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Article: The Founding Fathers were not Christians.
- Article from:
- Free Inquiry
- Article date:
- September 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. According to this Orwellian revision, the Founding Fathers of this country were pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.
Not true! The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New Testaments.
Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially ...