Faith of our Fathers

Deism and enlightenment thinking went hand in hand, unfortunately. And add Unitarianism to the mix.

I do think it's tricky, as we have to look at the entire written record of these men, and sometimes we read to much into what may be passing dalliances with unorthodox thought, while they settled in to orthodoxy in their later years.

 

Fake news?
I'm quite sure Bird Wilson was not the author of such a slur on the Founding Fathers; his own father was one!

Conservapedia ❧ James Wilson (Founding Father)

 

The young George Washington was an Anglican, but later became an Episcopalian. He bought Martha a Bible in 1789.
While he was a member of the Freemasons, their beliefs & practices have changed greatly since then.

In all likelihood, given the amount of praise he gave to God after the revolution, he was likely a Christian.

 

Anglicans are Episcopalians.

 

Would probably been much more biblical and conservative back then!

 

According to the link below, it's fake news of a sort for sure. The named source is incorrect, as you suspected.

Read Mr. Kabala's comment very carefully. We have corrected an error that most historians list in the primary sources. It was not Bird Wilson but James Renwick Willson and you may read his sermon here.

http://www.covenanter.org/JRWillson/princemessiah.htm
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The Jon Rowe Archives

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I have spent a fair amount of time in Washington's letters and ledgers, since a forebear was a neighbor and elected to the House of Burgesses together with Washington from Fairfax County.

 

I believe God intended to make the USA great, whether our Presidents were Christians or not. After all, He made several ancient pagan nations great. often using them to punish Israel & judah.

 

Founders Online: The Papers of George Washington

 

Thanx for an informative link !

 

The source can make a considerable difference for those who go by authority, not to mention the personal proximity being claimed in the telling, which was considerably closer than reality in this case.

The main issue is the real aim of the debate, which for secularists and atheists is not to ID deists, but to completely sever the nation's ties to biblical morality and teaching. I won't quibble over the standing of a Founder before God, it wouldn't be my place to judge. But I doubt any side with the immorality of those raising the issue.

 

Apologies. No, I'm not accusing you of immorality, much less peddling or pushing it, nor of atheism or secularism, nor even of raising the issue. The issue was raised quite some time ago.

I dropped the Christianity bit because I consider that a distraction from the real issue, namely the standard of morality in society. What was the approach of the Founding Fathers? We must look to the laws they wrote, the decisions they handed down, the standards they went by, the arguments they made. What were their practices? What were their models? What were their assumptions, their axioms?

 

Unfortunately, one principle that many of our "founding fathers" followed, and many current "leaders' still do is, "Do as I SAY, not as I DO !"