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The Faith of the Founding Fathers is Quite a Misunderstood Facet of the Beginnings of the United States. Is the USA Really a Christian Nation?

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There are a lot of misconceptions about the faith of the Founding Fathers. Some say they were all atheists, others say they were Deists.

In reality there wasn’t just one dominant faith among the founders, they came from a background of many different religions.

Some were Catholic, some were Protestant, some were atheists, some were Deists, and some were Freemasons.

It’s true the faith of the Founding Fathers most people recognize was Deism.

But it can be argued that Deism is more of a philosophy than a faith because of its focus on rationality and the observance of the natural world.

Deism is a religion, or a philosophy to some people, that became popular during the Enlightenment period when all of Europe was rediscovering Rationalism and the power of the mind.

It makes sense that the one thing most irrational-religious belief would come under fire from Rationalists, because religious faith is based on supernatural events and a belief in things that aren’t rational.

Today in America, we are under the threat of losing the rights our founders risked their lives for. Not just religious freedom, but all of our freedoms.

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Deism

Deism was created as a way to merge faith in a Supreme Being with a belief in the power of the human mind. Deists believe there is a God, or a Supreme Being, but they believe God is more removed from human events compared to other religions.

Most Judeo-Christian religions teach that God is ever present in the affairs of humans and people regularly pray to God for things as small as helping them decide which book to read or helping them sell their homes.

Deists believe that God is more of an ideal and is not involved at all in the day to day lives of humans, but has an ultimate plan for the world that He has put in place and that is unfolding all the time.

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Deism and the Founding Fathers

To say that the faith of the Founding Fathers was Deism would not only be inaccurate but it would also not recognize the contribution that members of other faiths made to the creation of the United States government.

The construction and organization of the government of the United States is unique in the world.

Part of the reason this unique setup has continued to work for hundreds of years is because of the faith of the Founding Fathers.

They were successful in setting up a country where people who had different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, different social statuses, and different levels of education could all live and work together peacefully.

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Separation of Church and State

The idea of the separation of church and state is a central tenet of the American system of government.

This partly came about because of the faith of the Founding Fathers and the different ways they expressed it.

The Founding Fathers recognized one of the most basic rights people have is the freedom to choose their own beliefs.

They wanted to make sure that in the government they were creating, which was supposed to be a bastion of personal freedoms and rights, people would be able to participate in the government.

They would be able to enjoy the benefits of living in American society without being forced to believe in a particular religion or to practice one religion over another.

The Founding Fathers had seen in England how a country that didn’t have true separation of church and state could never really function in the best interests of the people.

Examining the history of England clearly showed the founders how combining religion and political power created a situation where it was very easy for political leaders to take more power than they were entitled to and to control too much of the lives of the ordinary citizens. 

Today, in the United States, the threat of losing these rights is very real.

We must be vigilent in preserving the right to choose our religion and every other right they fought for.

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