CHRISTIANITY'S REAL RECORD

Christianity's Real Record
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6657

http://aquinasdad.blogspot.com/
http://www.tektonics.org/qt/spaninq.html

What About Atrocities That Have Been Done in the Name of Religion?
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atrocities.html

Darwin Won't Do
http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive2007/09-26-07.asp

http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=127049
http://phatcatholic.blogspot.com/2007/06/infallibility-and-history-of-church.html
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_hollow_men_hitchens_dawkins_and_harris/
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2006/11/23/atheism-kills/
http://www.inplainsite.org/html/atheism_or_christianity.html
http://thinkers.net/talk/messages/9/15.html
http://steigerblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/evil-bloody-religion_20.html
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/331-history-of-neopaganism
http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2006/03/mohammed_in_the.html
http://culturalapologetics.blogspot.com/2005/04/hotel-rwanda-relativism-moral-anarchy.html
http://www.preachersjourney.blogspot.com/

http://www.twoorthree.net/2006/11/atheist_atrocit.html

http://www.evangelicalresources.org/wicca.shtml#articles

http://str.typepad.com/weblog/apologetics/index.html

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap01.html

How to Shut Up an Atheist if You Must
http://capoliticalnews.com/s/spip.php?article370

http://www.christianciv.com/ChristCivEssay.htm

http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/11-3article7.htm
http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html

http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/2005_06.html

http://www.tektonics.org/nutshell/nutshellhub.html

http://churchvstate.blogspot.com/2007/10/our-founders-were-they-christian.html

STATE CONSTITUTIONS
http://www.1776faith.com/constitutions.html
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/dispatch/stand_reason.htm
http://toulonbaptist.com/foundingfathers.htm
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5193
http://www.naacd.com/issues_founding_fathers.htm
http://www.usiap.org/Legacy/Quotes/ThomasJefferson.html
http://jcsm.org/AmericasFounders/

Whose belief system?
http://www.wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34243
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The Constitutional Convention

It's not necessary to dig through the diaries, however, to determine which faith was the Founder's guiding light. There's an easier way to settle the issue.

The phrase "Founding Fathers" is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group of men, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, like Jefferson, whose thinking deeply influenced the shaping of our nation. These 55 Founding Fathers, though, made up the core.

The denominational affiliations of these men were a matter of public record. Among the delegates were 28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 1 unknown, and only 3 deists--Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin--this at a time when church membership entailed a sworn public confession of biblical faith.[1]

This is a revealing tally. It shows that the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were almost all Christians, 51 of 55--a full 93%. Indeed, 70% were Calvinists (the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and the Dutch Reformed), considered by some to be the most extreme and dogmatic form of Christianity.

Who Were the Founding Fathers?

Historical proof-texts can be raised on both sides. Certainly there were godless men among the early leadership of our nation, though some of those cited as examples of Founding Fathers turn out to be insignificant players. For example, Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen may have been hostile to evangelical Christianity, but they were firebrands of the Revolution, not intellectual architects of the Constitution. Paine didn't arrive in this country until 1774 and only stayed a short time.

As for others--George Washington, Samuel Adams, James Madison, John Witherspoon, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, John Adams, Patrick Henry, and even Thomas Jefferson--their personal correspondence, biographies, and public statements are replete with quotations showing that these thinkers had political philosophies deeply influenced by Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson

Though deeply committed to a belief in natural rights, including the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, Jefferson was individualistic when it came to religion; he sifted through the New Testament to find the facts that pleased him.

Sometimes he sounded like a staunch churchman. The Declaration of Independence contains at least four references to God. In his Second Inaugural Address he asked for prayers to Israel's God on his behalf. Other times Jefferson seemed to go out of his way to be irreverent and disrespectful of organized Christianity, especially Calvinism.

It's clear that Thomas Jefferson was no evangelical, but neither was he an Enlightenment deist. He was more Unitarian than either deist or Christian.[3]

This analysis, though, misses the point. The most important factor regarding the faith of Thomas Jefferson--or any of our Founding Fathers--isn't whether or not he had a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The debate over the religious heritage of this country is not about who is ultimately going to heaven, but rather about what the dominant convictions were that dictated the structure of this nation.

Even today there are legions of born-again Christians who have absolutely no skill at integrating their beliefs about Christ with the details of their daily life, especially their views of government. They may be "saved," but they are completely ineffectual as salt and light.

By contrast, some of the Fathers may not have been believers in the narrowest sense of the term, yet in the broader sense--the sense that influences culture--their thinking was thoroughly Christian. Unlike many evangelicals who live lives of practical atheism, these men had political ideals that were deeply informed by a robust Christian world view. They didn't always believe biblically, having a faith leading to salvation, but almost all thought biblically, resulting in a particular type of government.

Thomas Jefferson was this kind of man. In Defending the Declaration, legal historian Gary Amos observes, "Jefferson is a notable example of how a man can be influenced by biblical ideas and Christian principles even though he never confessed Jesus Christ as Lord in the evangelical sense.