Hi, I'm David Bercot. For the past two nights, we've been looking at the faith of the 10 men who had the greatest influence on the founding of America. The first night we looked at Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton. We learned that all four of those men were conventional Christians. Not necessarily born again Christians, but professing Christians. Last night we looked at George Washington and talked about the fact that he is a bit harder to classify spiritually.
When we look at all of the evidence subjectively, we may not all come to the same conclusion about him. My own conclusion is that although he was a great man, humanly speaking, and a man who believed in God and attended the Episcopal Church, I find no evidence to indicate that he had any real relationship with Jesus Christ. Now tonight we'll be looking at the final five men, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.
Except for James Madison, we know exactly where these men stood spiritually because they've left us writings that make it very clear what they believed. We'll be starting with John Adams. He played a very important role in Massachusetts politics. And along with Samuel Adams, he was allied with those who were wanting a war with Britain. But now he was not the troublemaker that Samuel Adams was. He was much more conservative, much more concerned about following the operation of law.
He was an original delegate at the First Continental Congress, and it was he who pushed for George Washington to be made commander-in-chief. Because up to that point, most of the pushing for the revolution was coming out of Massachusetts. And John Adams was very perceptive and he realized the southern states have to be equally involved or else the British will divide and conquer.
And so by making a Southerner from Virginia, George Washington, Commander-in-Chief, this helped to cement both the northern and southern colonies together in the war. He was on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, and again, he pushed for Thomas Jefferson to draft it. One, Thomas Jefferson had a better way with words, although John Adams was certainly a very fine writer. And the other thing is Thomas Jefferson was a southerner from Virginia.
John Adams served along with Benjamin Franklin as ambassador to France during the American Revolution. And although Benjamin Franklin was certainly the most prominent and effective of the two, John Adams nevertheless made a very important contribution during his time there. And then during the fall of 1779, he drafted the Massachusetts Constitution together with Samuel Adams and another man James Bowdoin. But John Adams did most of the writing of that Constitution.
John Adams was America's first ambassador to Britain after the American Revolution. And even though he was in England during the Constitutional Convention and therefore was not one of the delegates there, he did argue for the ratification of the Constitution, and he influenced it greatly because the Massachusetts Constitution that he primarily drew up was one of the models that the Founding Fathers used there at the Constitutional Convention.
John Adams was the first Vice President of the United States and the second U.S. President. He also played a key role in steering the United States to be an ally with Britain other than with France. He and John Jay and George Washington and Alexander Hamilton all helped to push the United States in that direction, which was a direction that has lasted most of our history. And it was John Adams who appointed John Marshall as the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Adams was one of the more conservative of the revolutionaries. He was not tied to mob violence and things like that the way that Samuel Adams was. In fact, he was a man of very high principle and he lived by very strong Christian convictions. For example, he successfully defended the British soldiers who were involved in the so-called Boston Massacre. And it was amazing that he got all of them but one or two acquitted, even though this was a colonial jury there in Massachusetts.
But John Adams firmly believed that the way to revolution could not be through indiscriminate violence that the rule of law had to be upheld. And the truth is, it was the mob who spurred the soldiers on and attacked them with rocks and clubs and everything else. And they honestly believed that they had received a command to fire onto the crowd. I admire John Adams because after the war for independence, he worked to make peace with England. He was a peacemaker.
Queen Elizabeth II in our day and time said this about him. John Adams, America's first ambassador to England, said to my ancestor, King George III, that it was his desire to help with the restoration of the old good nature and old good humor between our peoples. That restoration has long been made and the links of language, tradition, and personal contact have maintained it. There were no scandals ever involved with John Adams.
He conducted himself honorably in the way a Christian should during the American Revolution when he was over there in France. And even though he and Thomas Jefferson were political enemies during the time that he was in office and when George Washington was in office, after he was out of office, after Jefferson was out of office, he was instrumental in putting forth the olive branch and making peace with Thomas Jefferson, and the two of them became friends and stayed friends the rest of their lives.
