The faith (and doubts) of our fathers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"IN THE year of our Lord 1816 two grand old men of the American Revolution corresponded eagerly about the work they had recently done, in their rural\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/12\/the-faith-and-doubts-of-our-fathers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The faith (and doubts) of our fathers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"IN THE year of our Lord 1816 two grand old men of the American Revolution corresponded eagerly about the work they had recently done, in their rural\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/12\/the-faith-and-doubts-of-our-fathers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-12-16T21:07:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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{"id":2496,"date":"2011-12-16T21:07:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T21:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/12\/the-faith-and-doubts-of-our-fathers.html"},"modified":"2011-12-16T21:07:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T21:07:00","slug":"the-faith-and-doubts-of-our-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/12\/the-faith-and-doubts-of-our-fathers.html","title":{"rendered":"The faith (and doubts) of our fathers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

At a time when many modern Americans are arguing feverishly over the real significance of the nation\u2019s religious and political beginnings, such letters can be dynamite. So let the contents of this exchange be noted carefully. Thomson, like most members of the first American Congress, which he had served as secretary, was a committed member of a church\u2014in his case Presbyterian\u2014but he still felt that there might be things in the Bible that organised Christianity hadn\u2019t grasped. So he spent years re-translating the scriptures; the ex-president approved.
Read more here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"