“Only a Christian can be trusted to lead our country!”

As I’ve noted elsewhere, bigotry against atheists is one of the forms of prejudice that is still socially acceptable. There is a reason why Barney Frank came out as an atheist 26 years after coming out as gay: it is even harder for an atheist to make a political career, than a homosexual. The argument from the far right is that only a Christian can rule a Christian nation – and black Christians with funny names don’t count.

Well, obviously. All the men who built and ran this country loved Jesus, didn’t they?

Benjamin Franklin, the man who did as much as anybody else to build the American system of government, was a deist who rejected Christian dogma as a young man; he wrote a work on philosophy which made no mention of salvation or the divinity of Jesus.

Thomas Paine, the architect of the American Revolution, was a deist who loathed organized religion, especially Christianity; he wrote two books debunking the Bible.

George Washington, father of our country, never spoke of God or Jesus: he accompanied his wife to church but would not go up for communion, as “non-communicants” did back in the day; when a preacher criticized him for doing so, he curtailed his visits to church. He promised to lead the way in fighting religious persecution, and insisted that no man should be kept out of office because of what he believed.

John Adams, a key player in the revolution, held beliefs which included precepts from deism and humanism. He ridiculed the notion that America’s leaders would be steered by heaven, he said America was not founded on Christianity, and he said that men of all beliefs should have equal right to run for office.

Thomas Jefferson, prominent in the revolution and the man who doubled the size of the United States, was a deist; he detested most of the Bible, including the miracles which underpin almost all Christian belief. He praised the wall between church and state, he insisted that Christianity had no part in American law, he claimed that if God existed he would respect reason more than blind fear, he condemned preachers as enemies of freedom and the purveyors of political corruption, he demanded freedom of belief, and he specified that non-believers should have the same rights as believers.

James Madison, key author of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, deist. He repeatedly demanded the separation of church and state.

In fact the great majority of the Founders believed strongly in keeping religious belief, or the lack of it, out of politics and government. Founding fathers including Isaac Backus, Roger Sherman, Charles Pinckney, Elbridge Gerry, Patrick Henry and Rufus King demanded a wall between church and state. George Mason and Thomas Paine warned against persecution if the wall was breached. Noah Webster, Oliver Wolcott, Edmund Randolph and Oliver Ellsworth demanded that we have no religious tests that would ensure that public officials professed the “correct” faith (or any faith at all). Alexander Hamilton and Samuel Adams demanded tolerance of all beliefs.

These are the guys who built and ran America during the vital period from the 1760s through the War of 1812, when we declared our freedom, beat the British, and built the Constitution which is a model for the whole world. And, almost to a man, they didn't give a rat's ass about the divinity of Jesus. 

Let's continue!

James Monroe said almost nothing about religion and may have been a deist.

John Quincy Adams, Unitarian, which was practically atheist for the 19^th century.

John Calhoun, the powerful Senator, rarely mentioned religion and probably shared Jefferson’s religious views, with bits of Unitarianism mixed in.

Daniel Webster, another power Senator, seems to have been a Unitarian who admitted he didn’t understand all that poppycock about the Trinity.

Andrew Jackson, builder of the modern presidency, finally joined a church when he was 67 after his military and political careers were over.

Abraham Lincoln, the man who saved the nation, was a skeptic who never joined a church, and said Christianity was not his faith.

Ulysses Grant, the man who won the Civil War, refused to join a church.

Grover Cleveland, who saved America from a generation of crooked Republicans, was offered a free college education if he became a minister, but refused; he won election despite outraging the churches by admitting he had a bastard child.

Joe Cannon, the most power Speaker in the history of the House, left the Quakers when he got married; when the Quakers demanded an apology, he told them to go fly a kite.

William Taft said he didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ.

Herbert Hoover belonged to a sect which, depending on who you believe, isn’t even Christian.

Franklin Roosevelt believed in tolerance, rarely went to church, almost never spoke of religion, and angered many religious leaders by advocating the end of prohibition; he said he wasn’t sure which religion his ancestors followed and didn’t care.

Eisenhower didn’t belong to any organized religion, although he consented to be baptized when he was in his sixties and beginning his political career.

John Kennedy made a point of keeping all religion out of his efforts as president.

Nixon, see Hoover.

Reagan pretended he loved the evangelicals and then betrayed them by ignoring the abortion issue.

Obama’s parents and stepfather were not religious, and he didn’t join Trinity Church until he was in his thirties and beginning his political career.

In other words, a huge proportion of the men who built and led our nation didn’t give a damn about Jesus and the Bible, except as political convenience. Because leading this country requires brainpower and logic, the very mental conditions that are antithetical to religious belief.

It is the Christians who went at their jobs in a Messianic way who came to disaster. Woodrow Wilson got to be so pigheaded and “God-like” in his pronouncements about his plans to bring the precepts of Christian democracy to postwar Europe, that his own Senate got fed up and blocked all his plans. Jimmy Carter wore Jesus on his sleeve and his presidency foundered. George Bush openly proclaimed a Crusade to invade the Muslim world and led the nation to destruction.