In fact, both of them died on the very same day, and it was on a July 4th that they died. Now, it's very easy to find quotations from John Adams ' letters and speeches and documents to demonstrate his belief in God, his belief in Christianity. A lot of books refer to him as a Puritan, but it's not really honest. He certainly started out as an Orthodox Christian. In fact, his father wanted him to become a clergyman.
But he was from an early age very turned off by the theological disputes he was seeing between clergymen and religious professors and that sort of thing. And so he decided to go into law instead. Back later in his life, he wrote, " 20 times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out and saying this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it? " Now that wouldn't totally sum him up either. He started his life being raised as a Calvinist.
He came to reject that and then came to reject the doctrine of the Trinity as it's taught in the Athanasian creed. And yet in his mind, he always viewed himself as a genuine Christian. In drawing up the Constitution of Massachusetts, he put many references in it to God, and he also put a provision that provided for the state of Massachusetts to help support public worship. Again, there was freedom of religion, as very similar to the bill that Patrick Henry had tried to pass in Virginia.
But there was also the view in the Massachusetts Constitution that religion and particularly Christianity were good for society as a whole, just as people today would view education as good for the society as a whole. And we all pay taxes to support public schools, even if we don't have any children ourselves. And likewise, the feeling was everyone should pay taxes to help provide for churches, for religious teachers, for charitable organizations, things like that.
In fact, in the Massachusetts Constitution, he has the provision that no person shall be capable of being elected as a senator who is not of the Christian religion. Likewise, the governor shall be chosen annually and he shall be of the Christian religion. In his inaugural address when he was elected president, I'll read you just a couple of short sentences.
He says, " And with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity, among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two houses shall not be without effect.
" And he said at the end of it, " And may that being who is supreme over all, the patron of order, the fountain of justice, and the protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue his blessing upon this nation and its government, and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of his providence.
" In fact, after he lost the election to Thomas Jefferson in his second term, election for the second term, he later wrote a friend saying that he felt the fact that he had asked for a national day of fasting, that perhaps that's why he lost the election, because Jefferson tried to paint him as someone who would try to force religion on the American people who didn't want it. In the last years of his life, John Adams basically became a unitarian in the sense that he did not believe in the Trinity.
In fact, he was buried in the graveyard of a Unitarian church. In one of his letters to Thomas Jefferson, he said, " The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion. " Another letter he says, " The human understanding is a revelation from its maker, which can never be disputed or doubted. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove this celestial communication. " This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three, nor can three be one.
He's talking about the Trinity here. Had you and I been 40 days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and there we were told that one was three and three was one. We might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not have believed it. In another writing, John Adams wrote, " Can prophecies or miracles convince either you or me that this infinite benevolence, wisdom, and power created and preserves for a time innumerable millions just to make them miserable forever for his own glory?
" He's talking here about the teaching of Calvinism, and I think a general teaching of most Christians concerning hellfire. He continues Wretch. What is his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is he vain, tickled with adulation, exalting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance? Pardon me, my maker for these awful questions. My answer to them is always ready. I believe in no such things. My adoration of the author of the universe is too profound and too sincere.
The love of God and His creation, delight, joy, triumph, exaltation in my own existence. Though I am but an atom, a molecule, organic in the universe. These are my religion. Howl, snarl, bite you Calvinist, ye Athanasian divines, if you will. You will say I am no Christian. I say you are no Christians. And there the account is balanced. Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians in my sense of the word.
So as you can see, John Adams considered himself a Christian, lived by a Christian code of conduct and morality, other than, again, not understanding the two kingdoms. But none of the conservative evangelicals today who want to portray him as a Christian would consider a person with those beliefs to be a genuine Christian. So it's not honest to portray him that way. We now come to Benjamin Franklin, whose role in the forming of this nation, in my opinion, would be second only to George Washington.
Franklin was no doubt the most intelligent person in all of the 13 colonies. And that's recognizing that he was serving with a lot of other very brilliant men like Alexander Hamilton. Before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin was the one that the colonies chose to go over to England and present America's case against the Stamp Act and against various laws with which the colonists were upset. Unfortunately, he did not succeed. He was unable to prevent war, although he worked hard to try to prevent war.
