The Distinctly Non-Christian Origins of the
United States of America

There are those who would have us believe that the United States of America was founded on Christian ideals - that the writers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America were "God-Fearing Christians." I've heard people say these things with great conviction. Christian revisionism of the history of this nation has turned George Washington - a Deist - into a "God Fearing Christian." It has led to the contamination of our currency and coins (in the 1950's) with "In God We Trust" and to the corruption of the Pledge of Allegiance (also in the 1950's) by the addition of "under God". It is now the year 2000 - an election year. Being "Born again" is all the rage amongst presidential candidates. They don't have the slightest clue how backward their beliefs would appear to the Founders of this Nation.

The first Anglo settlers in North America (I use the word "Anglo" because the continent was clearly already settled by the Native Americans) were the Puritans who arrived first in 1620. Were the Puritans Christian? To me, this is a stupid question, but I ask it for a reason. Whenever I bring up the subject of a Christian who is a murderer or rapist, my Christian friends are quick to point out to me that the person in question is not a "real" Christian. In this way - disclaiming all who are deemed undesirable - Christians are able to keep their ranks pure. This being the case, can the Christians of today honestly claim that the Puritan settlers were Christian? The Puritans murdered and stole land from Native Americans. They burned at the stake - in public forums for all to see - Witches, Heretics, Unitarians, Atheists, Agnostics ....... everyone and anyone whose beliefs differed in any way from their own. And while we are so accustomed to hearing "burned at the stake" that we are no longer appalled by the phrase, just think for a moment what that entails. The Puritans stood and watched as the flesh charred and flaked away from the bodies of their tormented victims. Did they sing "Jesus loves me" as they watched? If these people were Christian, then so is every evil person who has ever called himself or herself a Christian. If Christians wish to claim the Puritans as their own, then they have absolutely no right to say of other people that they are not "real Christians".

The United States was born with the Declaration of Independence (1776). The document was drafted by Thomas Jefferson (a distinctly anti-Christian Deist) between June 11 and June 28.

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. [.......]"

Christians often recite those portions of the Declaration of Independence which refer to the "Creator", and yet they seem to forget the fact that the document begins with a passage that refers to Nature's God. Christians will claim that the use of words such as "Creator" is a sign that Christian ideology and ideals were in the hearts and minds of the founders. Such thoughts are nothing more than Christian fantasy and delusion. The drafter of the Declaration of Independence was staunchly Deist and despised Christianity in all its forms.

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
- Thomas Jefferson

In a letter to John Adams - the second president of the United States and a Unitarian (i.e. a non-believer of the Trinity) - Jefferson has this to say of the Trinity and of Christianity in general:

"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion, and they would catch no more flies."

[Thomas Jefferson, to John Adams, Aug. 22, 1813 Jefferson s Works, Vol. IV, p. 205, Randolph's ed.]

How many of our founding fathers - of the men and women who helped shape this country - were non-Christian? The answer is many - quite possibly the majority of them. That the majority of our founding fathers were non-Christian, I cannot state as fact. However, Deism was the more common religion among the educated. Many others were Unitarian (i.e. rejected the Christian Trinity), and some were Agnostic or Atheist. Allow me to mention a few by name, beginning with some of our earliest Presidents:

George Washington
First President of the United States and the Father of our country. His religiosity is rather hard to pin down since he strove to not align himself with or against any particular faith or doctrine. While he was a member of the Anglican Church, he rarely attended church services. Most historians regard Washington as a Deist, and this is supported by statements and journal entries of many of his closest friends and contemporaries.

John Adams
Second President of the United States and signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams was a Unitarian (i.e. he rejected the Christian Trinity). In his time, Unitarianism was tolerated by Christians, but just barely. Had Adams lived just a hundred years earlier, he would likely have been kindling in a Puritan's fireplace.

"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 carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."
- John Adams

"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 carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
 Christianity."
                      [John Adams]
-------
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature
 shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings
 shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
            [John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation.
 But 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?"
         [John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816]
-------
"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!"
               [John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era?
 Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius?
 Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by
 order of another pope, because suspected of heresy?  Remember the 'index
 expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the
 guillotine."
                [John Adams, letter to John Taylor]
-------
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.
 And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or
 dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate,
 the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently
 endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded.  But touch a solemn truth
 in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof,
 and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm
 about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
               [John Adams, letter to John Taylor]
-------
"God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power; he created the universe; his
 duration is eternal, a parte ante and a parte post. His presence is as
 extensive as space. What is space? An infinite spherical vacuum. He created
 this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory; and with deliberate
 design of making nine-tenths of our species miserable for ever for his glory.
 This is the doctrine of Christian theologians, in general, ten to one. Now, my
 friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me that infinite
 benevolence, wisdom, and power, created, and preserves for a time innumerable
 millions, to make them miserable forever, for his own glory? Wretch! What is
 his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is he vain, tickled with
 adulation, exulting 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 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, exultation in my own existance- though but an
 atom, a molecule organique in the universe- are my religion".
      [John Adams, in a latter to Jefferson, Sept. 14, 1813, from
       "Christianity and the Constitution: The Founding faith of our Fathers"
       John Eidsmoe ISBN: 0-8010-3444-2]
-------
       TREATY OF PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP
       BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
       AND THE BEY AND SUBJECTS
       OF TRIPOLI OF BARBARY
       8 Stat. 154, Treaty Series 358

Treaty signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796, and at Algiers January 3, 1797.
Senate advice and consent to ratification  June 7, 1797.
Ratified by the President of the United States June 10,  1797
Entered into force June 10, 1797
Proclaimed by the President of the United States June 10, 1797.

ARTICLE 11

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded
 on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity
 against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-- and as the said
 States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any
 Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from
 religous opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony
 existing between the two countries."
     [John Adams, 1797-05-27, Article 11, Treaty of Peace and Friendship
      between the US and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary.
      Treaties and Other International Acts of America, ed. Hunter Miller]
-------
"This is my religion . . . joy and exaltation in my own existence . . . so
 go ahead and snarl . . . bite . . . howl, you Calvinistic divines and all
 you who say I am no Christian. I say you are not Christian."
            [John Adams, in _Toward the Mystery_]
-------
"[In regard to the Trinity]; "Tom, had you and I been 40 days with Moses,
 and beheld the great God, and even if God himself had tried to tell us
 that three was one . . . and one equals three, you and I would never
 have believed it. We would never fall victims to such lies."
             [John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient
 Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above
 all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public?  Miracles
 after miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding wave in the
 Catholic church, from the Council of Nicea, and long before, to this day."
          [John Adams, to Jefferson, 3 December 1813]
-------
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of
 governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now
 sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture,
 hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their
 history.  Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is
 at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may
 hereafter become an object of curiosity.  It will never be pretended that any
 persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any
 degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or
 houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be
 acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of
 reason and the senses...."
    [John Adams, "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the
     United States of America" [1787-1788]; from Adrienne Koch, ed.,
     The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment
     and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 258]
-------
"Nothing is more dreaded than the national
 government meddling with religion."
          [John Adams]

Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States, drafter of the Declaration of Independence, and writer of The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson was very much a Deist.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
                [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"...difference of opinion is advantageous in religion.  The several sects
 perform the office of a common censor over each other.  Is uniformity
 attainable?  Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the
 introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
 yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity.  What has been the
 effect of coercion?  To make one half the world fools, and the other half
 hypocrites.  To support roguery and error all over the earth."
    [Thomas Jeffersion, "Notes on the State of Virginia [1781-1785]"
     also George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New
     Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363.]
-------
"Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.  Let us
 restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
 liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.  And let us reflect
 that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
 mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we countenance a
 political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
 bloody persecutions."
      [Thomas Jefferson, "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1801.
       From Mortimer Adler, ed., The Annals of America: 1797-1820,
       Domestic Expansion and Foreign Entanglements, Vol.4;
       Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, pp. 144]
-------
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
                    [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"...let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which
 error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it".
       [Thomas Jefferson, 1st inaugural address, March 4, 1801]
-------
"They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
 of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
 of the duperies on which they live."
                      [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
 and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
 feature.  They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
               [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Woods]
-------
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American
 people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting
 an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,'
 thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
        [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association]
-------
"... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various
 batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering.  I
 have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the
 West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less
 caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their
 interested duperies were to be played off.  Their sway in New England is
 indeed formidable.  No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself."
            [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Spofford, 1816]
-------
"Do not be frightened from this enquiry by any fear of its consequences.
 If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to
 virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its' exercise, and the
 love of others which it will procure you.  If you find reason to believe
 that there is a god, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and
 that he approves of you, will be a vast additional incitement."
           [Thomas Jefferson, on advising a nephew on
            a critical examination of the Bible]
-------
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
 to others.  But 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."
        [Thomas Jefferson, speech to Virginia House of Delegates,
         November, 1776 (Notes on the State of Virginia Query XVII.)
         from Merrill D. Peterson, "Jefferson and Religious Freedom",
         The Atlantic Monthly  12/94.  Also- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith
         of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco:
         Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 42-43]
-------
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
 He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return
 for protection of his own.  It is easier to acquire wealth and power by
 this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have
 perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and
 jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine
 for their purpose."
        [Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spofford, March 17, 1814;
         from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
         Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371]
 -------
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man
 and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship,
 that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not
 opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole
 American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law
 respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
 thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
     [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT.
      "The Complete Jefferson" by Saul K. Padover, pp 518-519]
-------
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are
 servilely crouched.  Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal
 for every fact, every opinion.  Question with boldness even the existence of
 a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason
 than that of blindfolded fear."
          [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787]
-------
"Read the Bible as you would Livy or Tacitus. 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 showers of
 blood, speaking of their statues, beasts, etc. But it is said that the
 writer of that book was inspired. 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
 astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature"
           [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr,
            Aug. 10, 1787, in Works, Vol.ii., p. 217]
-------
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in
 the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that
 the one is not three, and the three are not one.  But this constitutes the
 craft, the power and the profit of the priests.  Sweep away their gossamer
 fabrics of fictitious religion, and they would catch no more flies"
           [Thomas Jefferson, to John Adams, Aug. 22, 1813
            Jefferson s Works, Vol. IV, p. 205, Randolph's ed.]
-------
"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect
 the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate,
 which would more nearly relate to the state.  Will the magistrate make a law
 that he not be poor or sick?  Laws provide against injury from others; but
 not from ourselves.  God himself will not save men against their wills.

But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the
 Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who
 professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for
 enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
        [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1810]
-------
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
 maintaining a free civil government.  This marks the lowest grade
 of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders
 will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
       [Thomas Jefferson, to Baron von Humboldt, 1813;
        from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
        Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370]
-------
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles,
 all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been
 quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for
 abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and
 absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
            [Thomas Jefferson, to Carey, 1816]
-------
"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own
 country, was Jesus of Nazareth.  Abstracting what is really his from the
 rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from
 the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond
 from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime
 morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man.  The establishment
 of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the
 rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from
 artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate
 conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him,
 his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal
 presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration,
 election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable object."
           [Thomas Jefferson, to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819]
-------
"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his
 doctrines.  I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he
 preaches the efficacy of repentence toward forgiveness of sin; I require
 a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.

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; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so
 much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that
 such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.  I separate,
 therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the
 latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples.  Of
 this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the
 first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus."
         [Thomas Jefferson, to William Short, April 13, 1820]
-------
"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more
 dangerous.  Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and
 religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the
 grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel
 and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of
 Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel.  That Jesus
 did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically
 speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than
 myself in that lore."
             [Thomas Jefferson, to Story, Aug. 4, 1820]
-------
"All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor
 shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution"
       [Thomas Jefferson, 1776, from Thomas Jefferson: A Reference
        Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986.]
-------
"...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship
 or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions
 or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain,
 their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise...
 affect their civil capacities."
             [Thomas Jefferson, 1777 draft Bill for
              Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia]
-------
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of
 opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."
          [Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Statute for
           Religious Freedom, 1779.  Papers, 1:545]
-------
"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
 But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin:
    1. That there are three Gods.
    2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
    3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible
       the proposition, the more merit the faith.
    4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
    5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals
       to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes
       of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save."
    [Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]z
-------
"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church
 ... made of Christendom a slaughter-house."
  [Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]
-------
"Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions,
 through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and
 divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another."
   [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Whittemore, June 5, 1822]
-------
"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those,
 calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the
 structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any
 foundation in his genuine words.  And 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 classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in
 the brain of Jupiter.  But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom
 of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial
 scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this
 most venerated Reformer of human errors."
         [Thomas Jefferson, to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823
          Jefferson's Works, Vol. IV, p. 365, Randolph's ed.,
          quoted by E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D.
          Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography,
          New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 287.]
-------
"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and
 of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism,
 differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible."
       [Thomas Jefferson, to Jared Sparks, 1820]
-------
"..our civil rights have no dependance on our religious
 opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry"
                 [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"It is error alone which needs the support of
 government.  Truth can stand by itself."
   [Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782;
    from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
    Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363]
-------
"...If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that is
 pleasing to him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist?  It is idle to
 say, as some do, that no such thing exists.  We have the same evidence of
 the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations,
 and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally
 that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic
 Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to
 Atheism.  Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet are known to have been
 among the most virtuous of men.  Their virtue, then, must have had some
 other foundation than love of God."
       [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814;
        From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The
        Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society,
        New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 358.]
-------
"He is less remote from the truth who believes
 nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."
           [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the
 Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines,
 discipline, or exercises.  This results not only from the provision that no
 law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion,
 but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to
 the United States.  Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise,
 or to asssume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the
 General Government.  It must then rest with the States, as far as it can be
 in any human authority.  But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not
 prescribe a day of fasting and prayer.  That is, that I should indirectly
 assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises, which the
 Constitution has directly precluded them from.  It must be meant, too, that
 this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by
 some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment,
 but of some degree of proscription, perhaps in public opinion.  And does the
 change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation less a law of
 conduct for those to whom it is directed?  I do not believe it is in the best
 interests of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises,
 its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the
 General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any
 uniformity of time or matter among them.  Fasting and prayer are religious
 exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline.  Every religious society
 has a right to determine for itself the times of these exercises, and the
 objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this
 right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the Constitution has
 deposited it."
   [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Miller, a Presbyterian minister,
    January 23, 1808. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, ed.
    (Washington, DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904),
    Vol. XI, p.428.  Also, Willson Whitman, arranger, Jefferson's Letters,
    Eau Claire, Wisconsin: E. M. Hale and Company, ND, pp. 241-242]
-------
"I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring
 about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another."
  [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799.
  From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of
  American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499.]
-------
"A professorship of Theology should have no place in
 our institution [the University of Virginia]."
  [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, October 7, 1814.
   From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book
   of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492.]
-------
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any
 party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in
 anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an
 addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could
 not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."
  [Thomas Jefferson, Letter To Francis Hopkinson, Paris Mar. 13, 1789]
-------
"To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the
 general mind must be strengthened by education."
             [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to
 a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of
 reason & right.  It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in
 the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that
 it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal.  Where the preamble
 declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of
 our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that
 it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of
 our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that
 they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and
 the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every
 denomination."
     [Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia
      Act for Religious Freedom"; from George Seldes, ed., The Great
      Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363]
-------
" Sir,- I have duly received your favor of the 18th and am thankful to you for
 having written it, because it is more agreeable to prevent than to refuse what
 I do not think myself authorized to comply with.  I consider the government of
 the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious
 institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.  This results not
 only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment,
 or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states
 the powers not delegated to the U.S.  Certainly no power to prescribe any
 religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been
 delegated to the general government.  It must then rest with the states, as
 far as it can be in any human authority.  But it is only proposed that I
 should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting and prayer.  That is, that I
 should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises
 which the Constitution has directly precluded them from.  It must be meant too
 that this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by
 some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine or imprisonment,
 but of some degree of proscription perhaps in public opinion.  And does the
 change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less a law of
 conduct for those to whom it is directed?  I do not believe it is for the
 interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct it's exercises,
 it's discipline, or it's doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the
 general government should be invested with the power of effecting any
 uniformity of time or matter among them.  Fasting and prayer are religious
 exercises.  The enjoining them an act of discipline.  Every religious society
 has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, and the
 objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this
 right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has
 deposited it.

