Last week, I heard it again: That oft-repeated urban legend that we’ve heard so often. This time, to my horror, I heard it from a well-educated pastor: “Our founding fathers were not Christians. They were deists, atheists, and agnostics.”
Au contraire!
The pilgrims, as you will recall, were, Christians fleeing Europe in order to escape religious persecution, and they literally began their stay in their new land with the words, “In the name of God, Amen.”
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The pilgrims were followed to New England by the Puritans, who created bible-based commonwealths. Those commonwealths practiced the same sort of representative government as their church covenants. Those governmental covenants and compacts numbered more than 100, and were the foundation for our Constitution.
New Haven (Connecticut) and Massachusetts were founded by Puritans who wanted to reform the Church of England, who later became known as Congregationalists. Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island based on the principle of freedom of conscience. Pennsylvania was established by William Penn as a Quaker colony. Maryland was a haven for Catholics from Protestant England.
America was indeed founded by bible-believing Christians and based on Christian principles. When they founded this country, the Founding Fathers envisioned a government that would promote and encourage Christianity.
All but two of the first 108 universities founded in America were Christian. This includes the first, Harvard, where the student handbook listed this as Rule #1: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation for our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."
In 1777. Continental Congress voted to spend $300,000 to purchase bibles which were to be distributed throughout the 13 colonies! And in 1782, the United States Congress declared, “The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools."
So, let us take a look at some of the lives and words of our Founding Fathers to see whether they were Christians or whether history has been revised.