A History of the American People

He summed up his faith six weeks before he died in a letter to Ezra Stiles, saying he followed the
precepts of Christ while doubting his divinity, that he believed in a Supreme Being and doing Good to his other Children.' Of the Founding Fathers, the man least affected by religion was Jefferson. Some people indeed classified him not just as a deist but as an atheist. In 1800 the New England Paladin wrote that Should the infidel Jefferson be elected to the Presidency, the seal of death is that moment set on
our holy religion, our churches will be prostrated and some infamous prostitute, under the title of
the Goddess of Reason, will preside in the Sanctuaries now devoted to the worship of the Most
High.' But this was electoral propaganda. Jefferson was no more an atheist than the much
maligned Walter Ralegh, whom he resembled in so many other ways too. And, strongly as he
sympathized with the French Revolution, at any rate for a time, he deplored its anti-religious
excesses. He believed in divine providence and confided to John Adams, in spring 1816: I think it is a good world on the whole, and framed on Principles of Benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us.'' Jefferson and his follower Madison certainly opposed Patrick Henry's attempt to get the Virginia legislature to subsidize the churches, but in the whole of their long and voluminous correspondence, amounting to 2,000 printed pages, it is impossible to point to any passage, by either of them, showing hostility to religion. What they both hated was intolerance and any restriction on religious practice by those who would not admit the legitimacy of diverse beliefs. Madison, unlike Jefferson, saw an important role for religious feeling in shaping a republican society. He was a pupil of John Witherspoon (1723-94), president of the New Jersey College at Princeton, and author of a subtle and interesting doctrine which equated the religious polarity of vice/virtue with the secular polarity of ethics/politics-politics understood in their Machiavellian sense.''' Witherspoon seems to have given Madison a lifelong interest in theology. Letters to friends (not Jefferson) are dotted with theological points-he advised one toseason' his studies
`with a little divinity now and then'-and his papers include notes on the Bible he made in the
years 1772-5, when he undertook an extensive study of Scripture. He carried around with him a
booklet, The Necessary Duty for Family Prayer, with Prayers for Their Use, and he himself
conducted household prayers at his home, Montpelier. Deist he may have been, but secularist-no.
The same can be said for the great majority of those who signed the Declaration of
Independence, who attended the Constitutional Convention, and who framed the First
Amendment. An investigation by the historian W. W. Sweet revealed that, of the last group,
eight were Episcopalians, eight Congregationalists, two Roman Catholics, one Methodist, two
Quakers, one a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and only one a deist. Daniel Boorstin
discovered that of the Virginians who composed the State Constitutional Convention, over a
hundred, only three were not vestrymen. Among the Founding Fathers and First Amendment
men were many staunch practicing Christians: Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of
Connecticut, Caleb Strong and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, William Livingston of New
Jersey, Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, Richard Bassett of Delaware, Hugh Williamson of North
Carolina, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, John Dickinson and Thomas Mifflin of
Pennsylvania, Rufus King of Massachusetts, David Brearley of New Jersey, and William Few of
Georgia.
Even the doubting and the unenthusiastic were quite clear that religion was needed in society,
especially in a vast, rapidly growing, and boisterous country like America. Washington served
for many years as a vestryman in his local Anglican church, believing this to be a pointed gesture
of solidarity with an institution he regarded as underpinning a civilized society. Franklin wrote to