David Barton

Since the only way for America to end slavery was to separate from Great Britain, many Founders believed that separation would be an appropriate course of action. In fact, in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson personally penned the clause declaring: [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. . . . Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

That is, not only has King George III engaged in slavery and the slave trade but he has even opposed all efforts to stop it. Ending slavery was so important to so many of the Founders that when America did separate from Great Britain in 1776, several States began abolishing slavery, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York. It is true that not every State immediately abolished slavery; and it is also true that even though the overwhelming majority of Founding Fathers were anti-slavery, not all were. In fact, Jefferson’s forceful denunciation of the slave trade in the original draft of the Declaration was complained about so strenuously by the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina that his clause was removed from the Declaration and a milder condemnation inserted instead. Nevertheless, the desire to end slavery was a major factor in the thinking of many Founding Fathers.

For example, America’s first antislavery society was founded in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush (both of whom became signers of the Declaration of Independence). This society was founded two years before the separation from Great Britain – an act of civil disobedience, for King George III had said America could not end slavery.

But these two Founders ignored that dictum and worked to end slavery anyway; and Dr. Benjamin Rush led the anti-slavery fight for almost four decades and even headed the national abolition movement. For many Founders, their desire to end slavery was religiously motivated. This fact is illustrated by John Quincy Adams, who hated slavery and so crusaded against it that he was nicknamed “the hell-hound of abolition” for his unrelenting efforts to abolish that evil. In a famous speech, Adams cited the Bible passage from Luke 4 where Jesus declared that he had come to “proclaim liberty to the captives”; he then noted that if this was the goal of the Savior, it should also be the goal of all Christians – they, too, should work to end slavery. Clearly, issues such as religious liberties and the desire to end slavery – as well as the removal of trial by jury, the impressment of American seamen by the British, the placing of the military power above the civilian power, and many others – were important reasons behind the Founders’ separation from Great Britain. Yet all that most Americans hear about today is “taxation without representation.”

Another indication of how little is known today about our own history is revealed when Americans are asked, “Who were the leaders most responsible for the movement in America that led to our independence?” Today, we hear names such as Samuel Adams, the “Father of the American Revolution”; Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration; John Hancock, the President of Congress with his bold signature on the Declaration; and John Adams, who not only signed the Declaration but who also negotiated and signed the Peace Treaty with Great Britain to secure our independence. These were indeed important political leaders behind our independence, but previous generations also knew about other important leaders. John Adams himself declared that the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Mayhew and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper were two of the individuals “most conspicuous, the most ardent, and influential” in the “awakening and revival of American principles and feelings” that led to our independence. Other ministers whose influence and leadership were also important included the Rev. George Whitefield, the Rev. James Caldwell, the Rev. John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg with his brother the Rev. Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, and many more. (The exploits of many of these ministers are recorded in several older historical works, including The Pulpit of the American Revolution, The Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution, and The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution.) Regrettably, today we don’t hear much about the role of the church – of ministers and Christians – in the founding of our civil government.

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Benjamin Rush was one of America’s most influential Founding Fathers, signing the Declaration of Independence and serving in the presidential administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Furthermore, he helped found five universities, authored numerous textbooks, and was one of the first Founders to call for free, national public schools. He understood the instability of a democracy; he also understood that if our people ever lost their knowledge of the Bible and its rights and wrongs, then we would lose our republican government. As he explained:

[T]he only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government . . . is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.