He was selected to serve on the First Continental Congress. In fact, he was on the committee chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. It was he and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. But the most important role he played in the founding of this nation was the fact he was sent by the Continental Congress as ambassador to France. And it was primarily Benjamin Franklin who persuaded the French to join in on the side of the colonists.
Now, even before they officially joined in war against England, they were sending both money and arms to the colonies on the sly and were providing a big help to the revolution that way. And finally, Benjamin Franklin was also on the Constitutional Committee. And even though he was elderly and didn't take a vigorous part in the various debates, his wisdom and calming influence helped the entire thing to work. Now religiously, it's not easy to put Benjamin Franklin in a box.
He was definitely a firm believer in God and in the value of prayer and fasting. Yet he was not willing to embrace the basic doctrinal tenets of Christianity. For example, he questioned the divinity of Christ. On the other hand, Franklin saw Christianity as something good for society, very similar in this respect to, say, George Washington. Because Christianity helped to inculcate the teachings of Jesus among the people in society, and Benjamin Franklin saw those teachings as something very good.
Let me just let Franklin tell you himself what he believed in his own words. We fortunately have a letter that he wrote to Ezra Stiles, who was the president of Yale. And in his letter, he's very candid about this is what I believe. He writes, " You desire to know something of my religion. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the 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 points in 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 his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, are 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. Though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it. And I think it needless to busy myself with it now when I expect soon of having the opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. This is because he was elderly when he wrote this letter.
I see no harm, however, and it's being believed if that belief has the good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more observed. Especially as I do not perceive that the supreme being takes it amiss by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure.
I shall only add, respecting myself, that having experienced the good of that supreme being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the next, though without the smallest notion of meriting such goodness. " End quote. From reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, those are basically the conclusions I came to myself. So it was nice to come upon that letter and realize what I was gleaning from his autobiography is indeed exactly what he felt.
He was a friend of Christianity. He definitely saw the good of religion and particularly Christianity on public life. But he himself never seemed to have actually surrendered his life to Jesus Christ or believed in Jesus Christ as his Savior. Let me read to you some of these passages from his autobiography. He has a lot about George Whitefield when he came to America during the time of the Great Awakening.
And what Benjamin Franklin writes in his autobiography tells us a lot about George Whitefield, for one thing, and a lot about the beliefs and feelings of Benjamin Franklin. He writes this: " In 1739, the Reverend Mr. Whitefield arrived among us from England. He had made himself quite famous there as an itinerant preacher, that is, a traveling preacher.
He was at first permitted to preach in some of our churches, but the clergy taking a dislike to him soon refused him their pulpits, and he was obliged to preach in the fields. The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous.
And it was a matter of speculation to me, who was one of the number, to observe the extraordinary influence of his preaching on his hearers and how much they admired and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them by assuring them they were naturally half beasts and half devils. It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants.
From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street. In another passage, he writes about the orphans in Georgia. Georgia was settled by a lot of people from debtor's prisons, and many of them were not in good health, and they died in the hot climate of Georgia, leaving orphaned children.
And George Whitefield became aware of this when he preached in Georgia. Anyway, Benjamin Franklin writes, " The sight of their miserable situation inspired the benevolent heart of Mr. Whitefield with the idea of building an orphan house there, " that's in Georgia, in which they might be supported and educated. Returning northward, he preached up this charity and made large collections. For his eloquence, had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an example.
I did not disapprove of his idea, but as Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen, it was proposed to send the laborers and the materials from Philadelphia at a great expense. I thought it would have been better to have built the orphanage here in Philadelphia and brought the children to it. I advised him of this, but he was resolute in his first idea, and he rejected my counsel. Well, thereupon, I refused to contribute.
However, I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish the message with a collection. So I silently resolved he would get nothing from me. Now I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five gold sovereigns. Well, as he proceeded, I began to soften, and I decided I would give him the copper coins. But another stroke of his preaching made me ashamed of that. And so I decided to give him the silver as well.
But he finished so admirably that I emptied my entire pocket into the collection plate, gold and all. He writes a few pages later, " Some people were concerned that George Whitefield might use these collections for his own private benefit, but I was intimately acquainted with him being employed in printing his sermons and journals, and I never had the least suspicion of his integrity. Rather, I am to this day decidedly of the opinion that he was, in all his conduct, a perfectly honest man.
