I think it is of importance to make the actual religious views of our primary founding fathers more widely known for two reasons:

1. It has been my observation from lectures, radio and television talk shows, and private conversations that very few Americans know what our first six Presidents said about Christianity, religion, the church and the Bible.

2. The American people are continually lied to by the Christian "right" (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and other fundamentalists) and the political right about the religion of our founding fathers. Not one of our first six presidents was even remotely "Christian." They were Deist and Humanist, as were many other founding fathers.

I will write on this subject, which I have taught at the university level, in defense of historical accuracy, facts, honesty and integrity, as well as to recover some flavor of the way it really was, rather than how so many fantasize it to have been.

We are a nation without genuine, authentic heroes. My heroes are those men and women who had, or have, the integrity of a Jefferson, Adams or a Madison. They never allowed their own integrity to become "unhinged."

They never spent a phony moment or uttered an insincere word to placate the Bible-Belt mentality. Our first six presidents were Deists, classical humanists and freethinkers. In their own words they said, and wrote, time and again that they did not believe in a personal God, but only an impersonal force or providence. They did not believe Jesus was divine, as son of God, or anything other than a Jewish teacher. They did not believe that the Bible was sacred, the word of God, or anything other than literature. Jefferson called the Bible a dunghill. These biographical and historical facts can be found in any major library in this country by those who can read.

John Adams
There was something mystical about the relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. On July 4, 1826, America celebrated the 50th anniversary of Independence. John Adams died on that day, saying "Jefferson lives," but on that same day, before sunset, Thomas Jefferson died. It is a golden privilege for me to be able to sit in my study and, through the written word, listen to these two giants who walked the earth. To read the Jefferson-Adams letters, and listen to them exchange ideas on practically every subject known to our species, is an inspirational and educational experience that is quite beyond description.

As for the religious views of John Adams, as with our other Founders, Adams was a Humanist who went no further in his theology than "in the beginning, God." He did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. He did not believe in the trinity or any of the other Christian doctrines, and the Bible was just another book to him. In fact, as with others, he found Christian doctrine repugnant. He had a contempt for the clergy and he looked upon the church as one of the great tyrannies that bound human minds and spirits. Naturally, the clergy attacked him. John Adams responded to them in these words:

"This is my religion, only this my adoration for the creator of this magnificent universe, and delight, joy, triumph and exultation in my own existence. Even though I am only an atom, a molecule in the universe, that is all of my religion. So go ahead and snarl, bite and howl, all of you Christian Calvinistic divines and all of you who say that I am no Christian. Well, I say to you that you are no Christian . . so there, the account is balanced. "

Regarding the doctrine of the trinity, that all of our Founders found absurd, Adams wrote these words to his friend Jefferson:

Tom, had you and I been forty days with Moses, and even if the great God had tried to tell us that three was one, and one equals three, you and I would never have believed it, for you and I could never fall victim to the lie that two and two equals five, for we know the contrary.

Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, with its article 11, which began "The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." Adams was convinced that none of the Christian creeds and doctrines were in the Bible. They were all man-made to give the church and the clergy power. And so he wrote:

Where do we find a precept in the bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days? . . . the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.

One event in his life had a lasting effect upon him. In his own town, the minister of the First Congregational Church was recognized as the most scholarly minister in the town's history. But officers and members of the church did not like the scholarship that was being brought to them, and so they started a vicious campaign against this minister with the most slanderous character assassination. They spread their poison throughout the area. It spread, in Adams' words, "by people, drunk on hate; a far more despicable intoxication than one who is intoxicated by only a beverage." Adams never again had any use for the church.

Thomas Jefferson
When John Kennedy was president he hosted a banquet without precedent. He invited every living American Nobel Prize winner. When the guests were seated, Kennedy stood and said he wanted to offer a toast. He said this: "Never has so much talent, so much genius, been assembled in one room... since Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Jefferson: brilliant philosopher, theologian, architect, linguist, statesman, scientist, musician, horticulturist, agronomist, scholar, humanist, deist and master of the civilized arts.