Regrettably, America has forgotten many of these principles of government and has moved away from what the Founders so clearly articulated. This seems amazing considering the lengths to which they went to ensure that we would always know and understand those principles. How did we forget? How did we depart from those teachings? The movement away from those principles came as a result of destructive teachings introduced and widely disseminated during the last half of the nineteenth-century by men such as Colonel Robert Ingersoll, one of America’s first openly avowed and proudly self-proclaimed militant secular humanists. He aggressively attacked both Judaism and Christianity in order to remove the Judeo-Christian ethic from America. He wanted a different religion to be the foundation of government, explaining:

We are laying the foundations of the grand temple of the future . . . wherein . . . will be celebrated the religion of Humanity. . . . We are looking for the time when . . . REASON, throned upon the world’s brain, shall be the King of Kings and God of Gods. Ingersoll advanced two teachings to help achieve that goal:

(1) compartmentalizing the “religious” from the “secular,” and (2) excluding a candidate’s religious and moral beliefs from consideration of his competency for office (that is, to ignore a candidate’s private life and character). Tragically, these two teachings, although revolutionary at the time, have now become widely accepted, even among many in the God-fearing community. Concerning the latter teaching, Ingersoll asserted: The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. . . . All these things are private and personal.

However, such a policy is illogical. That is, it might be advisable to separate a candidate’s religious views from his run for office if citizens could be guaranteed that no public policy touching religion would ever arise while he was in office; but this has never happened and never will. In fact, in any given session of Congress today, from 10,000 to 13,000 bills are introduced, scores of which specifically address religious issues and values. The same is true at the state level (although fewer bills are introduced) and at the local level. Therefore, since a public official at every level of government will in some manner address religious issues, it is advisable to inquire into a candidate’s personal religious views.

To ignore a candidate’s religious views is as irrational as ignoring his economic views. It is certain that he will enact policy on economic issues, so it is important to know his economic views; the same is true with a candidate’s religious views. Unfortunately, however, too many today separate a candidate’s views on religious issues from his candidacy, fueling the notion that private life and views are irrelevant and have no bearing on professional public service.

Americans long believed that one’s private life and beliefs were an important indicator of the type of leader a candidate would make. In fact, the conviction of this truth was so strong that for generations it formed a core element in classroom instruction. One famous text incorporating this teaching was so popular that after being first published in December of 1800, it went through over 200 reprints, even being a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln. That text taught students that they must always examine the private life and character of a leader, explaining:

[P]ublic character . . . is no evidence of true greatness, for a public character is often an artificial one.

The textbook illustrated the truth of this axiom with the example of Benedict Arnold. In his public capacity, Arnold was a General in the American Army, an early leader in the American Revolution, and a war hero in the momentous battle of Saratoga in 1777, with monuments having been erected to honor his military exploits.

However, during the same time that he was being publicly lauded as an American patriot, in private he was embezzling supplies destined for the starving troops at Valley Forge, selling the supplies on the black market, and then pocketing the profits – all while American soldiers were dying for lack of those supplies. So greedy was Arnold that he even betrayed West Point to the enemy for money. Clearly, he was a traitor to his country. So was his public life or his private life a better indicator of his true character? Obviously, his private life. The textbook thus concluded:

It is not, then, in the glare of public, but in the shade of private life that we are to look for the man. Private life is always real life. Behind the curtain, where the eyes of the million are not upon him . . . there he will always be sure to act himself. Consequently, if he act greatly [in private], he must be great indeed. Hence it has been justly said that “Our private deeds, if noble, are noblest of our lives.” . . . [I]t is the private virtues that lay the foundation of all human excellence.

Schoolbooks long taught Americans to examine the private life; but from what source did they derive that teaching? From several sources, including experience and common sense, the Scriptures, and the Founding Fathers.

One Founder outspoken about this teaching was John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration who served on over 100 different committees in Congress. He was also the President of Princeton University and is considered the educational father of many Founding Fathers, having personally trained one U. S. President, one Vice-President, three Supreme Court Justices, thirteen Governors, and at least twenty Senators and thirty Congressmen – not to mention several Cabinet Members 29 (and this does not include the numerous individuals he trained for state, local, and municipal offices). What did this prominent Founder teach his students that caused so many to rise to high levels of leadership? Among other things, Witherspoon taught them the three basic traits of an American patriot:

That he is the best friend to American liberty who is the most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country.