I am aware that the practice of my predecessors may be quoted.  But I have
 ever believed that the example of state executives led to the assumption of
 the authority by the general government, without due examination, which would
 have discovered that what might be right in a state government, was a
 violation of the right when assumed by another.  Be this as it may, every one
 must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me the
 civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U.S. and no
 authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.

I again express my satisfaction that you have been so good as to give me an
 opportunity of explaining myself in a private letter, in which I could give my
 reasons more in detail than might have been done in a public answer; and I
 pray you to accept the assurances of my high esteem and respect."
            [Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Rev. Samuel Miller
             Washington Jan 23 1808]
-------
"The Christian god can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many
 ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed
 monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this
 raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber
 of the people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes:
 fools and hypocrites."
       [Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr]
-------
"A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually
 impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than
 by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written."
     [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771]
-------
"The Christian God is a being of terrific character --
 cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."
     [Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_]
-------
"We discover [in the gospels] a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of
 things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication."
          [Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_]
-------
"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse,
 and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac."
          [Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_]
-------
"On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of
 all the certainties we can have or need.  I can conceive thought to be an
 action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by
 it's creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or
 magnetism of lodestone.  When he who denies to the Creator the power of
 endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he
 could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins
 the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can
 have a will, and by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist
 may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises
 the faculty of thinking.  When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is
 in the wind.  To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To
 say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are
 nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason
 otherwise. But I believe that I am supported in my creed of Materialism by
 the Lockes, the Tracys, and the Stewarts."
        [Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820]
-------
"If we believe that he [Jesus Christ] really countenanced the follies, the
 falsehoods, and the charlatanisms, which his biographers [writers of the
 New Testament] father upon him, and admit the misconstructions,
 interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early and the
 fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by
 every sound mind that he was an impostor."
      [Thomas Jefferson, _Jefferson Bible_, quoted by Joseph Lewis]
-------
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
         [Thomas Jefferson, in _Toward the Mystery_]
-------
"The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the
 teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible."
           [Thomas Jefferson, in _Toward The Mystery_]
-------
"If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted,
 we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else."
                 [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions more than our
 opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen
 as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being
 called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
 or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges
 and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural
 right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it
 is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and
 emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though
 indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither
 are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil
 magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain
 the profession or propagation of principles, on supposition of their ill
 tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious
 liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his
 opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of
 others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is
 time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers
 to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good
 order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself,
 that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to
 fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural
 weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
 permitted freely to contradict them."
   [Jefferson and Madison, from the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom]
-------
 [laws establishing freedom of religion]..."were meant to include within
 them the Muslim, the Hindoo [sic], and the infidel of any sort."
  [Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his nephew, Dethloff, Henry C., ed. Thomas
   Jefferson and American Democracy. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co. 1971]
-------
"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful
 that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have
 been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to
 them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what
 parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence
 that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other
 parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate
 those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."
         [Jefferson, letter to John Adams,  January 24, 1814]
-------
"There is not a truth existing which I fear...
 or would wish unknown to the whole world."
         [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will
 be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for
 I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form
 of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from
 me: and enough, too, in their opinion."
        [Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, 1800]
-------
"If we could believe that [Jesus]...countenanced the follies,
 falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him,
 ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter."
             [Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
              3rd president of the U.S.]
-------
"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to
 every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the
 mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an
 artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting
 controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit,
 power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus
 himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes
 have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this
 obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
       [Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814]
-------
"I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction at length of the
 judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have
 usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of
 the common law. The proof of the contrary which you have adduced is
 incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-
 Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name
 of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed."
     [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Major John Cartwright. Works,
      Vol. iv., pp. 397.  He then goes to explain precisely an
      original misquote which led to this historic mistake.]
-------
"For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by
 the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time to time by
 proper legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna Charta, which
 terminates the period of the common law, or lex non scripta, and commences
 that of the statue law, or Lex Scripta.  This settlement took place about
 the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the
 seventh century; the conversion of the first christian king of the Heptarchy
 having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686.  Here,
 then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in
 existence, and Christianity no part of it."
         [Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Thomas Cooper (Feb.10, 1814)]
-------
"... our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity,
 continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I believe
 it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the
 signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and
 superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings
 and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores
 the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All
 eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.  The general spread of the
 light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that
 the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a
 favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace
 of God.  These are grounds of hope for others.  For ourselves, let the annual
 return of this day [Fourth of July] forever refresh our recollections of these
 rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."
    [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826,
     declining an invitation to the 50th anniversary celebration of
     the Declaration of Independence, July 4 1826; this was Jefferson's
     last letter, dated ten days before he died; from Adrienne Koch, ed.,
     The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment
     and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 372.]
-------
"The Athanasian paradox that one is three and three but one, is so
 incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has
 any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea?  He who
 thinks he does, only deceives himself He proves, also, that man, once
 surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities
 the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of
 every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith,
 takes the helm of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck."
           [Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith]
-------
"In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the
 women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where,
 attended by their priests, and sometimes by a henpecked husband, they
 pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus in terms as amatory
 and carnal as their modesty would permit to a merely earthly lover."
          [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Cooper,
           Works, Vol. iv., p. 358, Randolph's ed.]
-------
"I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of
 the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom
 is no longer to disgrace the American history and character."
    [Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams regarding
     disestablisment in New England (Works, Vol. iv., p. 301)]
-------
"The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest, the most intolerant of all
 sects; the most tyrannical and ambitious, ready at the word of the
 law-giver, if such a word could now be obtained, to put their torch to
 the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the flame in which
 their oracle, Calvin, consumed the poor Servetus, because he could not
 subscribe to the proposition of Calvin, that magistrates have a right
 to exterminate all heretics to the Calvinistic creed!

