A Christian Nation?

[Bo D]

Recent postings have me wondering. I have long been an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, a man who many of you claim to be a founder of our "Christian Nation."

Jefferson wrote (or rather compiled) his own Bible. Here in a letter to John Adams, he describes his work. How many of you can read this and still say this country was founded on Christian faith?

In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of ... or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.

He also wrote "Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God." He called the writers of the New Testament "ignorant, unlettered men" who produced "superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications." He called the Apostle Paul the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." He dismissed the concept of the Trinity as "mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." He believed that the clergy used religion as a "mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves" and that "in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty." And he wrote in a letter to John Adams that "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."

[Bo D]

Of course, many of you will read that last quote - ""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."

and race to prove it wrong. I have also seen those sites - for instance http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/07/07/false-founding-father-quotes-f/


BULLSHIT!

The fricking ORIGINAL LETTERS are in the Library of Congress!!!!!

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page053.db&recNum=840

[Y]

We are a nation first.  That most of our population ascribe to xtianity doesn't have anything to do with our being a nation.  It's merely an interesting factoid about the populace.

I almost started a thread about Jesus and Paul after reading some of the posts in the RFRA thread.

I don't know how anyone can claim affiliation/acceptance of Jesus and accept Paul/Pauline doctrine.

[Henry Hawk]

Of course, many of you will read that last quote - ""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."

and race to prove it wrong. I have also seen those sites - for instance http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/07/07/false-founding-father-quotes-f/


BULLSHIT!

The fricking ORIGINAL LETTERS are in the Library of Congress!!!!!

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page053.db&recNum=840

Who are you arguing with..😂 nobody even challengedcyou on anything! 😁. You even cussed at me!..😂

[Palehorse]

Recent postings have me wondering. I have long been an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, a man who many of you claim to be a founder of our "Christian Nation."

Jefferson wrote (or rather compiled) his own Bible. Here in a letter to John Adams, he describes his work. How many of you can read this and still say this country was founded on Christian faith?

In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of ... or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.

He also wrote "Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God." He called the writers of the New Testament "ignorant, unlettered men" who produced "superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications." He called the Apostle Paul the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." He dismissed the concept of the Trinity as "mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." He believed that the clergy used religion as a "mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves" and that "in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty." And he wrote in a letter to John Adams that "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."

I think I may have inherited Jefferson's spirit or something! 

That line of thought fairly parallels some of my own! 

[Exterminator]

He believed that the clergy used religion as a "mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves" and that "in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty."

Anyone who doubts whether or not this is true need only look up Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI.

[Henry Hawk]

Recent postings have me wondering. I have long been an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, a man who many of you claim to be a founder of our "Christian Nation."

Jefferson wrote (or rather compiled) his own Bible. Here in a letter to John Adams, he describes his work. How many of you can read this and still say this country was founded on Christian faith?

With that same tone of logic, based upon the following quotes by several of our founding fathers,  can read this and still say this country was NOT founded on Christian faith?

John Adams

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.


John Quincy Adams

In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.


Elias Boudinot

Let us enter on this important business under the idea that we are Christians on whom the eyes of the world are now turned... [L]et us earnestly call and beseech Him, for Christ's sake, to preside in our councils. . . . We can only depend on the all powerful influence of the Spirit of God, Whose Divine aid and assistance it becomes us as a Christian people most devoutly to implore. Therefore I move that some minister of the Gospel be requested to attend this Congress every morning . . . in order to open the meeting with prayer.

Charles Carroll

Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776, which I originally subscribed on the 2d day of August of the same year and of which I am now the last surviving signer.


Benjamin Franklin

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and His religion as He left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.


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.


and I have a WHOLE bunch more where this come from....

[Bo D]

With that same tone of logic, based upon the following quotes by several of our founding fathers,  can read this and still say this country was NOT founded on Christian faith?

John Adams

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.


and I have a WHOLE bunch more where this come from....

And they are nearly all misquotes and cobbled together from different sources to make it sound as if the writer claimed our government was based on Christianity.

Take that first one from John Adams.

Here is the FULL QUOTE IN CONTEXT!

Who composed that army of fine young fellows that was then before my eyes? There were among them Roman Catholics, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anabaptists, German Lutherans, German Calvinists, Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants, and House Protestants, Deists and Atheists, and Protestants "qui ne croyent rien." Very few, however, of several of these species; nevertheless, all educated in the general principles of Christianity, and the general principles of English and American liberty.

Could my answer be understood by any candid reader or hearer, to recommend to all the others the general principles, institutions, or systems of education of the Roman Catholics, or those of the Quakers, or those of the Presbyterians, or those of the Methodists, or those of the Moravians, or those of the Universalists, or those of the Philosophers? No. The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young men could unite, and these principles only could be intended by them in their address, or by me in my answer. And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united, and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system. I could, therefore, safely say, consistently with all my then and present information, that I believed they would never make discoveries in contradiction to these general principles. In favor of these general principles, in philosophy, religion, and government, I could fill sheets of quotations from Frederic of Prussia, from Hume, Gibbon, Bolingbroke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, as well as Newton and Locke; not to mention thousands of divines and philosophers of inferior fame.


See how your version leaves out vast portions and puts together unrelated sentence?

To infer that Adams was a Christian is more than deceit. It is an outright lie.

You can find these quotes in the Library of Congress from the original letters of John Adams.

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
– John Adams

[Bo D]

And Benjamin Franklin? 


". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."       

"I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them."

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."

[Exterminator]

To infer that Adams was a Christian is more than deceit. It is an outright lie.

And they have no compunction whatsoever with doing so despite it being in direct violation of one of the fundamental tenets of the religion they claim to follow.  It's all bullshit.

[Henry Hawk]

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
– John Adams

And YOU are doing the very thing you are claiming I am doing...here's the complete quotation in an April 19, 1817, letter to Thomas Jefferson:


Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion at all!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.

You left off a very important part of that quote Bo     Does that make YOU a liar?
I can all day long with accurate quotes from our forefathers....YOU possible pick and choose a FEW of them that MIGHT indicate a lack of religion....

[Henry Hawk]

Even IF, you can perhaps indicate a FEW of our forefathers were Deists...the question you asked in this thread "was  country was founded on Christian faith?"

Even Ben and Adams were both FANS of the Christian Faith....

[Henry Hawk]

Benjamin Franklin's Creed

A few weeks before his death at age 84, Benjamin Franklin summarized his religious beliefs, in terms with which I could readily associate myself:
  You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavor in a few words to gratify it.
Here is my creed.

   
• I believe in one God, the creator of the universe.
• That he governs by his providence.
• That he ought to be worshipped.
• That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.
• That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.

These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire,

   
• I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes,
• and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity;
• though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.
• I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequences, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more observed;
• especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure.

Benj. Franklin, Letter to Ezra Stiles, 9 March 1790, in John Bigelow, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin, at 12:185-86 (New York: Putnam's, 1904)

[Henry Hawk]

And Benjamin Franklin? 

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?

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A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district -- all studied and appreciated as they merit -- are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.

-

I have been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and ... I was never without religious principles.

-

Though I seldom attended any public worship, I had still an opinion of its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted, and I regularly paid my annual subscription for the support of the only Presbyterian minister or meeting we had in Philadelphia.  He used to visit me sometimes as a friend, and admonish me to attend his administration.

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Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principals of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.

[Locutus]

Hank, what's the Supreme Law of the Land?