According to Witherspoon, the first trait of an American patriot – the first indicator of a true leader – was that he be an active and sincere promoter of “true and undefiled religion.” Second was that he “set himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind.” Why would this trait be necessary for a good leader?

Because with America’s republican form of government, if the people became profane and immoral, then the government would also become profane and immoral; and since history proves that profane and immoralgovernments do not endure, then if someone loved America and its form of government, he would bear down on the enemies of good government: profanity and immorality. Witherspoon’s third characteristic was that whoever was “an avowed enemy of God” was “an enemy to his country.” Why? Since the American republic was firmly built on the principles of God’s Word, if an individual opposed what God stood for, he opposed the very foundation on which America had been built. How, then, could he be a true patriot?

(Abigail Adams agreed with John Witherspoon, explaining: “[A] true patriot must be a religious man. . . . [H]e who neglects his duty to his Maker may well be expected to be deficient and insincere in his duty towards the public.” )

Notice that two of Witherspoon’s three characteristics focused on private life – one on private religious life, and one on private moral life. Private life was very important to the Founders. Therefore, the textbooks in part derived their teaching on private life from great leaders such as John Witherspoon; however, they also derived that teaching from the Bible.

One clear Biblical passage espousing this position was Matthew 7:16-20, in which Jesus explained that a tree’s roots determined the character of its fruit – that if its root was corrupt, then its fruit would also be corrupt. As he reminded His listeners, grapes could not be picked from briar bushes, or figs gathered from thistle plants; what one was at his roots – at his core – would determine what eventually would manifest itself in public.

Nonetheless, many today absolutely refuse to consider one’s “roots” – one’s private life; they want to ignore private character and believe that the one they elect will somehow produce good results simply because he promised to do so during his campaign. This is an unsound approach, based on unrealistic, fanciful thinking. To find out if there will be good fruit in a leader, first examine his roots – his private life and character. As John Witherspoon explained: Those who wish well to the State ought to choose to places of trust men of inward principle, justified by exemplary conversation [lifestyle]. Is it reasonable to expect wisdom from the ignorant? fidelity [faithfulness] from the profligate [unfaithful]? assiduity [diligence] and application to public business from men of a dissipated [careless] life? Is it reasonable to commit the management of public revenue to one who hath wasted his own patrimony [inheritance]? Those, therefore, who pay no regard to religion and sobriety in the persons whom they send to the legislature of any State are guilty of the greatest absurdity and will soon pay dear for their folly.

In short, to know what fruit an individual will produce, check his roots – don’t expect public faithfulness from one who is privately unfaithful, or public frugality from one who is privately extravagant, etc. Always investigate a candidate’s private religious and moral beliefs and behavior.

According to John Adams, it was the presence of private moral and religious beliefs that produced trustworthy public officials and thus provided a security for government and its citizens. In fact, in his diary entry for February 9, 1772, he discussed “that struggle which I believe always happens between virtue and ambition,” insightfully noting that an individual in office who lacks virtue will “appl[y] himself to the passions and prejudices, the follies and vices of great men in order to obtain their smiles, esteem, and patronage, and consequently their favors and preferment.” This is an accurate description of what today may be termed a “politician” – an individual who willingly compromises principles in order to maintain favor with his party and constituents and thus win reelection. A statesman, however, will not compromise principles, regardless of the cost. What makes the difference between a politician and a statesman – what makes one willing to compromise principles and the other one not?

According to Adams, it was embracing the Biblical conviction of the reality of future rewards and punishments. That is, a statesman realizes that he will stand before God and account to Him for what he does in private as well as in public; this awareness of imminent accountability to God serves as a restraint on personal misbehavior. Such a restraint is especially important for office-holders, for although they are termed “public officials,” most of what they do in their official capacities actually occurs in private. Therefore, if there is no self-imposed restraint on a public official’s private actions stemming from a sense of his accountability to God, then that public official is a danger to good government because of the compromises he invariably will make.

