“Faith of our Founders”
Michael and Jana Novak, at National Review Online, have written an article concerning a recent book called, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. In this book, the authors contend that the founding fathers were less than enthusiastic about the Christian message (at least six of them). I would recommend a reading of the entire Novak article. I thought this quote from a letter which Benjamin Franklin, one of the least orthodox of the top 100 founders, to the president of Yale was interesting:
I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. 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 principles of 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 the 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; tho’ 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.
Novak closed the article with this comment:
In sum, the most astonishing thing to say about the religion of the Founders is how little it has been studied during the past hundred years, and how cavalierly and unsympathetically — most often by historians who paint their own portrait while painting in pale colors the faith of their fathers. As a nation of countless students, writers, and professors, surely we can do better than that.
HT: (First Things: Richard John Neuhaus)