"Religion and the Founders"
I've written about this subject so much on Usenet that I can barely lift my hand to make another comment, except to say to Christopher Levenick and Michael Novak that these people will not give up even when you chase their arguments down to the last atom and put even that out of its misery.
I've had them swarm upon me with absurd claims that the Declaration of Independence is not the founding document of the United States behind the sole motivation that they do not want the Declaration's mentions of God to be admitted for significant purpose into the political history of our country. In this endeavor they try every conceivable angle, while accepting no historical testimony or fact to the contrary. For instance, that Lincoln's "four score and seven years ago" had the "new nation" founded in 1776 is met with, "so, Lincoln was never wrong?"
From Levenick and Novak's article a precise illustration of what I've faced four score and seven times:
I've had them swarm upon me with absurd claims that the Declaration of Independence is not the founding document of the United States behind the sole motivation that they do not want the Declaration's mentions of God to be admitted for significant purpose into the political history of our country. In this endeavor they try every conceivable angle, while accepting no historical testimony or fact to the contrary. For instance, that Lincoln's "four score and seven years ago" had the "new nation" founded in 1776 is met with, "so, Lincoln was never wrong?"
From Levenick and Novak's article a precise illustration of what I've faced four score and seven times:
To take an example: In her litany of statements that intend to prove that "the Founding Fathers were not religious men," she cites one line from a letter written by John Adams. According to Allen, "As an old man, [Adams] observed, 'Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"'" Pretty damning evidence, right? Well, no: Allen neglects to include the next two sentences from Adams: "But in this exclamati[on] I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without Religion, this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell."
Comments
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.""
The full quote,
"...But in this exclamation I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without Religion, this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell."
-- letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817
What a change, eh?
Compare Jeffersonian philosophy to the socialist French Revolution,
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
--Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson on atheism
Ironically, unlike the documents of the French Revolution the American founders did not exclude God from their documents, including the Constition. It's not "Godless" if it places God as sovereign over time in "the year of our Lord."
The quality of the scholarship you are citing seems to be propaganda, disinformation intended to be spread as misinformation by people such as yourself.
Here is a good overview from the Library of Congress that can correct a lot of misinformation from the Left on this. It's ironic that the Library that Jefferson founded would protect his words from that "...subtle corps of sapper and miners..."the Judiciary. In whose hands the Constitution can become a "...thing of wax..." as he put it.
From the Library:
"Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the House of Representatives [note: he started attending 2 days after writing the famous 'Danbury Letter
which contains the phrase concerning separation of Church and
State']. Madison followed Jefferson's example...."
cf. The Library of Congress
The quality of the scholarship you are citing seems to be propaganda, disinformation intended to be spread as misinformation by people such as yourself.
...it's clear that you didn't read what I wrote or what I quoted for meaning.
In other words: We're on the same side.