Our Founding Fathers!!

George Washington: Never explicitly stated his religious beliefs in any of his writings and made little reference to his religious views in thousands of letters. His Freemasonry experience implied that he was a Deist and upon his death his close friend Dr. Abercrombie had the following reply when asked of Washington’s religious faith: "Sir, Washington was a Deist."

"One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian."--The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, p. 420

James Madison: The primary author of the Constitution was much like Washington in that he didn’t talk much about his own personal views, but the evidence supports his stance as being Deist. Regardless, his comments show that he was certainly no fan of the Christian religion. "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." As the author of the First Amendment he was also its biggest proponent: "The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity." Madison wrote at length about the need for religious liberty and for keeping government and religion separate.

John Adams: A Unitarian, Adams was not fond of Christianity as a religious viewpoint. "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 ever existed?" Along with statements such as "I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"

Benjamin Franklin: Another Deist, though he had been raised by Christian parents. ”. . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on me 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 through Deist." Jefferson did find value in some aspects of the Christian religion, but rejected the concept of Christ as the Son of God as well as all of the miracles in the Bible and was quite critical of Christianity in general. Jefferson even sat down and made his own version of the Bible excising all of the content he considered to be total garbage. Here is a quote from Jefferson wherein he explains his reasons for making his own version of the Bible: "My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor. I give no credit to their falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian.... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore."

Thomas Paine: A Freethinker who held some Deist beliefs, Paine was openly hostile toward Christianity and found little in it worthy of respect. "Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity." Thomas Paine played a major role in bringing about the Bill of Rights to address what he considered to be holes in the Constitution.

I could go on, but you get the picture I’m sure.