They pant to re-establish by law that holy inquisition which they can
 now only infuse into public opinion"
           [Thomas Jefferson, Works, Vol.iv.,p.322]
-------
"But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion.
 No two, say I, have established the same.  Is this a proof of the
 infallibility of establishments?"
                     [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"I know it will give great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of
 religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them."
        [Thomas Jefferson, to Levi Lincoln, 1802. ME 10:305
         referring to reaction over his administration in which
         absolutely no religious proclamations were issued.]
-------
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society
 require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions
 agree (for all forbid us to steal, murder, plunder, or bear false witness),
 and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which
 all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality."
             [Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback, 1809]
-------
 "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
             [Thomas Jefferson, February 10, 1814]
-------
   The State of Virginia (act of assembly of 1705, c. 30) provided that
"...if a person brought up in the Christian religion denies the being of
 a God, or the Trinity, or asserts that there are more Gods than one, or
 denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of
 divine authority, he is punishable on the first offense by incapacity to
 hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil or military;  on the
 second by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian,
 executor, or administrator and by three years imprisonment, without bail.
 A father's right to the custody of his own children being founded in law
 on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course
 be severed from him, and put, by the authority of a court, into more
 orthodox hands."
         [Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia,
          from  _Thomas Jefferson: Writings_, pg. 284-285]
-------
"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted
 into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine
 against the civil and religious rights of man."
     [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Jeremiah Moor, 1800; as quoted
      by Saul K. Padover in Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, New York,
      1946, p. 165, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr,
      compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long
      Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 48.]
-------
"I can never join Calvin in adressing his god.  He was indeed an Atheist,
 which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man
 worshipped a false god, he did.  The being described in his 5. points is
 not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent
 governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit.  It would be more
 pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious
 attributes of Calvin.  Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great
 handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there
 would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god."
       [Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823]
-------
"Because religious belief or non-belief is such an important part of every
 person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual.  State churches
 that use government power to support themselves and force their views on
 persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights.  Moreover, state
 support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and
 leads to corruption within religion.  Erecting the "wall of separation between
 church and state," therefore,  is absolutely essential in a free society."
            ["Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government",
             Section 46: Freedom of Religion]
-------
"...merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable
 of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."
      [Thomas Jefferson, on the Revelations in the Bible,
       from Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New
       York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986.]
-------
"I rarely waste time in reading theological subjects... Ridicule is the only
 weapon that can be used against such unintelligible propositions. Ideas must
 be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct
 idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling
 themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer
 their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like
 the scuttle-fish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it
 impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will sulk."
                        [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished, does
 not give impunity to criminal acts, dictated by religious error."
     [Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98]
-------
"I never told my religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never
 attempted to make a convert nor wished to change another's creed.
 I have judged of others' religion by their lives, for it is from
 our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read.
 By the same test must the world judge me."
                  [Thomas Jefferson]
-------
"We have solved...the great and interesting question whether freedom
 of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to
 the laws.  And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort
 which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly
 those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own
 reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."
        [Thomas Jefferson to Virginia Baptists, 1808]
-------
"Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that... of liberty to
 worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will;
 a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government
 and yet proved by our experience to be its best support."
        [Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Baptist Address, 1807]
-------
"From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of
 choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform.  But if
 we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so
 reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty."
     [Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers, 1:545]
-------
"The rights [to religious freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind,
 and... if any act shall be... passed to repeal [an act granting those
 rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of
 natural right."
  [Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers, 2:546]
-------
"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved.
 I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which
 no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle."
            [Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813]
-------
"In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed
 by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government.
 I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious
 exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found
 them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities
 acknowledged by the several religious societies."
          [Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural Address, 1805]
-------
"Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the
 power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these
 should consider a conquest over the conscience of men either attainable
 or applicable to any desirable purpose."
      [Thomas Jefferson: Reply to New London Methodists, 1809]
-------
"To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
 and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of
 their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious
 liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his
 opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others
 only as they shall square with or differ from his own."
   [Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers, 2:546]
-------
"Our particular principles of religion are
 a subject of accountability to God alone."
   [Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814]
-------
"[If] the nature of... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the
 ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to
 come.  Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and
 they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been].  And there [the]
 clergy will always keep them if they can.  [They] will follow the bark of
 liberty only by the help of a tow-rope."
        [Thomas Jefferson to Pierrepont Edwards, July 1801]
-------
"This doctrine ['that the condition of man cannot be ameliorated, that what
 has been must ever be, and that to secure ourselves where we are we must
 tread with awful reverence in the footsteps of our fathers'] is the genuine
 fruit of the alliance between Church and State, the tenants of which finding
 themselves but too well in their present condition, oppose all advances which
 might unmask their usurpations and monopolies of honors, wealth and power,
 and fear every change as endangering the comforts they now hold."
      [Thomas Jefferson: Report for University of Virginia, 1818]
-------
"I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to
 bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another."
      [Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799]
-------
"The law for religious freedom... [has] put down the aristocracy of
 the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind."
          [Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813]
-------
"No man [should] be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship,
 place, or ministry whatsoever, nor [should he] be enforced, restrained,
 molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor... otherwise suffer on account
 of his religious opinions or belief...  All men [should] be free to profess
 and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and ...the
 same [should] in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
    [Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers, 1:546]
-------
"We have no right to prejudice another in his civil
 enjoyments because he is of another church."
     [Thomas Jefferson: Notes on
      Religion, 1782.  Papers, 1:546]
-------
"No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs,
 for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for
 consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty;
 but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies,
 there is an immediate uproar."
  [Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782; from George Seldes, ed.,
   The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364]
-------
"If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has
 fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering
 the State to be troubled with it."
         [Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782]
-------
"The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does
 not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error."
        [Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788]
-------
"If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary
 to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no
 otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market."
    [Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776.  Papers, 1:548]
-------
"Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth or permitted to the subject in the
 ordinary way cannot be forbidden to him for religious uses; and whatsoever
 is prejudicial to the Commonwealth in their ordinary uses and, therefore,
 prohibited by the laws, ought not to be permitted to churches in their sacred
 rites.  For instance, it is unlawful in the ordinary course of things or in a
 private house to murder a child; it should not be permitted any sect then to
 sacrifice children.  It is ordinarily lawful (or temporarily lawful) to kill
 calves or lambs; they may, therefore, be religiously sacrificed.  But if the
 good of the State required a temporary suspension of killing lambs, as during
 a siege, sacrifices of them may then be rightfully suspended also.  This is
 the true extent of toleration."
      [Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers, 1:547]
-------
"The constitutional freedom of religion [is] the
 most inalienable and sacred of all human rights."
      [Thomas Jefferson, 'Virginia Board
       of Visitors Minutes,' 1819]
-------
"I have never conceived that having been in public life required me to
 belie my sentiments, or to conceal them. Opinion and the just maintenance
 of it shall never be a crime in my view, nor bring injury on the individual.
 I never will by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance. I never
 had an opinion in politics or religion which I was afraid to own; a reserve
 on these subjects might have procured me more esteem from some people, but
 less from myself.
            [Thomas Jefferson quoted by Joseph Lewis]
-------
"I will never, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance,
 or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
    [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803.
     From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper
     Book of American Quotations,New York: Harper & Row,1988,pg 499]
-------
"I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover
 health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment;
 but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor."
   [Thomas Jefferson, notes for a speech, c. 1776. From Gorton
    Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
    Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 498.]
-------
"Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The
 Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this
 court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is
 inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others,
 in the new Encyclopedie. I think it will produce considerable good even in
 those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of
 body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the
 people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped."
       [Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Wythe from Paris,
        Aug. 13, 1786. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American
        Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and
        a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 311]
-------
"The Virginia act for religious freedom has been received with infinite
 approbation in Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I do not mean by
 governments, but by the individuals who compose them. It has been translated
 into French and Italian; has been sent to most of the courts of Europe,
 and has been the best evidence of the falsehood of those reports which
 stated us to be in anarchy. It is inserted in the new "Encyclop�die," and
 is appearing in most of the publications respecting America. In fact, it
 is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so
 many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings,
 priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us, to have produced the first
 legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be
 trusted with the formation of his own opinions...."
       [Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison from Paris,
        Dec. 16, 1786. From Lloyd S. Kramer, ed., Paine and
        Jefferson on Liberty, New York: Continuum, 1988, pp. 87-88]
-------
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold,
 and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for
 our citizens?  Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to
 be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman,
 simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read,
 and what we must disbelieve?"
    [Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia
     bookseller, 1814, on the occasion of prosecution for selling
     De Becourt's "Sur le Cr�ation du Monde, un Syst�me d'Organisation
     Primitive"; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations,
     Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371]
-------
"I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a
 fact like this can become a subject to inquiry, and of criminal inquiry,
 too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a
 book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom
 of religion?"
    [Thomas Jefferson, letter to N. G. Dufief, April 19, 1814.
     From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book