And I think my testimony in his favor ought to carry more weight as we had no religious connection between us. He indeed sometimes used to pray for my conversion, but he never had the satisfaction of seeing his prayers answered. Ours was a mere civil friendship, sincere on both sides, and it lasted until his death. The following example will show something of the terms on which we stood. Upon one of his arrivals from England at Boston, he wrote to me that he would be coming soon to Philadelphia.
However, he did not know where he would lodge when he was here as he understood that his former kind host, Mr. Benez, had moved to Germantown? Well, my answer was, " You know my house. If you can make do with its scanty accommodations, you will be most heartily welcome here. He replied that if I had made that kind offer for Christ's sake, I would not miss receiving a reward. But I replied, " Don't let me be mistaken. It was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake.
" One last thing I'd like to read to you from his autobiography. Concerns events in the 1740s. This was before the French and Indian War, but it was at a time where it looked like there might be war between England and France or England and Spain, and that the colonies could obviously be affected. So Benjamin Franklin was involved in creating an association for the defense of Pennsylvania. He writes, " My activity in these operations for defense was agreeable to the governor and council.
They took me into confidence and I was consulted by them in every measure where their concurrence was thought to be useful to the association. Calling in the aid of religion, I proposed to them the proclaiming of a fast, to promote reformation and to implore the blessing of heaven on our undertaking. They embraced the motion, but as it was the first fast ever thought of in the province of Pennsylvania, the Secretary had no precedent from which to draw the proclamation.
Well, my education in New England, which is where Franklin was from, where a fast is proclaimed every year, was here of some advantage. I drew it up in the accustomed style. It was translated into German, printed in both languages, and sent throughout the province of Pennsylvania. " End quote. So like I say, Franklin did believe very much in the effectiveness of prayer and that of fasting. This was not just a show he was putting on, but something he really believed in.
We now come to the final group of founding fathers. These are the men who were deists, who believed in God, but who did not seem to have any demonstrable relationship with God, or at least an appreciation for the contribution that churches and religion have made to the public good. I mean, I think we would have to classify Benjamin Franklin as a deist, but there was a real faith there in God, a real belief in the efficacy of prayer, and also a real belief that Christianity was good for society.
Even though Franklin couldn't embrace it himself, he felt it was a good thing. This last group of men, I'm not so sure they thought of it as a good thing. I'm going to start with James Madison. He was the fourth U.S. President, as most of us know, but he also played perhaps the major role in the drafting of the United States Constitution. In fact, he's called the father of the Constitution.
He not only helped considerably in drafting it, but along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, he wrote some of the papers to help convince the public to ratify the Constitution. He was also a friend and in many ways a disciple of Thomas Jefferson. As far as outward religion, James Madison attended the Episcopal Church. In fact, early in life, he had thought of becoming a minister, but he decided on law instead.
To be sure, perhaps Madison should be grouped with George Washington and John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, rather than with Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Because Madison never wrote anything anti-Christian the way that Jefferson and Thomas Paine did. Like George Washington, he just didn't say a lot about his religious beliefs. On the other hand, unlike Washington, he was against government support of religion in any way.
Now he always claimed that he took this position because true religion doesn't need the help of the government, and that religion prospers more when there's no establishment of religion. And I had bought into that when I was a school boy, when we studied James Madison in high school and in college. I thought, yes, he grasped some concept of the two kingdoms, that Christians don't need to be connected with the governments of this world. They are going to prosper better without any connection.
But after examining his whole life during the last eight years, as I've been working on these messages, I've come to the conclusion that those were not his real reasons. He wanted no government support of Christianity because I think he had little regard for it himself. Now, in the next message, which will be the final message of this series on the myth of Christian America, we're going to be looking at the fact that the men at the Constitutional Convention purposefully wrote God out of the Constitution.