Was John Adams a politician or a statesman? – was he willing to compromise principles, or was he determined to stand firm even though it might cost him the next election? Adams was definitely a statesman,explaining, “The duration of future punishment terrifies me.” Because he understood that he would answer to God for his every action, John Adams guarded his private behavior and carefully weighed his public policy decisions before God; as a result, his reputation for public integrity remains untarnished to this day.

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Noah Webster provides additional corroboration of the Founders’ views on this subject. Webster today is primarily known only as an educator (his impact on education was so profound that he has been titled the “Schoolmaster to America”), yet he was also a Founding Father, serving as a soldier during the Revolution and a legislator and judge afterwards. He was one of the first Founders to call for the Constitutional Convention and was personally responsible for specific wording in the Constitution. In a textbook he authored for public schools, Webster told students: All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

Very simply, the Founders understood the numerous societal benefits produced by Biblical precepts and values and had no intention of expunging those principles from the public square. They even believed that American government would not function properly if separated from religious principles. As John Adams explained: [W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (emphasis added)

Adams was one of only two Founders to sign the Bill of Rights (and thus the First Amendment), and as a constitutional expert, he forcefully pronounced that our Constitution would not function properly if separated from religious values and standards. Yet, contemporary courts now use the document that bears his signature to prohibit what he encouraged under that same document. Significantly, subsequent generations retained the Framers’ beliefs about the importance of Biblical principles in maintaining a civilized society. For example, Robert Winthrop, a Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives in the 1840s, repeated what he had learned from the Framers, explaining: Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or by the bayonet. (There are similar authoritative declarations from numerous other Framers and early statesmen.)

Given the Founders’ unequivocal position on the necessity of including religious principles and expressions throughout the public arena, is it reasonable to believe that they would create an Amendment whose alleged purpose was to prohibit what they so cherished and advocated? Certainly not! To the contrary, not only did the Founders never intend that the First Amendment be a vehicle to separate religious principles from public affairs but they believed that through its Free Exercise clause they had protected these principles and kept them in the public square.

One of the clearest affirmations of the Framer’s commitment to retaining religious principles in official arenas came from President George Washington, who presided over the formation of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In his famous “Farewell Address,” † Washington reminded Americans that religious teachings and values must never be removed from politics and public policy, declaring:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable [insepa-rable] supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness – these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. (emphasis added) Notice that Washington even asserted that if anyone tried to separate religion and morality from public life and policy, he could not be called a patriot! Washington was not finished, however; he next warned Americans to reject the proposition that morality could be preserved apart from religion:

[L]et us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Washington, understanding that religion was the basis of morality and that there was no secure basis for a free government apart from religion, therefore insightfully queried:

Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?

Washington warned that if religious principles were separated from public institutions such as our courts of justice, then citizens would no longer have a secure basis for property, life, or freedom. Clearly, the writings not only of George Washington but also of John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Fisher Ames, John Marshall, Noah Webster, James Madison, and many other prominent Founders make clear that they did not embrace the secular “separation” philosophy imposed on America today, and supposedly imposed under the authority of the Constitution they wrote.

Yet, if the phrase “separation of church and state” appears in no official founding document, then what is the source of that phrase? And how did it become so closely associated with the First Amendment?

On October 7, 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, sent a letter to President Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that protection for religion had been written into the laws and constitutions. Believing strongly that freedom of religion was an inalienable right given by God, the fact that it appeared in civil documents suggested that the government viewed it as a government-granted rather than a God-granted right. Apprehensive that the government might someday wrongly believe that it did have the power to regulate public religious activities, the Danbury Baptists communicated their anxiety to President Jefferson. On January 1, 1802, Jefferson responded to their letter. He understood their concerns and agreed with them that man accounted only to God and not to government for his faith and religious practice. Jefferson emphasized to the Danbury Baptists that none of man’s natural (i.e., inalienable) rights – including the right to exercise one’s faith publicly – would ever place him in a situation where the government would interfere with his religious expressions. He assured them that because of the wall of separation, they need not fear government interference with religious expressions: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, . . . 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.