     of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492]
-------
"If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can
 ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public
 opinion, [then and only then will truth] prevail over fanaticism."
  [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Jared Sparks, 4 November 1820.
   as quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion
   and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 49.]
-------
"I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives.... It is in our
 lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same
 test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They
 must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities.
 My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never
 been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the the purest
 of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power,
 revolt those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what
 is really there."
    [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith, August 6, 1816.
     From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of
     American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492.]
-------
"Life is of no value but as it brings us gratifications. Among the
 most valuable of these is rational society. It informs the mind,
 sweetens the temper, cheers our spirits, and promotes health."
   [Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, February 20, 1784.
    From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The
    Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society,
    New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 305]
-------
"It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to
 throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified."
  [Thomas Jefferson: Letter to William Short, August 4, 1820]
-------
"The hocus-pocus phantasy of a God, like another Cerberus, with
 one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood
 of thousands and thousands of martyrs."
  [Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson s Works, Vol. IV, 360, Randolph's ed.]
-------
"If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators
 of the public happiness send them here [Europe]. It is the best school
 in the universe to cure them of that folly. They will see here with their
 own eyes that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy
 against the happiness of the mass of people. The omnipotence of their
 effect cannot be better proved than in this country [France] particularly,
 where notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under
 heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable
 character of which the human form is susceptible, where such a people I
 say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are yet loaded with
 misery by kings, nobles and priests, and by them alone."
                [Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe]
-------
"If not an absolute atheist, he had no belief in a future existence.  All
 his ideas of obligation or retribution were bounded by the present life."
     [President John Quincy Adams on Thomas Jefferson, 1831]
-------
"... The most revealing writings concerned the commonly repeated maxim that
 Christianity was part of the common law.  In two posthumously published
 writings, an appendix to his Reports of Cases Determined in the General Court
 and a letter to Major John Cartwright, Thomas Jefferson took issue with the
 maxim. He traced the erroneous interpretation to a seventeenth-century law
 commentator who, Jefferson argued, misinterpreted a fifteenth-century
 precedent. He then traced the error forward to his favorite b�te noire, Lord
 Mansfield, who wrote that "the essential principles of revealed religion are
 part of the common law." Jefferson responded with a classic, positivistic
 critique: Mansfield "leaves us at our peril to find out what, in the opinion
 of the judge, and according to the measures of his foot or his faith, are
 those essential principles of revealed religion, obligatory on us as part of
 the common law."
    [Daniel R. Ernst, "Church-State Issues and the Law: 1607-1870" in
     John F. Wilson, ed., Church and State in America: A Bibliographic
     Guide. The Colonial and Early National Periods," New York: Greenwood
     Press, 1986, p. 337. Ernst gives his source as Thomas Jefferson,
     "Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law?"]
-------
"So much is Jefferson identified in the American mind with his battle for
 political liberty that it is difficult to entertain the possibility that
 he felt even more strongly about religious liberty.  If the letters and
 activities of his post presidential years can be taken as a fair guide,
 however, he maintained an unrelenting vigilance with respect to freedom in
 religion, and an unrelenting, perhaps even unforgiving, distrust of all those
 who would seek in any way to mitigate or limit or nullify that freedom."
    [Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers:  Religion and the
     New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 46-47.]
-------
"He [Jefferson] rejoiced with John Adams when the Congregational church
 was finally disestablished in Connecticut in 1818; welcoming "the
 resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberty, Jefferson congratulated
 Adams "that this den of priesthood is at length broken up, and that a
 protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace American history and character."
     [Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the
      New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 49]
-------
"A final example of Jefferson's separationism may be drawn from his founding
 of the University of Virginia in the last years of his life.  Prepared to
 transform the College of William and Mary into the principal university of
 the state, Jefferson would do so only if the college divested itself of all
 ties with sectarian religion--that is, with its old Anglicanism now
 represented by the Protestant Episcopal Church. The college declined to make
 that break with its past, and Jefferson proceeded with plans for his own
 university well to the west of Anglican-dominated tidewater Virginia. In
 Charlottesville this new school ("broad & liberal & modern," as Jefferson
 envisioned it in a letter to [Joseph] Priestly of 18 January 1800) opened in
 1825 with professorships in languages and law, natural and moral philosophy,
 history and mathematics, but not in divinity.  In Jefferson's view, as
 reported in Robert Healey's Jefferson on Religion in Public Education, not
 only did Virginia's laws prohibit such favoritism (for divinity or theology
 was inevitably sectarian), but high-quality education was not well served by
 those who preferred mystery to morals and divisive dogma to the unities of
 science. Too great a devotion to doctrine can drive men mad; if it does not
 have that tragic effect, it at least guarantees that a man's education will
 be mediocre. What is really significant in religion, its moral content, would
 be taught at the University of Virginia, but in philosophy, not divinity. If
 Almighty God has made the mind free, one of the ways to keep it free is to
 protect young minds from the clouded convolutions of theologians. Jefferson
 wanted education separated from religion because of his own conclusions
 concerning the nature of religion, its strengths and its weaknesses, its
 dark past and its possibly brighter future."
     [E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas
      Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's
      Sons, 1986, pp. 282-283.]
-------
"... If this [extending religion's influence on the basis of "reason alone"]
 is the path chosen by Omnipotence and Infallibility, what sense can there
 possibly be in "fallible and uninspired men ...setting up their own opinions
 and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible"?  No sense at all,
 argued Jefferson, who found compulsion in religion to be irrational, impious,
 and tyrannical. If such compulsion is bad for the vulnerable citizen, its
 consequences are no more wholesome for the church: "It tends also to corrupt
 the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
 with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally
 profess and conform to it."
        [E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed.,
         Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York:
         Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 280.]
-------
"It was what he did not like in religion that gave impetus to Jefferson's
 activity in that troublesome and often bloody arena. He did not like
 dogmatism, obscurantism, blind obedience, or any interference with the free
 exercise of the mind. Moreover, he did not like the tendency of religion to
 confuse truth with power, special insight with special privilege, and the
 duty to maintain with the right to persecute the dissenter. Ecclesiastical
 despotism was as reprehensible as despotism of the political sort, even
 when it justified itself, as it often did, in the name of doing good. This
 had been sufficiently evident in his native Virginia to give Jefferson
 every stimulus he needed to see that independence must be carried over
 into the realm of religion."
       [E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed.,
        Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York:
        Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 279]
-------
"Across the ages, clergy have been interested [according to Jefferson] not in
 truth but only in wealth and power; when rational people have had difficulty
 swallowing "their impious heresies," then the clergy have, with the help of
 the state, forced "them down their throats." Five years later, he [Jefferson]
 wrote of "this loathsome combination of church and state" that for so many
 centuries reduced human beings to "dupes and drudges."
     [Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New
      Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 47. According to
      Gaustad, the first quotes are from a letter from Jefferson to
      William Baldwin, January 19, 1810; the second source is a
      letter from Jefferson to Charles Clay, January 29, 1815.]
-------
"Jefferson wrote voluminously to prove that Christianity was not part
 of the law of the land and that religion or irreligion was purely a
 private matter, not cognizable by the state."
    [Leonard W. Levy, Treason Against God: A History of the
     Offense of Blasphemy, New York: Schocken Books, 1981, p. 335]
-------
"To conclude this discussion of the religious clauses of the First Amendment,
 let's talk some more about Thomas Jefferson and his "wall." Some TV preachers,
 as well as writers, politicians, and, worst of all, Supreme Court Justice
 William Rehnquist, have sought to pull down the wall by disparaging Jefferson's
 influence on the First Amendment. A popular bit of historical revisionism that
 floats around these days goes something like this: Jefferson served as
 ambassador to France during the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of
 Rights. He had no hand in their preparation and passage because he was out of
 the country.  Therefore, his metaphor about the "wall of separation" is
 misplaced and ill-informed because he was living in France and was out of
 touch. Tommyrot! Thomas Jefferson was James Madison's mentor. Madison as the
 chief architect of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights drew heavily
 from Jefferson's ideas and kept in regular contact with his fellow Virginian
 even though the latter lived in France. Volumes of correspondence exist
 between the two men as they discussed the day's crucial events. Jefferson
 understood that the First Amendment created a separation between church and
 state because he, more than most of the Founders, gave form and substance to
 the nation's understanding of how the two institutions should best relate in
 the new nation. Some politicians, lawyers, and preachers subject us to mental
 cruelty when they disparage Jefferson's interpretation simply because he lived
 in France during the years of the Constitution's framing."
         [Robert L. Maddox, Baptist minister and speech writer and
          religious liaison for President Jimmy Carter, Separation
          of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New
          York: Crossroad Publishing, 1987, pp. 67-68.]
-------
"This statement [Jefferson and the "one-directional wall"] is an
 example of the Religious Right's more blatant lies.  It is impossible
 to determine where this myth originated, but we do know that it began
 appearing with increasing frequency in the early 1990s...  Of
 course, Jefferson said no such thing about his "wall," as any of
 his biographers or church-state historians will readily testify."
          [Boston, _Why the Religious Right is Wrong
           about the Separation of Church and State_]
-------
"Jefferson had it reviewed by Levi Lincoln, his attorney general.
 Jefferson told Lincoln he viewed the response as a way of 'sowing
 useful truths and principles among the people, which might germinate
 and become rooted among their political tenets'."
   [Boston, _Why The Religious Right is Wrong about the Separation of
    Church and State_, Prometheus Books, 1994., on the "wall" letter]
-------
"..a completely secular document (which) contains no references to God, Jesus
 or Christianity. The Religious Right's constant appeals to documents like
 the Declaration of Independence which contains a deistic reference to "the
 Creator," cloud the issue and makes some people believe their rights spring
 from these other documents. They don't.  As important as those other
 documents are to history, the rights of all Americans are ultimately traced
 to the Constitution and its amendments, specifically the Bill of Rights.
 When we talk about religious freedom and separation of church and state,
 therefore, only one document matters--the Constitution."
         [Rob Boston, "Why the Religious right is Wrong About
          Separation of Church and State, p. 221, 1993]
-------
"My correspondent thinks with Mr. Jefferson, that Jehovah has no attributes
 that will harmonize with slavery; and that all men are born free and equal.
 Now, I say let him throw away his Bible as Mr. Jefferson did his and then
 they will be fit companions.  But never disgrace the Bible by making Mr.
 Jefferson its expounder, nor Mr. Jefferson by deriving his sentiments from
 it.  Mr. Jefferson did not bow to the authority of the Bible, and on this
 subject I do not bow to him."
   [Rev. Thornton Stringfellow, D.D., in "Scriptural View of Slavery,"
    a work showing that the Bible sanctions slavery, from John E.
    Remsburg, "Six Historic Americans. Chapter 2: Thomas Jefferson"]
-------
"He devoted much attention to the establishment of the University at
 Charlottesville. Having no religious faith which he was willing to
 avow, he was not willing that any religious faith whatever should be
 taught in the University as a part of its course of instruction. This
 establishment, in a Christian land, of an institution for the education
 of youth, where the relation existing between man and his Maker was
 entirely ignored, raised a general cry of disapproval throughout the
 whole country. It left a stigma upon the reputation of Mr. Jefferson,
 in the minds of Christian people, which can never be effaced."
      [John S.C. Abbot, "Lives of the Presidents", p. 142]
-------
"It cannot be necessary to adopt any train of reasoning to show that
 a man who disbelieves the inspiration and divine authority of the
 Scriptures -- who not only denies the divinity of the Savior, but
 reduces him to the grade of an uneducated, ignorant and erring man --
 who calls the God of Abraham (the Jehovah of the Bible), a cruel and
 remorseless being, cannot be a Christian."
     [Theodore Dwight, _The Character of Jefferson_, p. 364]
-------
"A question has been raised as to Thomas Jefferson's religious views.
 There need be no question, for he has settled that himself. He was an
 Infidel, or, as he chose to term it, a Materialist. By his own account
 he was as heterodox as Col. Ingersoll, and in some respects even more so."
      [Chicago Tribune article, on Jefferson's religious beliefs]
-------
"Mr. Jefferson, it is well known, was never suspected of being very
 friendly to orthodox religion, but these volumes prove not only that
 he was a disbeliever, but a scoffer of the very lowest class."
         [New York Observer, leading Christian journal,
          on the publication of Jefferson's works]
-------
"I take to heart Jefferson's aspiration that the idea of
 church-state separation "germinate and take root among
 [the American people's] political tenets."
    [Kenneth S. Saladin, "Municipal Church-State Litigation and
     the Issue of Standing," in the "Church and State" issue of
     National Forum: The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Winter, 1988, p. 23.]

