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Demolishing the wall between church and state in order to establish a Christian theocracy is the ultimate goal of the Christian Right. Since they believe their version of Christianity is infallible and the only true means of salvation, they can’t understand why their religion shouldn’t be an integral part of our lives and our government as well. They believe they are doing us a favor by saving our souls and think by Christianizing the world they are preparing it for Christ’s Second Coming.

To tear down the wall, fundamentalist Christians flagrantly twist facts. They claim our first presidents, as well as most of our other founders, were Christians, that the essential documents our country was founded on incorporated Christian precepts, and that the founders didn’t really intend to establish a strict separation between Christianity and the government.

I’ll review specific evidence to help refute these claims.

The religious beliefs of the first four United States presidents (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) is a good starting point since these remarkably talented men provided crucial leadership in the creation of our particular form of government.

All were strongly influenced by the European Enlightenment, a movement that promoted scientific thinking and religious tolerance. Most of the members of the Enlightenment were Deists, a minimalist religion that promoted the idea of a non-anthropomorphic god, a vague idea of a first cause or a god of nature. Deists thought this pseudo-god created the Universe and then retired to allow it to operate naturally. They did not believe in miracles or any humans, such as Jesus Christ, possessing divine powers. Many historians have classified these presidents as Deists.

The first four presidents were highly intelligent and comprehensively well educated, (Washington had less formal education than the other three) – including the classics and scientific knowledge of the time. They were men of exemplary character. All these attributes eminently qualified them to create a government structure that has endured and been a model for the rest of the world. (I feel a bit depressed when I compare these giants against some of our recent presidents, and I believe we should start critically reviewing what has gone wrong with the selection process).

Although the first four presidents did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and had serious misgivings about much of religion in general, they were tolerant and friendly in their dealings with religious figures. They all believed in complete religious freedom for everyone and stressed that this freedom was only possible when the government remained entirely neutral toward religion.

1. George Washington (1732-1799), the first president of the United States (1789-1797), was the hardest to read of the early presidents concerning his religious beliefs. He realized how contentious the subject of religion was, especially in public office, and simply tried to keep his true feelings to himself.  It is understandable that some have regarded him as a Christian since he was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church, which he attended sporadically, less so as he became older.

This superficial appearance of Christianity is countered by considerable evidence:

• He never took communion, even though his wife Martha did, which required the family carriage to make a return trip to the church to pick her up. Most Christians took communion at some time;
• In his time, church attendance was often a social obligation rather than an indication of a person’s true beliefs;
• In Washington’s writings, he never referred to Jesus Christ;
• There is no evidence he expressed belief at any time in conventional Christian dogma;
• His father was a Deist;
• The Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie, rector of the church Washington attended with his wife, in reply to a question about Washington’s religion, said: “Sir, Washington was a Deist”;
• Thomas Jefferson noted in his private journal in February, 1800: “I know that Gouverneur Morris, who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did.” (Gouverneur Morris was the principal drafter of the Constitution, a member of the Continental Congress, a senator from New York, a minister to France, and a freethinker);
• Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister, in an interview in 1831, stated concisely: “I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more.”

2. John Adams (1735-1826) was the first vice-president of the U.S. and the second president (1775-1801). He played a prominent role in the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence and then exerted strong leadership in persuading the Second Continental Congress to adopt it.

Although he seemed to enjoy going to the Unitarian Church and described himself as a “church going animal,” he was a Deist, and a weak one at that, as revealed in his voluminous and erudite (sprinkled with quotations in multiple languages) correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. Quotes from multiple sources attest to his religious beliefs:

• In a letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, in explaining why he rejected the ministry, Adams wrote: “The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching”;
• Views of Religion by Rufus K. Noyes records this statement: “When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it”;
• Adams made this observation in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “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”;
• Another letter to Jefferson contained this statement: “There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel…. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating the divine authority of those books?”

3. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third president of the United States (1801-1809) and author of the Declaration of Independence. He was probably our most brilliant president and a prototypical Renaissance man, with a prodigious array of talents and accomplishments.

