Every once in a blue moon I stumble upon a quote or assertion claiming the Founding Fathers didn't believe in God or were atheists or deists or whatever. Everyone, for political or religious or secular reasons, wants a claiming piece of those dudes.
Frankly, I'm surprised there's a debate about this at all. Seems to me some were pretty clear (even if they changed their minds often like Jefferson did during his life. Hey, they were only human) where they stood on God, spirituality and organized religion and Christianity in particular. In the context of their times, essentially influenced by classical and Englightenment and even Renaissance and Christian thought, they were rational skeptics about government and religion.
This doesn't translate into being against God. On the contrary, they were not hostile to religion or God; just guarded against it. They questioned; not attacked. Hence, they devised a political system whereby none would encroach on the personal rights of man by attempting to keep things separate.
In fact, they did make some claims that the basis of American sovereignty and power was rooted and therefore flowed from God -as Madison believed. It's all there. Take it for what it is.
I understand for contemporary consumption we pluck out some comments and quotes they made to expropriate and attach it to a particular prevailing belief, but we don't have a right to it. Taking a quote and linking it straight to something is no answer to a question.
It's not that complicated where they stood on such issues. We just don't know how to read history I tend to read them like I'm watching good theater with all the twists, plots, contradictions, flaws, virtues, ironies and themes ever changing before our eyes. It's all very, well, human.
They were that interesting.
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