It was no accident. And nobody is more responsible for that fact than James Madison. Because you see, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine weren't delegates to the Constitutional Convention. It wasn't their influence that caused our Constitution to be written the way it is. It was largely the influence of James Madison, not that he was alone in that by any means. Well, now let's look at some representative quotations about religion from Madison.
In 1778, during the Revolution, he told the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, " We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We've staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. " It's interesting. He didn't say according to the Sermon on the Mount, which is perhaps what Franklin or Adams would have said. But no on the Ten Commandments. That's pretty weak.
After the Revolution, James Madison fought against Patrick Henry's bill to provide public support for religion through a small tax that could go to the church or minister of each person's choice. Writing against this proposal of Patrick Henry, Madison said, " We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth that religion or the duty which we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.
The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and that is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. Well, you see, Patrick Henry's bill was in no way against that. It forced no person's religion or Christianity on somebody else. Everybody could support the religion of his choice.
See, what Madison wanted to protect was people who didn't want any of their money to go to support any religion, that they wouldn't be forced to have to support it through taxes. You see, interestingly, our government hasn't taken that stand towards science. What if someone argued that everybody should be free to believe in the science of his choice, and there should be a complete separation of science and government? See, someone who argued that no one would say, " Oh, well, he's a friend of science.
" He just realizes that science is going to be more pure if it's not corrupted by political influence, which of course is actually true. But I don't hear people who put their faith in science arguing that government should not aid or help science in any way. No, very far from that. And so I don't really believe Madison when he claims he only wanted to help Christianity by keeping church and state separate.
For example, when they were writing the bill for religious liberty there in Virginia, the one that did pass, in the preamble, conservative Christians there wanted to at least make a reference to Jesus Christ. And Madison opposed that and kept it out, saying, " The better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion. " Now, like I say, that would be great.
As a college student, I remember thinking, " Okay, Madison understood the concept of the two kingdoms. " Now, when I was in college, I didn't have that term, the two kingdoms, but I did have an understanding that real Christianity cannot be wrapped up in government. It will always end up corrupting Christianity. And as I said, I thought Madison was seeing this, but I don't think so at all. I think it was mere rhetoric on Madison's part.
I mean, for example, Madison objected to there being chaplains appointed for the Houses of Congress in the federal government. He wrote, " Is the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution and with the pure principle of religious freedom? " In the strictness, the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.
The law appointing chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives to be performed by ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them. And these are paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment? Applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the constituent as well as of the representative body, end quote. Ironically, I agree with Madison about the need to separate these two kingdoms.
But I now realize that he and I are at opposite spectrums. I see the need because that is how Jesus established His church. But I also recognize that churches have done much for society at large. That's not their primary purpose for being in existence, but Jesus did call us the light and the salt of the world. And the influence that Christians have had just in private life has affected society as a whole for the good. Christianity doesn't have to be established by the state or endorsed by it for that to happen.
See, Madison wanted it totally out of everything. Furthermore, even though I recognize the truth of the doctrine of the two kingdoms, I would say that any government on earth should at least recognize God as the ruler of the universe and that their power here on earth comes from God. I'm not so sure Madison ever really believed that, and he certainly did not want that acknowledgement. So my guess, and I may be wrong on this, is that Madison was as much an enemy of Christianity as was Thomas Jefferson.
I think he was just much more coy and discreet about it. Unfortunately, a lot of the opinions of Madison have influenced the United States Supreme Court in recent years to essentially ban religion and reference to God from public education, from all aspects of government. I don't know where all of the other Founding Fathers stood on that matter, but I think all of the ones we've looked at from Samuel Adams down through Benjamin Franklin, I don't think any of them would have been in favor of that.
Unfortunately, those of them who were at the Constitutional Convention didn't fight very hard to keep Madison's views out of it. If there's some doubt as to where James Madison stands in this spectrum from Orthodox Christian to anti-Christian deist, I don't think there can be any question about where Thomas Jefferson stands. Thomas Jefferson certainly was one of the key players in the establishment of the United States.
He was a delegate from Virginia to the Second Continental Congress, and he was the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence. He served as Secretary of State under George Washington, and he was Vice President under John Adams. And then he served as the third president of the United States. Now, aside from his anti-Christian views, there was a dark side to Jefferson, even from a secular standpoint.