Jefferson chose this epitaph for his tomb: “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia.” It is highly significant that he included the Virginia religious freedom statute and omitted his two terms as president. This statue clearly outlined the church-state separation concept and served as the model for the Constitution. His epitaph confirms how important he thought this separation was.

• In his religious beliefs he is usually classified as a Deist, but at times he sounds almost like an atheist. Of the four presidents, his views on religion are the most extensively documented. Here are a few quotes that express his beliefs, in his own words:
• In a letter to Ezra Stiles, Jefferson wrote: “I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know;”
• Writing in Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson observed: “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth”;
• Jefferson, in replying to a letter of John Adams, stated: “If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation of that hypothesis is just, ‘that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it’ “;
• He wrote in a letter to Dr. Woods: “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies”;
• Corresponding with John Adams, he noted: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter”;
• Even Jefferson’s belief in God seems a bit shaky in this statement in a letter to Peter Carr: “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god….”

4. James Madison (1751-1836), the fourth president of the United States (1809-1817), has often been called “the father of the constitution.” Also, more than any other person, he can be considered responsible for making the Bill of Rights part of the constitution. He helped draft the constitution of Virginia and insisted on its providing separation of church and state.

He was a Deist but without much depth of conviction. Here are a few quotes that reflect his attitude toward religion:

• In a letter to William Bradford, Jr., he observes: “Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects.”
• He notes in another letter to Bradford: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize”;
• Addressing the Virginia General Assembly about religious assessments, he said: “Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution”;
• Writing in a letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, he explains: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

Clearly, our first four presidents were not Christians, and the god they believed in was consistent with a Deistic one. In fact, the Reverend Dr. Wilson, who was almost a contemporary of our early statesmen and presidents, and extensively researched their religions, stated that the founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents elected up to his time, not one had professed a belief in Christianity. The presidents that he was referring to were the four I have discussed plus, in order, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson.

Some fundamentalist Christians claim that our government is founded on the Declaration of Independence, and that this document proves the founders intent was to incorporate Christian principles because of the mention of God. Of course, this contention is nonsense. First, our nation is founded on the Constitution and not the Declaration of Independence. Second, the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and written by Thomas Jefferson, does not contain any references to a Christian anthropomorphic god. I checked the document and found four references that could be construed as being to a Deist- type entity. One reference is to “Nature’s God,” another to “Creator,” still another to “Supreme Judge of the world,” and finally one to “Divine Providence.” Third, there is no mention of Christ or Christianity in the document.

Our Constitution is the document that defines the structure of our government, and its understanding is crucial to answering claims by fundamentalist Christians that our nation was founded as a Christian nation. James Madison, its chief architect as previously mentioned, keenly recognized the horrors that can ensue if religion insinuates itself into government and quite deliberately constructed an obviously secular document. Not once is there a mention of any type of deity, Christ, or Christianity. In fact, the only mention of religion is in Article 6, Section 3: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This article clearly separates church and state.

Nonetheless, Article 6 of the Constitution was not strong enough to satisfy everyone and the First Amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights further delineated church-state separation: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;….”

Thomas Jefferson spelled out the meaning of the First Amendment even more precisely in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association: “ Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

And as an unambiguous statement of the non-religious nature of our government, Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli is unexcelled. This treaty was signed into law by President John Adams and reads: “As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, ….”

At the time of the creation of the Constitution, the colonies were religiously diverse: Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Baptists, Anglicans, and others. It can be fairly said that the colonies were predominately Christian. Nonetheless, even though some clergy vigorously, but unsuccessfully, pushed for the insertion of Christian references into the Constitution, most of them, and Americans in general, seemed to understand the concept that strict church-state separation meant greater religious freedom for all. The churches’ acceptance of the concept of strict separation stands in sharp contrast to the situation nowadays where there are unrelenting efforts by fundamentalist Christians to destroy the wall.