James Madison
Fourth President and chief architect of both the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, James Madison was a Deist.

"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions more than our
 opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen
 as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being
 called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
 or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges
 and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural
 right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it
 is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and
 emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though
 indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither
 are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil
 magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain
 the profession or propagation of principles, on supposition of their ill
 tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious
 liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his
 opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of
 others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is
 time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers
 to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good
 order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself,
 that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to
 fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural
 weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
 permitted freely to contradict them."
   [Jefferson and Madison, from the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom]
-------
"Nothwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in
 favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some
 parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old
 error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov' & Religion
 neither can be duly supported: Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition,
 and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot
 be too carefully guarded agst.. And in a Gov' of opinion, like ours, the only
 effectual guard must be found in the soundness and stability of the general
 opinion on the subject. Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect
 separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I
 have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done,
 in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less
 they are mixed together;"
      [James Madison, Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822,
       "The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt]
-------
"An alliance or coalition between Government and religion cannot be too
 carefully guarded against......Every new and successful example therefore
 of a PERFECT SEPARATION between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of
 importance........religion and government will exist in greater purity,
 without (rather) than with the aid of government."
   [James Madison in a letter to Livingston, 1822, from Leonard W. Levy-
    The Establishment Clause, Religion and the First Amendment,pg 124]
-------
"It was the belief of all sects at one time that the establishment of Religion
 by law, was right & necessary; that the true religion ought to be established
 in exclusion of every other; and that the only question to be decided was
 which was the true religion. The example of Holland proved that a toleration
 of sects, dissenting from the established sect, was safe & even useful. The
 example of the Colonies, now States, which rejected religious establishments
 altogether, proved that all Sects might be safely & advantageously put on a
 footing of equal & entire freedom.... We are teaching the world the great
 truth that Govts do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit
 will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater
 purity, without than with the aid of Gov."
      [James Madison, Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822,
       "The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt]
-------
"[I]t may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of
 separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority
 with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential
 points.  The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to
 a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded
 agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way
 whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and
 protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others."
     [James Madison, in a letter to Rev Jasper Adams spring
      1832, from "James Madison on Religious Liberty", edited
      by Robert S. Alley, ISBN 0-8975-298-X. pp. 237-238]
-------
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society?
 In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the
 ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding
 the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians
 of the liberties of the people.  Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty
 may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries.  A just
 government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
      [Pres. James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", addressed
       to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785]
-------
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of
 maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary
 operation.  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."
     [James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", addressed to
      the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785]
-------
"It was the Universal opinion of the Century preceding the last, that Civil
 Government could not stand without the prop of a religious establishment; and
 that the Christian religion itself, would perish if not supported by the
 legal provision for its clergy.  The experience of Virginia conspiciously
 corroboates the disproof of both opinions.  The Civil Government, tho'
 bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite
 stability and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number,
 the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the
 people have been manifestly increased by the TOTAL SEPARATION OF THE CHURCH
 FROM THE STATE."
       [James Madison, as quoted in Robert L. Maddox:  Separation
        of Church and State; Guarantor of Religious Freeedom]
-------
"Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe
 the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny equal
 freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has
 convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not
 against man:To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered."
 [James Madison, according to Leonard W. Levy, Treason Against God: A History
  of the Offense of Blasphemy, New York: Schocken Books, 1981, p. xii.]
-------
"The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and
 the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the
 total separation of the church from the state."
    [James Madison, 1819, in Boston, _Why The Religious Right
     is Wrong about the Separation of Church and State_]
-------
"The Civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated
 hierarchy, posesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions
 with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality
 of the priesthood, and devotion of the people, have been manifestly
 increased by the total separation of the church from the state."
    [James Madison in a letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819]
-------
"Strongly guarded... is the separation between religion
 and government in the Constitution of the United States."
              [James Madison]
-------
"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in
 the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by
 Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already
 furnished in their short history."
          [James Madison,"Detached Memoranda", 1820]

(This short history being referred to was attempts where religious
  bodies had already tried to encroach on the government.)
-------
"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity,
 in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any
 particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?"
                        [James Madison]
-------
"(15) Because finally, the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise
 of his religion according to the dictates of conscience is held by the same
 tenure with all our other rights.  If we recur to its origin, it is equally
 the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us;
 if we consult the Declaration of Rights which pertain to the good people of
 Virginia, as the basic and foundation of government, it is enumerated with
 equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis."
   [James Madison, Section 15 of A Memorial and Remonstrance, June 20,
    1785, frequently misquoted to imply religion as the basis of gov't]
-------
"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 it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate."
    [James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance to the Assemby of Virginia]
-------
"...several of the first presidents, including Jefferson and Madison,
 generally refused to issue public prayers, despite importunings to do
 so.  Under pressure, Madison relented in the War Of 1812, but held to
 his belief that chaplains shouldn't be appointed to the military or be
 allowed to open Congress."
    [Richard Shenkman, "I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode Or Not"]
-------
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits
 it for every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect."
   [James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1,1774,
    as quoted by Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion
    and the New Nation, San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1987, p. 37]
-------
"No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual
 and temporal matters.  Yet whenever they have been made objects of
 Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till
 one or the other has gained the supremacy."
    [James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson Oct-Nov 1787]
-------
"To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I
 have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to
 the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem
 Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical
 distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity
 of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could
 not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself"
             [James Madison, Letter to Baptist
              Churches in North Carolina, June 3, 1811]
-------
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep
 forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has
 soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
              [James Madison, 1803]
-------
"The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error
 so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians,
 as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without
 a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be
 supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical
 Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity."
       [James Madison, Letter to F.L. Schaeffer, Dec 3, 1821]

James Monroe
Fifth President of the United States, Monroe was a Deist.