For one thing, during Washington's tenure in office, Thomas Jefferson secretly orchestrated this campaign against him, portraying him as a senile old man who was controlled by men like Alexander Hamilton and the other Federalists. However, when Washington asked him about this, when the rumors reached Washington, he denied to Washington's face that he was the one instigating these rumors.
However, in 1797, a personal letter that Thomas Jefferson sent to a friend of his in Europe, Philippe Mazzei, was published in various American newspapers. And this letter pretty well demonstrated that indeed Jefferson was guilty of the very thing that he denied to George Washington. Because in this letter he wrote, " Our political situation is prodigiously changed since you left us.
Instead of that noble love of liberty and that Republican government, which carried us triumphantly through the dangers of war, an Anglo-Monarchico, aristocratic party has arisen. He's referring to the Federalists. Their avowed object is to impose on us the substance as they have already given us the form of the British government. Jefferson was very critical of the Jay Treaty that aligned American interests more closely with those of Great Britain and kept America neutral in the war between France and Britain.
Anyway, Jefferson continues in this letter, " I would give you a fever if I were to name the apostates who have embraced these heresies. Men who were Solomon's in counsel and Samson's in combat. Here he's no doubt referring to Alexander Hamilton and George Washington himself, but whose hair has been cut off by the whore of England? They would wrest from us that liberty which we have obtained by so much labor and peril.
So Jefferson was very critical of George Washington, thought that he was setting himself up as a monarch and betraying the Republican principles of the revolution. Of course, there's nothing wrong with his having a different view than George Washington. The sick thing is that he did this behind Washington's back, created this rumor campaign against him, and then denied to his face that he had any involvement in it.
The other black mark on Jefferson's character is his purported relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. Now this was brought up way back when Jefferson was running for president and has been brought up numerous times in history and in recent times as well. As far back as 1802, a former friend of Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper saying that Jefferson had kept as his concubine one of his own slaves, referring to Sally Hemings, and that he had several children by her.
At this point in time, no one knows for certain whether indeed he did father children by this slave. We do know that she was, like I say, a slave that she lived there at Monticello. And when Jefferson and his two daughters went to Paris, he brought her along as well. She had at least six children. We know that Sally Heming's children were light-skinned. And in fact, three of them were able to live as members of white society once they became adult.
DNA testing in more recent times shows that there seems to be a genetic relationship between the Jeffersons and the Hemings, although it would not prove that the father of her children was Thomas Jefferson himself. It could have been one of his nephews. We do know that the descendants of Sally Hemings have maintained from day one down to today that they are descended from Thomas Jefferson.
It is interesting and another black mark on Jefferson's character with all that he said about liberty and equality and all of that, that he never freed his slaves. And even unlike George Washington and others, even upon his death, he didn't free them. He was a poor businessman and left his estate in heavy debts when he died, and his slaves had to be sold off to pay for these debts, although he did free these children of Sally Hemings.
In public, Jefferson during his lifetime didn't say a lot about religion and his religious views. He was somewhat like Madison in that regard, except he said a whole lot in personal letters, which letters are now public. He also said things in various notes that he wrote, things that were never published. For example, in his notes on religion, maybe written in 1776, we're not sure, he said, " Why have Christians been distinguished above all people who have ever lived for persecution?
" Is it because it is the genius of their religion? No, its genius is the reverse. It is the refusing to be tolerant of those of a different opinion. This has produced all the contentions and wars on account of religion. Now, I would not disagree with the essence of what Jefferson wrote, except he's talking about institutional Christianity, the Christianity that joined church and state at the time of Constantine, and did persecute people ever since until modern times.
Of course, other religions have been just as intolerant Islam and Judaism when Judaism was in power. In one of his writings, Jefferson referred to the God of the Old Testament as a being of terrible character, cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust. In speaking of the Jewish priests, he said they were a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the local god of Israel.
In a letter to one of his nephews, Jefferson said this about the Bible, " Read the Bible as you would read Livy or Tacitus. " Those are Roman classical writers. For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told the sun stood still for several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their stories about showers of blood, or statues that spoke, etc. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired talking about the Bible.
Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are an astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature. So he definitely questioned the authenticity and truthfulness of the Bible.
In a letter written to John Adams shortly before his death, Jefferson said, " 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.
" In another letter, Jefferson wrote, " If we could believe that Jesus really countenance the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism, which his biographers " referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, father on him and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early ages and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an imposter. Jefferson certainly viewed Jesus as an impostor as to being the Son of God.
But like most deists, Jefferson regarded the moral teachings of Jesus as very good. He wrote, " 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. " But again, others of so much ignorance, of so much absurdity, so much untruth and imposture as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same person.
I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross, and restore to Jesus the gold, and leave the dross to the stupidity of his disciples. And this is why he created what's known as the Jefferson Bible. And it goes to the New Testament, and he takes out all the miracles, all the claims about Jesus ' divinity, most of the theology taught, and just leaves the moral teachings of Jesus.
And that was basically the religion of Thomas Jefferson, a religion that saw Jesus as a good man and the Bible as a book full of errors and falsehoods. We finally now come to Thomas Paine. He's not usually counted among the founding fathers because he didn't serve in either the Continental Congress or the Constitutional Convention or hold any high public office in either colonial or independent America. His accomplishment was being the author of the pamphlet Common Sense.
It sold around 100,000 copies in just the first three months of 1776. I mean, that would still be considered a good seller today to sell 100,000 copies in three months. But this was back in 1776 when there were only two million free Americans. In fact, common sense was probably read by just about everyone in the colonies who could read and who supported the revolution.
It played a key role in persuading the colonists to turn the war from one of just demanding no taxation from England to one of obtaining independence from Britain and doing away with monarchy altogether. His pamphlet common sense was discussed at dinner tables read aloud in taverns and it helped encourage recruitment for the Continental Army and also deter public opinion towards fighting for independence. I've read nearly all of Thomas Paine's writings and I'll say he's a very good writer.
He puts forth logical, very convincing arguments. And not just in common sense, but in just about everything that he wrote. I don't mean that I agree with his arguments, but that he presents them in a convincing manner. Now, Thomas Paine was not politically a conservative like George Washington and John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were. His vision for the new society that the American Revolution would produce was one that would be staunchly anti-slavery.
He was one of the first to advocate a world peace organization. He advocated something like Social Security for the poor and for the elderly. He definitely wanted a classless society. Interestingly, Thomas Paine was not only involved in the American Revolution, but shortly thereafter in the French Revolution as well. And like Thomas Jefferson, he took a dislike to the policies of George Washington when Washington became president. However, he had more integrity than Jefferson did.
He didn't attack Washington behind his back. He attacked him in a public letter written to a newspaper. Now he was upset because Washington and the Federalists had decided to remain neutral in the conflict between France and Britain, and in many ways to side with Great Britain in that conflict. To Thomas Paine, this seemed like the worst kind of betrayal possible. The colonies would not have won their independence without both the monetary and military aid of the French.
And now just a decade later, America turned its back on its French allies. Let me read to you some excerpts of this letter that he had published. He said, " It is laughable to hear Mr. Washington talk of his sympathetic feelings, who has always been remarked even among his friends for not having any. He has, however, given no proofs of any to me as to the pompous encomiums he so liberally pays to himself on the victory of the American Revolution, the reality of them may certainly be questioned.
And since he has forced them so much into notice, it's fair to examine his pretensions. A stranger might be led to suppose from the egotism with which Mr. Washington speaks that he and he alone had generated, conducted, completed, and established the revolution. In fact, that it was all his doing. End quote. Well, from there it actually just gets worse. And this proved to be a very bad mistake on the part of Thomas Paine. George Washington was not somebody that you disparaged.
And his attack on George Washington turned nearly the entire nation against him. He certainly had no further political influence in America after that attack. Let's move now to Thomas Paine's religious beliefs. He wrote a book entitled " The Age of Reason " and in it he attacks the Bible itself, its miracles, its theology, its claim of inspiration. His views probably weren't that much different than Thomas Jefferson.
