children of the same family, differing only, in what is called, their Christian names." [B47 p50 Paine C-Sense1776]

Reentering the Virginia legislature in 1784, James Madison defeated Patrick Henry's bill to give financial support to "teachers of the Christian religion."

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need for masters." [Bigalow xi p318]

"I had been religiously raised as a Presbyterian; and tho' some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as… appeared to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying day. I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern'd it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service to God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. These I esteem'd the essentials of every religion; and, being to be found in all the religions we had in our country, I respected them all, tho' with different degrees of respect, as I found them more or less mix'd with other articles, which, without any tendency to inspire, promote or confirm morality, ser'd principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another. This respect to all, with an opinion that the worst had some good effects, induc'd me to avoid all discourse that might tend to lessen the good opinion another might have of his own religion; and as our province increas'd in people, and new places of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected by voluntary contribution, my mite for such purpose, whatever might be the sect, was never refused." [B26p100]

"It is…blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason."

"I am not about to become a Leader or Follower in Theology. To my own Master I stand or fall." [R125 p125]

"But I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to him, and not to the priests. I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted t make a convert, nor wished to change another’s creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives, and by this test, my dear Madam, I have been satisfied yours must be an excellent one, to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read." [R531 p1404]

"Neither Hamilton nor Madison was a slave to authority. And rarely in the Federalist did they take the metaphysical leap of faith and appeal to divine authority. In short, theirs was a synthesis of empiricism and rationalism. They had complex minds with which to cope with complex problems…[they] repeatedly said, "Let us consult experience…that last best oracle of wisdom"…but they were not chained to the past. Madison made this clear…[they] repeatedly referred to the experience of Greece and Rome, but…the Constitution contained no detail taken directly from those civilizations.…On the other hand…[they] often cited political "truths" with as much certainty as they might have postulated mathematical assumptions.…eg; There cannot be an effect without a cause, the means ought to be proportioned to the end, etc." [B29 p xxi-xxii]