John Quincy Adams
Sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams was a Unitarian.

Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President of the United States, Lincoln was born a little late to be considered a founding father. However, I find it interesting to note that both he and Ulysses S. Grant (eighteenth President and General-in-Chief under Lincoln during the Civil War) were Doubters (Lincoln was most likely a Deist while Grant may have simply been disinterested?). In contrast, the President and the General-in-Chief of the Confederacy supported slavery and were both devout Christians.

"The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.  I could
 never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma."
                       [Abraham Lincoln]
-------
"I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense.
 But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the
 papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians,
 and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle
 my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity."
                        [Abraham Lincoln]
-------
"I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and
 that cloud is coming from Rome."
            [Abraham Lincoln]
-------
"My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and
 the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with
 advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
    [Abraham Lincoln, 1862 letter to Judge J.A. Wakefield, after the
     death of Willie Lincoln.  ** Disputed; no such letter appears in
     the scholarly edition of Lincoln's writings, none of Lincoln's
     biographies mention Judge Wakefield; This originally appeared in
     "Six Historic Americans", 1906, by John Remsburg, with no source
     cited - "They Never Said It", Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George]
-------
"It will not do to investigate the subject of religion
 too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity."
       [Abraham Lincoln, from "What Great
        Men Think Of Religion" by Ira Cardiff]
-------
"My husband is not a Christian but is a religious man, I think."
  [Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, in _Toward The Mystery_]
-------
"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by
 religious men who are certain they represent the Divine will. ... I
 hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be probable
 that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with
 my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me."
        [Abraham Lincoln. Chapter 14 of Part 5 of
         "Six Historic Americans" by John Remsburg]
-------
"I care not for a man's religion whose dog
 and cat are not the better for it."
        [Abraham Lincoln]
-------
"Here are 23 ministers, of different denominations, and all of them are
 against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members of the
 Churches, a very large majority of whom are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am
 not a Christian -God knows I would be one -but I have carefully read the
 Bible, and I do not understand this book'; and he drew from his bosom a
 pocket New Testament. 'These men well know,' he continued, 'that I am for
 freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution
 and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. they know
 this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human
 bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not
 understand it at all.'"
    [Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Newton Bateman, Superintendent of Public
     Instruction for the State of Illinois, from "The Religious Beliefs
     of Our Presidents, From Washington to F.D.R.", by Franklin Stiner]
-------
"It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion
 without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and
 the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him."
   [Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois,
    newspaper, from Antony Flew: How to Think Straight p 17]

Ulysses S. Grant
Eighteenth President of the United States and Doubter (see Lincoln).

Thomas Paine
One of the great heroes of the American Revolution, Paine was the author of Common Sense (1776) which called for a declaration of independence. His other writings included African Slavery in America (1775) condemning slavery in America as unjust and inhumane, and Age of Reason. Paine was most definitely a Deist, although his continued criticism of Christianity led many to accuse him of being an Atheist.

Click Here to visit the Internet Infidels library of publications by Thomas Paine.

Click Here to order books by Thomas Paine from the Internet Infidels website.

Click Here to to visit the World Union of Deists archive of Thomas Paine Essays.

"The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of
 the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.''
                      [Thomas Paine]
-------
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion
 is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the
 world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave,
 and seeks to pursue us into eternity."
                      [Thomas Paine]
-------
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
 Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
 nor by any Church that I know of.  My own mind is my own Church."
                 [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]
-------
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful
 to himself.  Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving;
 it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is
 impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that
 mental lying has produced in society.  When man has so far corrupted and
 prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional
 belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the
 commission of every other crime."
              [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]
-------
"I put the following work under your protection.  It contains my opinion
 upon religion.  You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always
 strenuously supported the right of every man to his opinion, however different
 that opinion might be to mine.  He who denies to another this right, makes a
 slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the
 right of changing it.

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.  I have
 never used any other, and I trust I never shall."
                  [Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"]
-------
"The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story
 of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in
 vision, and credulity believe.  Stories of this kind had been told
 of the assassination of Julius Caesar..."
                        [Thomas Paine]
-------
"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."
                          [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The Bible is a book that has been read more and
 examined less than any book that ever existed."
   [The Theological Works of Thomas Paine]
-------
"Every phrase and cirsumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of
 superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they
 could have.  The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are
 blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader
 might suck in the error before he began to read."
            [Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason", p.131]
-------
"Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class
 of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance."
        [The Theological Works of Thomas Paine, p.207]
-------
"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."
                          [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The adulterous connection between church and state."
      [Thomas Paine, _The Age of Reason_]
-------
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the
 cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which
 more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant 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; and, for my
 part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel."
               [Thomas Paine, _The Age of Reason_]
-------
"Any system of religion that has anything in it that
 shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true."
             [Thomas Paine]
-------
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is
 always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law."
                     [Thomas Paine]
-------
"..but the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions
 there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any..."
       [_The Age of Reason_, Thomas Paine, p. 104]
-------
"The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act..."
      [_The Age of Reason_, Thomas Paine, p. 153]
-------
"That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it
 is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not."
      [The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 9 p. 134]
-------
"..we must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new
 law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries."
        [The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 9 p. 282]
-------
"There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the
 express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity
 and to every idea we have of moral justice....".
               [Thomas Paine]
-------
"Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication-- after that it
 is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made
 to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be
 incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation
 made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him."
                [Thomas Paine in "The Age Of Reason"]
-------
"The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough
 to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have approached
 nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale."
               [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]
-------
"But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word
 mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can
 be applied to light.  ... Mystery is the antagonist of truth.  It is a
 fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in
 distortion.   Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery
 in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist,
 and never of itself."
                       [Thomas Paine]
-------
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more
 derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to
 reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity."
               [Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, pg. 186]
-------
"As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call
 it the Word of God.  It is a book of lies and contradictions
 and a history of bad times and bad men."
    [Thomas Paine, writing to Andrew Dean August 15, 1806]
-------
"It is far better that we admitted a thousand devils to roam at large
 than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua,
 Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God
 and have credit among us."
                      [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is
 subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation
 necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the
 mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of
 willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human
 language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of
 the Word of God. The Word of God exists in something else."
             [Thomas Paine, Age of Reason]
-------
"It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from
 which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.