But again, Jefferson had the political savvy to do things behind people's backs, to disparage the Bible in private letters, not in something public. Paine published this for everyone to read, and those who were not turned against him for attacking George Washington, which was nearly everybody in the States, well, his attack on the Bible pretty well completed it.
He said in the Age of Reason, " The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles related in the New Testament is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ and carrying him to the top of a high mountain and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world. " Now, how did it happen that he did not discover America? Or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest?
I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to believe that he told this whale of a miracle himself, end quote. Well, his book created quite a stir against him in America. And in response to one letter that a former friend wrote him, Thomas Paine writes this, " In your letter of the 20th of March, you give me several quotations from the Bible, which you call the Word of God, to show me that my opinions on religion are wrong.
And I could give you as many from the same book to show that yours are not right. " Consequently, then the Bible decides nothing, but it decides any way it wants, every way, however one wants to choose it. Now, by what authority do you call the Bible the Word of God? For this is the first point to be settled. It is not your calling it the Word of God that makes it so any more than the Muhammadans calling the Quran the Word of God makes the Quran to be so.
The popish councils of Nicaea and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted for the books that now compose what is called the New Testament. They voted them to be the Word of God. That was done by yeas and nays just as we now vote on laws. It is often said in the Bible that God spoke to Moses. But how do you know that God spoke to Moses? Because you will say the Bible says so. Well, the Quran says that God spoke to Muhammad. Do you believe that too?
Why not? Because you will say you don't believe it, and that's all the reason you can give. And because of that, you will say that Mohammed was an imposter. Well, how do you know that Moses wasn't an imposter? For my own part, he continues, " I believe that everyone is an imposter who pretends to hold verbal communication with the deity.
" You form your own opinion of God from the account given of Him in the Bible, and I form my opinion of the Bible from the wisdom and goodness of God that is manifested in the structure of the universe and in all works of His creation. The result in these two cases will be that you, by taking the Bible for your standard, will have a bad opinion of God, and I, by taking God for my standard, will have a bad opinion of the Bible.
Because the Bible represents God to be a changeable, angry, vindictive kind of being, making a world and then drowning it, afterwards repenting of what he had done and promising not to do it again. Setting one nation to cut the throats of another and stopping the course of the sun until the butchery can be accomplished. But the works of God in creation preach to us another teaching. In the vast volume of creation, we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable, angry, vindictive God.
No everything we behold there impresses us with a contrary idea, that of unchangeableness and of eternal order, harmony, and goodness. And I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, and that it is a falsehood. And I have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary. But I know you can give me none, except that you were taught to believe the Bible, end quote.
Well, again, his arguments sound logical, but they're the logic of someone who has never come to know God or to know Jesus Christ. Or to appreciate the love of God for all of us that is demonstrated in the pages of the Bible. Well, as I said, between publicly attacking George Washington and publicly attacking the Bible, Thomas Paine alienated himself from just about everyone in America. As a result, when he died, only a handful of persons attended his funeral.
This then completes our discussion of the faith of the Founding Fathers. To be sure, we've only looked at the religious beliefs of the 10 men who perhaps played the greatest role in the American Revolution and in the founding of the United States. But, you know, you could take the next 10 men, and then the next 10 men after that, and you would find the same thing. Some were conventional Christians, some were deists who appreciated the Bible and who viewed religion as a thing that has been good for society.
And then there were some who were deists who disparaged the Bible and who saw Christianity as something that has primarily been bad for mankind. The only thing they all had in common was that their country meant more to them than their religious beliefs. Those who were conventional Christians had no hesitation to kill other conventional Christians who sided with the British. Those who were deists had no problem killing other deists who were on the other side of the political spectrum.
And the conventional Christians had no qualms about working hand in hand with non-believers who shared their same political views. One of the important lessons we should come away with from studying the Faith of the Founding Fathers is that their lives so perfectly demonstrate the truth of Jesus ' words. No man can serve two masters. At some point, he will choose to love the one and hate the other, to serve the one, and leave the other.
What came first in the lives of all of these men was their love of their country. Most of them were men of noble character. But I can say without hesitation that none of them sought first the kingdom of God in their lives.