Did America Have a Christian Founding?: Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth

by Mark David Hall

The influential but often overlooked signer of the Declaration, drafter of the Constitution, and early Supreme Court Justice James Wilson observed

his law lectures at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) that “of all governments, those are the best, which, by the natural effect of their constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back to their first principles.”

One possibility is simply that the founders identified themselves as Christians, which they clearly did.

In 1776, every colonist, with the exception of about two thousand Jews, identified himself or herself as a Christian.

Third, we might mean that the founders were orthodox Christians. In some cases—for example, with Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Roger Sherman, and John Witherspoon—there is abundant evidence that they embraced and articulated orthodox Christian ideas. But the lack of records makes it difficult to speak with confidence on this issue with respect to some founders. Nevertheless, because of the many misleading statements on the subject, I demonstrate that there is no evidence to support the popular claim that many or most of the founders rejected orthodox Christianity or were deists.

A final possibility for the meaning of a “Christian founding” is that the founders were influenced by Christian ideas. I believe this is the most reasonable way to approach the question, Did America have a Christian founding?

Few doubt that New England Puritans, for example, were serious Christians attempting to create, in the words of Massachusetts governor John Winthrop, “a city upon a hill” (see Matt. 5:14).

Massachusetts Bay’s 1647 penal code stipulated that:

least nine of the thirteen colonies had established churches, and virtually all the rest required officeholders to be Christians—or, in many cases, Protestants.

Few serious scholars deny that the early colonists were committed Christians, whose constitutions, laws, and practices reflected the influence of their faith (especially in New England).

Anyone who desires to understand this critical era simply must grasp the pervasive influence of religion at the time.

Practically, and positively, a central argument of this book is that America’s founders drew from their Christian convictions to create a constitutional order that benefits all Americans, not just Christians.

One of them is Micah 4:4, which reads “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.” This was one of George Washington’s favorite verses; we have records of him quoting or paraphrasing it at least forty times.

In the eighteenth century, deism referred to an intellectual movement that emphasized the role of reason in discerning religious truth.

unlike most Christians, deists did not think God intervenes in the affairs of men and

In Alan Wolfe’s words, they believed that “God set the world in motion and then abstained from human affairs.”

Yet it is noteworthy that even as a young man, Franklin rapidly concluded that the essay “might have an ill Tendency,” and he destroyed most copies of it before they could be distributed.6

In his autobiography, begun in 1771 and not published until after his death, Franklin acknowledged that he fell under the influence of deism as a young man.

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he reflected that “the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs the affairs of men”

It seems reasonable, however, to classify him as a founder who both publicly and privately rejected or questioned some tenets of orthodox Christianity.

Although it sold reasonably well in the United States, America’s civic leaders’ reactions to it were almost uniformly negative.11 Samuel Adams wrote his old ally a personal letter denouncing it, and John Adams, John Witherspoon, William Paterson, and John Jay each criticized the book.

When Paine returned to America, he was vilified because of the book. Indeed, with the exception of Jefferson and a few others, he was abandoned by all of his old friends.

Yet the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the work says a great deal about American religious and political culture in the late eighteenth century.

With the exception of Franklin, Allen, and Paine, I am unaware of any civic leaders in the era who clearly and publicly rejected orthodox Christianity or embraced deism.

Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg,” came close to costing him the election of 1800.17

Indeed, the public’s perception that he was a Calvinist who would impose a national church on the American people contributed to his losing the election of 1800.20 But he nevertheless must be numbered among those founders who privately rejected Christian orthodoxy.

Yet, to my knowledge, no writer has ever produced a public or private journal entry, letter, or essay showing that these men rejected Christianity or embraced deism.

On the surface, Washington’s refusal to take communion suggests that he was not a serious Christian; however, as John Fea points out, this “was not uncommon among eighteenth-century Anglicans,” and Washington may have done so because he “did not believe he was worthy to participate in the sacrament.”

But given the numerous, regular, and unqualified claims that “most” founders were deists, it is remarkable how little evidence there is that more than a handful of founders merit this distinction.

Before proceeding, I should note that if deism includes the idea that “God set the world in motion and then abstained from human affairs,” it is possible that only one of these men, Ethan Allen, was a deist. With the exception of Allen, all the founders regularly called deists are clearly on record speaking or writing about God’s intervention in the affairs of men and nations.32

Yet, it is noteworthy that most authors who claim the founders were deists ignore these and other clear statements by them that God intervenes in the affairs of men and nations.

If deism includes the idea that “God set the world in motion and then abstained from human affairs,” then the number of civic leaders in the American founding who were deists may be only one, Ethan Allen; and other than his significant military victory at Fort Ticonderoga, his role in the American founding was minimal.

Professor Jeffry H. Morrison has argued persuasively that the Declaration’s references to “‘divine Providence’ and ‘the Supreme Judge of the World’ would have been quite acceptable to Reformed Americans in 1776, and conjured up images of the ‘distinctly biblical God’ when they heard or read the Declaration.”

As Jefferson himself pointed out in his 1825 letter to Henry Lee, the object of the Declaration was not to “find out new principles, or new arguments . . . it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day.”

Even though Jefferson may have believed in a vague, distant Deity, when his fellow delegates revised and approved the Declaration, virtually all of them understood that “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Providence” referred to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—that is, a God who is active in the affairs of men and nations.

The only member of a Reformed church among these founders is Adams, but like some of his fellow Congregationalists (primarily in and around Boston), he moved rapidly toward Unitarianism.50

By way of contrast, in his magisterial history of religion in America, Sydney Ahlstrom observed that the Reformed tradition was “the religious heritage of three-fourths of the American people in 1776.”

Simil...

In social science lingo, these founders constitute an unrepresentative sample.

There is little reason to doubt, and much evidence to indicate, that the following Reformed founders were orthodox Christians: Samuel Adams, Elias Boudinot, Eliphalet Dyer, Oliver Ellsworth, Matthew Griswold, John Hancock, Benjamin Huntington, Samuel Huntington, Thomas

McKean, William Paterson, Tapping Reeve, Jesse Root, Roger Sherman, John Treadwell, Jonathan Trumbull, William Williams, James Wilson, John Witherspoon, Oliver Wolcott, and Robert Yates.54

There are good reasons to believe that many of America’s founders were orthodox Christians, and there is virtually no evidence to suggest that most (or even many) of them were deists, at least as that term is popularly and historically understood.

And, if they are careful, they should, in the absence of more compelling evidence, remove Washington, Madison, and Hamilton from their lists of founders who were deists.

Members of the Convention did not insert the phrase “in the year of our Lord” into the Constitution; it was added by the scribe who penned the final version of the document.8 But it was in the text signed by thirty-nine of the delegates to the Federal Convention (not all fifty-five delegates signed the Constitution)

It is not unreasonable to cite Article VII as evidence that the Constitution is not godless, but because documents in the era were routinely dated “in the year of our Lord,” it is best not to rely too heavily on this argument.9

They recognized that any attempt to revise the Constitution before it was ratified would significantly slow ratification, if it didn’t kill the Constitution altogether.

Hence, they opposed all amendments, even those aimed at protecting rights every founder agreed were fundamental, such as freedom of religion, speech, and the press.22

The great Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, for example, that in America “Christianity and religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such

people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity.”

The exception that proves this rule is a 1789 letter by Benjamin Rush, in which he contended that the “only Foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.” With a liberality unusual in his generation, he continued,