They may be all comprehended under three heads --
 1st, Superstition; 2d, Power; 3d, the common interests of
 society, and the common rights of man.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors,
 and the third of reason."
            [Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man]
-------
"...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they
 say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration
 himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me,
 and for every other person, as for Thomas."
            [Thomas Paine, Age Of Reason, pg. 54]
-------
"What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder.
 What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the
 Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married,
 and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."
                    [Thomas Paine]
-------
"When I see throughout this book, called the Bible, a history of the
 grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales
 and stories, I could not so dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name."
           [Thomas Paine, in _Toward The Mystery_]
-------
"Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man."
           [Thomas Paine]
-------
"As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of
 God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times
 and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book."
      [Thomas Paine, Letter to William Duane, April 23, 1806]
-------
"His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a
 supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same
 manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground."
                     [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest
 miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this
 thing called revelation, or revealed religion.  It has been the most
 destructive to the peace of man since man began to exist. Among the most
 detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses,
 who gave an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and then
 rape the daughters. One of the most horrible atrocities found in the
 literature of any nation. I would not dishonor my Creator's name by
 attaching it to this filthy book."
              [Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"]
-------
"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
                  [Thomas Paine]
-------
"Science is the true theology"
  [Thomas Paine, quoted in Emerson,
   "The Mind on Fire" pg 153]
-------
"All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a
 conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound
 the credulous people who come to have their fortune told."
             [Thomas Paine, "Age of Reason"]
-------
"...to argue with a man who has renouced
 his reason is like giving medicine to the dead."
    [Thomas Paine, "The Crisis", quoted
     in Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p.127]
-------
"Everything wonderful in appearance has been ascribed to angels, to
 devils, or to saints. Everything ancient has some legendary tale
 annexed to it. The common operations of nature have not escaped
 their practice of corrupting everything."
                      [Thomas Paine]
-------
"No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith."
                       [Thomas Paine]
-------
"When an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in
 trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-
 whoop, in the place of reason, argument and good order. Jesuitical
 cunning always endeavors to disgrace what it cannot disprove."
                         [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should
 redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder
 on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up."
                         [Thomas Paine]
-------
"Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word
 of God; this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the
 Holy Bible!  This is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!"
                        [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense."
                     [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers
 upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice."
            [Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"]
-------
"The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are
 those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science,
 and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally
 denominated rude and barbarous. The patronage which Britain has shown to
 Arts, Science and Literature has given her a better established and lasting
 rank in the world than she ever acquired by her arms. And Russia is a modern
 instance of the effect which the encouragement of those things produces both
 as to the internal improvement of a country and the character it raises
 abroad. The reign of Louis the fourteenth is more distinguished by being
 the Era of Science and Literature in France than by any other circumstance
 of those days."
                         [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The Church was resolved to have a New Testament, and as, after the lapse of
 more than three hundred years, no handwriting could be proved or disproved,
 the Church, which like former impostors had then gotten possession of the
 State, had everything its own way. It invented creeds, such as that called
 the Apostle's Creed, the Nicean Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and out of the
 loads of rubbish that were presented it voted four to be Gospels, and others
 to be Epistles, as we now find them arranged."
                             [Thomas Paine]
-------
"The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder."
                       [Thomas Paine]
-------
"All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are
 filled, are fit only for imposters to preach and fools to believe."
                        [Thomas Paine]
-------
"Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of
 the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood,
 the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would
 have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years
 since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of
 the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do,
 the wiser part do not believe it."
                         [Thomas Paine]
-------
"There is scarcely any part of science, or anything in nature, which
 those imposters and blasphemers of science, called priests, as well
 Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or
 sought to pervert to the purpose of superstition and falsehood."
                        [Thomas Paine]

Benjamin Franklin
Son of a Puritan, but none-the-less an enlightened Deist, Franklin was a writer and inventor, and a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

"You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have
 been questioned upon it.  But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall
 endeavour in a few words to gratify it.  Here is my creed.  I believe in one
 God, Creator of the Universe.  That He governs it by His providence.  That He
 ought to be worshipped.  That the most acceptable service we render 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 principles of 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
 the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the
 World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various
 corrupt 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 think it needless to busy myself with it,
 when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.
 I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good
 consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and
 better observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it
 amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in His government of the world with
 any particular marks of His displeasure.

"I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the goodness of
 that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt
 of its continuance in the next, without the smallest conceit of meriting it...
 I confide that you will not expose me to criticism and censure by publishing
 any part of this communication to you.  I have ever let others enjoy their
 religious sentiments, without reflecting on them for those that appeared to me
 unsupportable and even absurd.  All sects here, and we have a great variety,
 have experienced my good will in assisting them with subscriptions for
 building their new places of worship; and, as I never opposed any of their
 doctrines, I hope to go out of the world in peace with them all."

[Benjamin Franklin, letter to Ezra Stiles, President of Yale,
     shortly before his death; from "Benjamin Franklin" by Carl Van
     Doren, the October, 1938 Viking Press edition pages 777-778
     Also see Alice J. Hall, "Philosopher of Dissent: Benj.
     Franklin," National Geographic, Vol. 148, No. 1, July, 1975, p. 94]
-------
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
         [Benjamin Franklin]
-------
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it
 does not support itself, and God does not care to support it, so that its
 professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a
 sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
   [Ben Franklin, _Poor Richard's Almanac_, 1754 (Works, Volume XIII)]
-------
"I am fully of your Opinion respecting religious Tests; but, tho' the People
 of Massachusetts have not in their new Constitution kept quite clear of them,
 yet, if we consider what that People were 100 Years ago, we must allow they
 have gone great Lengths in Liberality of Sentiment on religious Subjects;
 and we may hope for greater Degrees of Perfection, when their Constitution,
 some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian Preachers had continued to
 teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without Salaries, and as the Quakers
 now do, I imagine Tests would never have existed; for I think they were
 invented, not so much to secure Religion itself, as the Emoluments of it.
 When a Religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it
 does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that
 its Professors are obliged to call for help of the Civil Power, it is a
 sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
   (Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, from a letter to Richard Price,
    Oct. 9, 1780; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment:
    The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York:
    George Braziller, 1965, p. 93.]
-------
"The nearest I can make it out, 'Love your
 Enemies' means, 'Hate your Friends'."
         [Benjamin Franklin]
-------
"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more
 regarded than virtue.  The scriptures assure me that at the last day
 we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did."
       [Benjamin Franklin, letter to his father, 1738]
-------
"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite
 Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us,
 but that He is even infinitely above it."
      [Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief
       and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728]
-------
"The faith you mention has doubtless its use in the world. I do not desire to
 see it diminished, nor would I desire to lessen it in any way; but I wish it
 were more productive of good works than I have generally seen it. I mean real
 good works, works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit, not holy-day
 keeping, sermon-hearing, and reading, performing church ceremonies, or making
 long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise
 men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity"
          [Benjamin Franklin, 1753, letter to Rev. George
           Whitefield.  Works, Vol. VII, p. 75]
-------
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in
 life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
    [Benjamin Franklin, in _Toward The Mystery_]
-------
"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through
 my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan] way.  But I was scarce
 fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them
 disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation
 itself.  Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be
 the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. [Robert Boyle
 (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for
 defense of Christianity.] 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"
    [Benjamin Franklin, "Autobiography,"p.66 as published in *The American
     Tradition in Literature,* seventh edition (short), McGraw-Hill,p.180]
-------
"The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason."
      [Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1758]
-------
"When knaves fall out, honest men get their goods;
 when priests dispute, we come at the truth."
   [Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1758]
-------
"When I traveled in Flanders I thought of your excessively strict observation
 of Sunday, and that a man could hardly travel on that day among you upon his
 lawful occasions without hazard of punishment, while where I was everyone
 traveled, if he pleased, or diverted himself in any other way; and in the
 afternoon both high and low went to the play or the opera, where there was
 plenty of singing, fiddling, and dancing.

I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no sign of them.  The cities
 were well built and full of inhabitants, the markets filled with plenty, the
 people well favored and well clothed, the fields well tilled, the cattle fat
 and strong, the fences, houses, and windows all in repair, and no 'old tenor'
 anywhere in the country; which would make one almost suspect that the deity
 was not so angry at that offense as a New England justice."
          [Benjamin Franklin, letter to Jared Ingersoll, 1762]
-------
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in
 Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been
 persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians
 thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on
 one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed
 persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans.
 These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice
 themselves both here [England] and in New England"
     [Benjamin Franklin, "Toleration", in _Works, Vol.ii._,p. 112]
-------
"Remember me affectionately to good Dr. Price, and to the honest heretic
 Dr. Priestley. I do not call him honest by way of distinction, for I think
 all t

The Distinctly Non-Christian Origins of the United States of America

The Distinctly Non-Christian Origins of the
United States of America