America was not founded as Christian nation

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I hear it over and over again- that America was founded as a Christian nation, that the founding fathers wanted to establish a covenant for a Christian nation, etc. A lot of people say this as a way of trying to bully non-Christians into allowing the government to promote Christianity. Those who say that America was a Christian nation and that the founding fathers were Christian often try to use this to deny the separation of church and state. In reality, most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and early patriots were not Christians. Here are some quotes from the Founding Fathers. --- Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia Deluxe Copyright © 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 The Learning Company, Inc ---- John Adams 2nd president, "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!" -letter to Thomas Jefferson "How has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?" -letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816 . "The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity." "God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world." "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." . --- Thomas Jefferson 3rd president, Drafted Declaration of Independence, Signer of Constitution, influential on 1st Amendment "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." "Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies." "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." [Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823] --- James Madison: 4th president, influential in the Constitutional Convention, Proposed the 1st Amendment "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has 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." "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." [April 1, 1774] --- Benjamin Franklin Signer of Declaration of Independence, signer of Constitution "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." [Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758] "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." "He (the Rev. Mr. Whitefield) used, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard." [Franklin's Autobiography] --- George Washington 1st president After Washington's death, Dr. Abercrombie, a friend of his, replied to a Dr. Wilson, who had interrogated him about Washington's religion replied, "Sir, Washington was a Deist." Historian Barry Schwartz writes: "George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian... He repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative." [New York Press, 1987, pp. 174-175] Paul F. Boller states in is anthology on Washington: "There is no mention of Jesus Christ anywhere in his extensive correspondence." [Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15] ---- Thomas Paine- pivotal in the founding of America: "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." "Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies." "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." "The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion." Also: "One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian."--The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968, p. 420. According to : [The Church in America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark (1992).] - Only 17% OF colonists at the time of the American Revolution belonged to churches.