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And Elias Boudinot, a President of Congress during the American Revolution, served as president of the “Society for Ameliorating the State of the Jews,” and made personal provision for bringing persecuted Jews to America. This tolerance for other faiths and religions, however, did not negate nor alter the fact that America was founded by Christians, on Christian principles. In fact, in 1854, following an extensive one-year investigation, the U. S. Congress succinctly declared: Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, but not any one [denomination]. . . . In this age there can be no substitute for Christianity. . . . That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendents.

Half-a-century later in 1892, the U. S. Supreme Court also conducted a thorough review of American history. After citing more than sixty historical precedents, the Court concluded: There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning; they affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. . . . this is a Christian nation.

But today’s pseudo-historians, not willing to let truth or historical fact stand in the way of their personal secularist convictions, proclaim just the opposite, asserting that neither our nation nor its leaders were influenced by Christianity. One article declares, “Our Founding Presidents Were Not Christians.” Another similarly announces “The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians” (notice the emphasis on the word “not”). Another proclaims that the “Signers of the Declaration were Enemies of Christ.” The L. A. Times heralds “America’s Unchristian Beginnings,” with an inset box declaring, “The founding fathers: Most, despite the preachings of our pious right, were deists who rejected the divinity of Jesus.”

According to these and many other writers, our Founding Fathers were a collective group of atheists, agnostics, and deists; they didn’t believe in Jesus; they weren’t Christians. And since our Founders were allegedly nothing more than atheists, agnostics, and deists, the title of a current university textbook seems to make complete sense: The Godless Constitution.

Many Americans today would not disagree with these characterizations. After all, in the painting of the signers of the Declaration, who are the two Founders that most Americans can immediately recognize? Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, of course! But can they identify which one in the picture is Samuel Huntington – or Robert Livingston, George Clinton, Robert Morris, Stephen Hopkins, Richard Henry Lee, George Read, Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, or the others? Americans seem to know nothing about these other signers.

We have been trained to recognize the two “least religious” Founders, Franklin and Jefferson. While we don’t know the others, we nevertheless are told that they were just like Franklin and Jefferson. However, in defense of Franklin and Jefferson, while they may have been the two “least religious” Founders, “least” is a comparative term; even they would be much more religious than most “religious” individuals today.

After all, Benjamin Franklin not only drafted a statewide prayer proclamation for his own State of Pennsylvania but he also recommended Christianity in the State’s public schools and worked to raise church attendance in the State. He also desired to start a colony in Ohio with the Rev. George Whitefield to “facilitate the introduction of pure religion among the heathen” in order to show the Indians “a better sample of Christians than they commonly see in our Indian traders.” He enthused, “In such an enterprise I could spend the remainder of life with pleasure, and I firmly believe God would bless us with success.” Franklin also made one of the nation’s most forceful defenses of religion when it was attacked by Thomas Paine, the author of the infamous Age of Reason. And it was Franklin – citing numerous Bible verses to prove his point – who called for the establishment of chaplains and daily prayer at the Constitutional Convention. These are the documented actions of one of the “least religious” Founding Fathers.

And then there is Thomas Jefferson. Not only did he recommend that the Great Seal of the United States depict a Bible story and include the word “God” in the national motto but President Jefferson also negotiated a federal treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians in which he included direct federal funding to pay for Christian ministers to work with the Indians and for the building of a church in which the Indians could worship – and this treaty was ratified by the U. S. Senate! Furthermore, Jefferson closed presidential documents with the appellation “In the year of our Lord Christ,” thus invoking Jesus Christ into official government documents. And this is Thomas Jefferson – the other “least religious” Founder! Most Americans really don’t know that much even about the Founders they think they know best! But what of the other signers about whom most Americans know less? Of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration, over half were educated in schools established for the purpose of training ministers for the Gospel, and they received what today would be considered degrees from seminaries or Bible schools. Many of the Founders also served as ministers or were active in Christian service.

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