It is ironic that the Enlightenment in Europe degenerated into the excesses of the French Revolution but that its principles became established instead in our country. The Enlightenment strongly influenced the thinking leading to the American Revolutionary War and strongly influenced our leaders in setting up our secular republic. We can only speculate what form of government we would now have if our government had been formed at another time with less enlightened leaders.

The founders of our country clearly meant for there to be a wall between any religion, including any form of Christianity, and our government. To maintain this essential separation, our citizens and watchdog groups need to be constantly alert in resisting these incursions.

But to ultimately remove the assaults against the church-state wall, it is essential that another wall eventually come down, a metaphorical one that exists in the frontal lobes of the brains of fundamentalists. This wall, constructed with a material called faith, separates a rational area where truth is decided with logic and evidence from a dark, irrational region where any type of religious belief, no matter how illogical, can exist. Only when this wall is gone will fundamentalist Christians realize their beliefs are not infallible and should not be imposed on everyone.

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America’s secular heritage begins with the founding of the country in the late 1700′s. While 200 years may seem like a long time ago, it’s a blink compared to the history of secularism that has threaded through most civilizations over the past 3,000 years.

Freethought is by no means an American invention.  It appeared in various guises as far back as ancient Middle East, Greece, India, and China. Gautama Buddha in India in the 6th century BCE spoke of the respect for uncertainty and doubt, warning his followers not to accept anything based merely on tradition or authority.

Thucydides, Anaxagoras, and Theodorus of Cyrene were famous ancient Greek secularists. There is also speculation that Digenes and Socrates were nonbelievers. Secularist Romans included Cicero, Horace, Lucretius, Seneca, and the skeptical philosopher Sextus Empiricus. It’s interesting to note that Romans called everyone who weren’t their religion “atheists,” including Jews and the early Christians.

Persian (Iranian) Omar Khayyam (1048-1123 AD), a first-generation Muslim and well-known mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, and poet, was not devout and expressed his doubts publicly about divine intervention.

During the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci was one of the biggest opponents of acceptance of the authority of the Church. It’s generally agreed that the modern period of Freethought began with the death in 1600 of Italian theologian and writer Giordano Bruno, who traveled throughout Europe writing and lecturing on secular topics. He was finally arrested by the Inquisition and spent seven years in prison in Rome before being burned at the stake for his atheist beliefs.

Atheism and skepticism emerged during the Middle Ages in Europe as universities began to grow independent from the control of the Catholic Church. Chaucer, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, and William of Occam helped reawaken the belief in reason and an interest in science, although none were atheists.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Freethought became popular in England, France, Germany, and other European countries.  During that time, America was well on its way to being settled by Europeans fleeing religious persecution or looking for a better life and African slaves, indentured servants, and prisoners sent to this new land against their will.

By the late 1700′s, the 13 English colonies were ready to split from British tyranny and strike out as a new country founded on human reason and secular humanist, not religious, principles. The founding fathers made their intentions clear on the importance of keeping church and state separate.

In the mid 1800′s, a large number of well-educated, German freethinkers and anti-clericalists emigrated to the US, Canada, and Australia following the 1848 European revolutions for democratic reform and human rights. Known as Forty-Eighters, these people, many of whom were Jewish, hoped to be able to follow their beliefs without governmental or church interference.  Many settled in immigrant communities in St. Louis, Indianapolis, Wisconsin, and the Texas hill country.

Freethought had it’s heyday in American society after the Civil War, from about 1875 to 1914, The most notable freethinker of the time was Robert Green Ingersoll, who gave well-attended, popular speeches around the country.  A number of Freethought periodicals were also published.

But as the country experienced growing pains, schisms between the secular and religious opened up.  Many looked for connections to God to be more visible in society. They wanted a tidy world of moral absolutes and a comfortable sense that a thread of religious belief bound everyone together with the same sense of virtue.  And so secularist influence receded as atheists and freethinkers were censored by regulations and laws meant to silence them.

In the 20th century, skirmishes continued on may fronts between those who wanted to place the Christian God front and center in the workings of everyday public life and those who understood the continuing relevance of freedom in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.  That divide continues.

For a richly detailed, clearly written accounting of freethought in America, read Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.

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