I have one bust in my study. It is of Jefferson. On the base are these words: "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." (He uses the word "God" as a Deist, not as a Christian; vast difference.) He made this scathing statement aimed at the tyranny of the Christian church. What did he think about Christianity?

The following quotes come from Thomas Jefferson A Profile , by Dr. Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Foundation Professor, University of Virginia Jefferson's University.)

"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. "

"Christianity has made one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites."

On Jesus:

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by a supreme being as 'father,' in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated about Jesus by a large band of dupes and impostors led by Paul, the first great corrupter.Unlettered and ignorant men, writing long after the events, provide the only source of information. Throw out the rubbish in the New Testament that is so much ignorance, absurdity, untruth, charlatanism and imposture."

On God:

"Question with boldness the existence of God."

James Madison
During almost fifteen centuries, the legal establishment of Christianity has been on trial. What have been its fruits? These are the fruits, more or less, in all places: pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance end servility in the laity; and in both, clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, presented the above opinion on Christianity to the General Assembly of Virginia in 1785. Madison, our Fourth President, continues:

What influence in fact, have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In NO instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.

In Virginia the Episcopal church was established. In 1744 Christians of all other sects were being arrested and persecuted. Madison addressed that septic situation in these words: "That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages; and to their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such a business." Due to the efforts of Madison and Jefferson, the

Episcopal Church was disestablished in Virginia. And rightly so. They should be taxed. He wrote: "Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." The word brilliant is often over-used, but in describing James Madison it is the only word that does this titan justice. James Madison was the brains and the energy that put our Constitution together, as well as our Bill of Rights. The brilliance of the vision that was Madison's was carved out in lonely solitude at his family home at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He surrounded himself with history books. Thomas Jefferson kept sending them to his dear friend and kindred spirit. For months on end Madison read and studied history, asking the question: "Why do nations fail?" And here in this lonely intellectual and spiritual odyssey, the answer came to him that would change the world, Weakness At The Center. If power stayed in the hands of the states, we were sure to fail. The states should all exist as ONE United States.

The constitutional Convention would not even allow a prayer to open the meeting, they so wanted to keep religion out of it. There is no reference to God, or Jesus, in the Constitution of this country.

James Madison should be at the very front of our celebrations. He was the father of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, both unique in the history of civilization.

Closing Thoughts
Why do I consider this theme so important at this time? This is an election year and we are going to be buried in phony and false oratory about our "Christian" founders.

But, equally as important, election year or not, it's time to raise the level of religious and historical literacy, which as a consequence reduces the level of superstition, bigotry, and historical illiteracy.

Episcopalian minister Bird Wilson, in a sermon of October 1831, summed up the religion of our Founders in these words: "Among all of our presidents, from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion (Christianity), at least not of more than Unitarianism."

I am always overwhelmed with thanksgiving and gratitude that men of the stature and integrity of Jefferson, Adams and Madison never stooped to the low level of inviting a token religious figure, a Bible thumping clown, for a "prayer breakfast", to placate Bible-Belt America. Our first six presidents must be crying in their graves today. Our society is saturated with the lethal disease that they fought so hard against. I speak of the obscene wedding today between many politicians and orthodox Christianity. We had a president who declared a recent year to be the "Year of the Bible." A president who spoke to national meetings of religious broadcasters and evangelicals. By stark contrast, our first six presidents refused all invitations for church membership.

Great men and women make small men and women aware of their smallness. After visiting the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: "I attribute the small number of distinguished men in political life to the ever increasing despotism of the majority." It's time to raise the level of religious and historical literacy, which as a consequence will reduce the level of superstition, bigotry, and indifference to our heritage.

An age without giants of the Jefferson, Adams and Madison stature, drifts. Greatness of this caliber is very difficult for the common men and women to bear. Ordinary and common people flinch before such honesty. As Gracian put it: "The unhinging of your own integrity means accepting less than your best... being overly tolerant of stupidity... and forgiving incompetence." We cannot long endure without giant men and women. And if the American public has no more desire for such authentic heroes, or even more tragic, cannot produce them, then the vision of Jefferson and Madison will become only a dream that evaporated into a lost history.

William Edelen is a newspaper columnist and radio talk show host on KPSL in Palm Springs