7 Faiths of the Founding Fathers - Perimeter Church

A History of Christianity in America • Part VII: Faiths of the Founding Fathers 6• Adams as president: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religiouspeople. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other.”• Adams: Morality and civic virtue cannot exist “without a supposition of a God.There is no right or wrong in the universe without the supposition of a moralgovernment and an intellectual and moral Governor.”• As president, Adams issued annual thanksgiving proclamations in addition to callsfor national days of fasting and prayer.• Anti-Catholic views.• Adams despised Catholics even more than Calvinists!• Adams: Catholicism is based on superstition, and it has been a source of oppressionfor centuries.• Catholicism is innately hierarchical and anti-republican.• “Liberty and Popery cannot live together.”• Reflections on the Catholic mass.James Madison (1751-1836).• An Anglican heritage.• A theology student at the College of New Jersey (Princeton).• Major influence: John Witherspoon.• Fading devotion and creeping skepticism.• The Revolutionary-era influences.• A proponent of religious liberty.• Madison’s role in disestablishing the Episcopal Church inVirginia.• Principle author of the Bill of Rights.• A “liberal Christian.”• Bishop William Meade: “Whatever may have been theprivate sentiments of Mr. Madison on the subject of religion,he was never known to declare any hostility to it. He always treated it with respect....“His creed was not strictly regulated by the Bible.”• An ambivalent civil religionist.• Madison: “Religion is the basis and foundation of all government.”• Madison: “The belief in a God All Powerful wise & good is... essential to the moralorder of the World & to the happiness of man.”• NOTE: Like many of his contemporaries, Madison’s public pronouncements neverreferred to Jesus Christ, the Bible, or specific Christian doctrines.• As president, Madison actively promoted American civil religion.• By 1816, Madison advocated strict separation of church and state.• Madison: Just as governments function best “without Kings and Nobles,” religion“flourishes in greater purity” without “the aid of Government.”• An enigma.• David L. Holmes: “Like so many other founding fathers, James Madison seems tohave ended up in the camp affirming the existence of a Deistic God.”