1. Did we have a Christian Founding?

2. David Barton
“one of the foremost Christian revisionist historians.” Time Magazine, 2005
Madison claimed that the Constitution is "staked upon...the Ten Commandments“
Not real quote
Barton often uses quotes not found in founders writings, but says that these quotes fit with their overall writings.

3. What the Founders believed
Deism – idea that creator left after creation, or is mainly inactive in human affairs.
Who?

4. What the Founders believed
Deism – idea that creator left after creation, or is mainly inactive in human affairs.
Who?
Virtually all of our most important founders.
Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Madison, Monroe, Washington.
Some did attend church, but usually because they found church a good social organization and not because of their professed belief in a Triune God.

5. John Adams
“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!”

6. Jefferson
“The greatest of all the Reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really His from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill.”
On book of Revelation: “It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.”

7. Jefferson
“Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Him by His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture.… I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross…and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the…first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus.”

8. Jefferson The Gospels Thomas Jefferson’s Bible
Cut gospels up to emphasize morals of Jesus, getting rid of silly religious stuff.
Cut out miracles.
“I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his [Jesus’], and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.”

9. The Gospels and what the skeptic might say don’t write this slide
Thomas Jefferson’s Bible
Cut gospels up to emphasize morals of Jesus, getting rid of silly religious stuff.
Cut out miracles.
The work ends with the words: “Now, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.”

10. Franklin
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 corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity.

11. At the Constitutional Convention
Luther Martin a Maryland representative urged the inclusion of some kind of recognition of Christianity in the constitution on the grounds that "it would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism.“
His suggestion was rejected outright.

12. George Washington
Nearly silent on Christianity as true, but does admit it is useful.
His pastor of more than 20 years said this, “I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation further than as may be hoped from his constant attendance upon Christian worship, in connection with the general reserve of his character.”

13. On Washington
“I know that Gouverneur Morris [ one of the principal drafters of the Constitution], who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed him self to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did"
(quoted in Remsberg, p. 123 from Jefferson's Works, Vol. 4, p. 572)

14. Historian Clinton Rossiter
The last and least skeptical of these rationalists [Washington] loaded his First Inaugural Address with appeals to the "Great Author," "Almighty Being," "invisible hand," and "benign parent of the human race," but apparently could not bring himself to speak the word "God" ("The United States in 1787," 1787 The Grand Convention, New York W, W, Norton & Co., 1987, p. 36).

15. Treaty w/ Barbary Pirates 1797
"As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
Signed by John Adams, passed unanimously in Congress

16. Madison
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect.”
[James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1,1774, as quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1987, p. 37]

17. People at the time
“Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism,“ Reverend B. Wilson complained in 1831

18. A Christian President?
..During this season, we are reminded that there's something about the resurrection -- something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.
"We all live in the hustle and bustle of our work…And I admit that my plate has been full as well…
"But then comes Holy Week. The triumph of Palm Sunday. The humility of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. His slow march up that hill, and the pain and the scorn and the shame of the cross. And we're reminded that in that moment, he took on the sins of the world -- past, present and future -- and he extended to us that unfathomable gift of grace and salvation through his death and resurrection."

19. Obama said this…
..During this season, we are reminded that there's something about the resurrection -- something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.
"We all live in the hustle and bustle of our work…And I admit that my plate has been full as well…
"But then comes Holy Week. The triumph of Palm Sunday. The humility of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. His slow march up that hill, and the pain and the scorn and the shame of the cross. And we're reminded that in that moment, he took on the sins of the world -- past, present and future -- and he extended to us that unfathomable gift of grace and salvation through his death and resurrection."