I thought I had you convinced on Adams. You are right that he had big problems with Catholicism. But there is 1) no evidence that such passage I reproduced was directed specifically against Catholicism, and 2) as I have repeatedly shown, Adams, a theological unitarian, had problems with the entire theology of Trinitarian Christianity. Adams believed, after his spiritual mentor Joseph Priestly, that the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement were “corruptions” of Christianity. Moreover when he stated — “But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that has ever existed?” — he was referring to the text of the Bible itself which he, like Jefferson, thought errant.

But in any event, Adams makes quite clear that America was founded on “reason and the senses,” and such makes sense given that in his personal writings he repeatedly elevates reason over revelation as the ultimate arbiter of truth.

Save the Hamilton stuff for a later post I’ll do on why he wasn’t a Christian until the end of his life and why his CCS was not a heartful statement of orthodoxy but a Machiavellian scheme.

Patrick Henry was indeed an orthodox Christian but the quotation you offered is a fraud. Google “David Barton” and “unconfirmed quotations” and you’ll be led to a link where Barton himself admits this (though he uses the euphemism “unconfirmed”). The fact that such statement was purportedly given in 1765 should have clued you in that it is a fraud as we weren’t yet a nation! Moreover, as a militant anti-federalist the term “great nation” would have made Henry want to puke. Henry like most folks back then referred to the US in a plural sense and voted against the US Constitution in part because it referred to the US as a powerful “one” entity and not a collection of sovereign states as he thought the US should be.

John Jay too likely was an orthodox Christian. All the quotation seems to say is that, in a democracy, Christians have the right to vote for Christians, which is self-evident. Given that the first four or five Founders weren’t Christian in the orthodox Trinitarian sense, as I pointed out in the body of the post, Jay’s sentiment flunks the spirit of Article VI and toleration. Though, the letter of Art. certainly permits anyone to vote for anyone for any reason.

Alexander Hamilton:
• Hamilton began work with the Rev. James Bayard to form the Christian Constitutional Society to help spread over the world the two things which Hamilton said made America great:
(1) Christianity
(2) a Constitution formed under Christianity.
“The Christian Constitutional Society, its object is first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States.”

Patrick Henry:
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.” [May 1765 Speech to the House of Burgesses]

Here’s another quote from a useless founder:

John Jay:
“ Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” Source: October 12, 1816. The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, ed., (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970), Vol. IV, p. 393.

“Whether our religion permits Christians to vote for infidel rulers is a question which merits more consideration than it seems yet to have generally received either from the clergy or the laity. It appears to me that what the prophet said to Jehoshaphat about his attachment to Ahab ["Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord?" 2 Chronicles 19:2] affords a salutary lesson.” [The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, 1794-1826, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), Vol. IV, p.365]

Reason as the bases for the contruction of the United States?

“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. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service 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, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”>>

Not true at all! You’ve distorted the context of the quotes. Adams is criticizing roman catholicism, not Christianity, based on superstition and bondage, not a true revelation.

“As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that has ever existed?”
Letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816

” Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding wave in the Catholic church, from the Council of Nice, and long before, to this day.”
To Jefferson, Dec. 3, 1813

The United States founded on reason? That isn’t what Adams’ son says, as well as the rest of the framers.

John Quincy Adams:
• “Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [the Fourth of July]?” “Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity”?
–1837, at the age of 69, when he delivered a Fourth of July speech at Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Here’s a framer who isn’t one of the big eight.

I agree. If only most Christians were as Christian as Ghandi or the Dalia Lama….

Though, I think Ghandi had it all wrong on on capitalism and commerce. But in terms of how to treat one another, he was more Christlike than any Christian of which I am aware.

Let’s be clear: Atheists can be profoundly religious. More than that, they can be holy.

“We know,” writes Liebman Hersh, “that one of the greatest religions of mankind, Buddhism, is basically a religion without a god.” (Liebman Hersch, My Jewishness (1940), in Saul L. Goodman, ed., The Faith of Secular Jews, at p. 78 (KTAV, 1976)).

Accepting the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet declared that his own “Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator.” (Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV, Nobel Evening Address (Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1989), in Sidney Piburn, ed., The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings by and about the Dalai Lama, at p. 115 (Snow Lion Publ., 2d ed. 1993)).

Our nation’s founders knew little of Buddhism. But if, as Jesus tells us, a tree may be known by its fruit (Matt. 7:15-20), then it surely appears that Tibet’s spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama, though an atheist, provides a better model of Christlike sainthood than does any televangelist who presumes to preach hatred in Christ’s name.

Eric Alan Isaacson

I agree. Discriminating against atheists is religious discrimination, which, unlike sexual orientation discrimination, is protected by federal statute, and is clearly protected by the original meaning of the Constitution.

However, Dale’s logic applied to atheist/religious discrimination holds the Boy Scouts are a private club and thus are allowed to discriminate.

Even if they have the constitutional right to discriminate b/n freedom of expressive association (which is a penumbra of the First Amendment) I don’t think they ought to receive public funding or support as long as they discriminate against either group.