{"id":2561,"date":"2011-11-15T06:48:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T06:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/11\/our-founding-fathers-christians-or-what.html"},"modified":"2011-11-15T06:48:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T06:48:00","slug":"our-founding-fathers-christians-or-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/11\/our-founding-fathers-christians-or-what.html","title":{"rendered":"Our \u201cfounding fathers\u201d\u2013Christians or what?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Recently I\u2019ve been delving once again into deism, or what is more appropriately called natural religion.\u00a0 (Deism has come to have connotations of belief in a distant, uninvolved and even uncaring God.\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t true of all who are lumped together as deists and the real sine qua non of \u201cdeism\u201d was belief in natural religion, not a doctrine of God.)\u00a0 I\u2019ve been re-reading Locke (a precursor), Toland and Tindal (among others).\u00a0 These men thought they were Christians.\u00a0 Well, there\u2019s some doubt about what Tindal actually thought, but let\u2019s say they all considered themselves Christians\u2013probably \u201cof a higher order\u201d than those around them.
My mind began to wander and wonder about those who claim publicly that most, if not all, of our republic\u2019s founding fathers were orthodox Christians, if not evangelical Christians.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to name any names here, but if you pay close attention to this controversy I think you can figure out some of the people I might be referring to.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here <\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I\u2019ve been delving once again into deism, or what is more appropriately called natural religion.\u00a0 (Deism has come to have connotations of belief in a distant, uninvolved and even uncaring God.\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t true of all who are lumped together as deists and the real sine qua non of \u201cdeism\u201d was belief in natural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOur \u201cfounding fathers\u201d\u2013Christians or what?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Recently I\u2019ve been delving once again into deism, or what is more appropriately called natural religion.  (Deism has come to have connotations of\" \/>\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\/11\/our-founding-fathers-christians-or-what.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our \u201cfounding fathers\u201d\u2013Christians or what?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently I\u2019ve been delving once again into deism, or what is more appropriately called natural religion.  (Deism has come to have connotations of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2011\/11\/our-founding-fathers-christians-or-what.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-11-15T06:48:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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