'Moral Minority' offers different perspective on founders' beliefs

By M. Scott Carter

Just what exactly did Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton believe?

Were they Christian evangelicals?

Were they Deists?

Were they men of the Enlightenment?

Or, were they just a bunch of guys looking to pick a fight with a king?

Historian Brooke Allen believes she has the answer.

And she reveals it in her book, "Moral Minority, Our Skeptical Founding Fathers."

Her results amazed me.

From the time I was in ol' Mrs. Cates' fourth grade class until this year, I believed "Christian men using Biblical principles" founded the United States.

Boy was I wrong.

According to Allen, the founding fathers weren't the 17th century's version of Oral Roberts. Instead, they took a more natural -- that is, liberal -- view of the world.

And they developed their concept of America by using the work of philosopher John Locke -- not Jesus.

"God entered the picture only as a minor player," Allen wrote. "And Jesus Christ was conspicuous by his absence."

Even now, months after reading that, I'm still shaking my head.

From the "In God We Trust" printed on our money to the picture of George Washington that hangs in the Methodist Church in my hometown, I believed the founders were brilliant, practicing Christians.

Ol' Mrs. Cates had pounded God and George Washington, God and Thomas Jefferson and God and Benjamin Franklin into my head.

She can stop pounding.

Especially about Benjamin Franklin.

Known for his wisdom, research and his diplomatic skill, Allen wrote Franklin was more at home with Voltaire than the Vulgate Bible.

Describing "Poor Richard," she said he was "...a man of the Enlightenment," who was "keenly interested in religion as a branch, as it were, of anthropology, but he attached himself to no particular creed."

Funny, I always though Franklin was a pious, church-going kinda guy.

In her book, Allen proves Franklin's religious beliefs evolved from Christianity to Deism. Using Franklin's own words, she explains:

"My parents had, early on, given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting way," Franklin wrote. "But I was scarce 15, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different brooks I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself... some books against Deism fell into my hands. And it happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."

She does the same with George Washington.

Heavily armed with historical documents and writings by Washington, himself, Allen offers a much different portrait of the man.

And, once again, I saw the myths I'd been taught since childhood destroyed.

"Our first president," Allen wrote, "generally declined to take the sacrament," and, when a preacher called him on this behavior as setting a bad example for others, Washington agreed and never attended church on sacramental Sunday again.

With her library of historical documents, letters and writings from the founders, themselves, Brooke Allen has written a compelling, well-reasoned account of the men who founded the United States of America.

At the same time, she's also poked holes in a vast amount of religious political rhetoric, and pretty much every historical fact ever taught to me by my teachers at Yale Elementary School.

Allen's book, "Moral Minority -- Our Skeptical Founding Fathers," is a must-read for anyone with the slightest interest in history or the real back-story of those men who built the foundation for a nation.

I know it changed my view about the United States, our government, and the men who put it together.

Published by Ivan R. Dee, "Moral Minority -- Our Skeptical Founding Fathers," is available at local bookstores or at Amazon.com.

Buy it, even if Mrs. Cates is your teacher.