Debating the Beliefs of the Founding Fathers

1/25/2014

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me if I had read Gregg Frazer's book on The Religious Beliefs of America's Founders. I told him that I had and that I had written a small book in response to Mr. Frazer's claims, but his question reminded me of just how little most people know about this particular area of my research.

Gregg Frazer is a history professor at The Master's College and a member of John MacArthur's Grace Community Church. His book on the founding fathers presents the claim that the most important of America's founders were decidedly not Christians but rather what he calls Theistic Rationalists. In my book, The Founders and the Myth of Theistic Rationalism, I show that Mr. Frazer relied on an improper definition of Christianity in order to exclude the key founders from the community of believers.

In addition to my book, however, I have also debated Mr. Frazer's view with several other historians, and most of those debates can be read online. The list below provides links to some of the best of those debates. If you've ever had any doubts about the faith of our founders, let me suggest that you take some time to read through a few of these debates and see if I might be able to change your mind.

2 Comments

Larry DeMejo

1/25/2014 11:32:30 am

Two comments:

1. You stated that Mr. Frazer is a member of John MacArthur's Grace Community Church. Mr. MacArthur believes and teaches that Jesus Christ did not die for every human being and that Christ's death did not atone for the sin of the world. Rather, Mr. MacArthur believes and teaches that Jesus Christ's death atoned only for the sins of the elect ( http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/90-277 and http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-278/The-Doctrine-of-Actual-Atonement-Part-2 ). This teaching is unbiblical and a heretical misrepresentation of our Lord and Savior's finished sacrificial work on the cross on behalf of all mankind!

2. Posted 2013-10-25 10:49 PM (#65695) By: SavedByGrace at
http://www.americaspartynews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=25810&posts=1&highlight=Christian%20nation&highlightmode=1#M65695

Response to Charles Haynes' Commentary that America was not founded as a Christian nation
::
Life, Liberty, Faith & the Family (Independent) -> The Always In Prayer Network

10/25/2013 e-mail to Charles C. Haynes entitled, Dispelling your myth that America was not founded as a Christian nation

Dear Mr. Haynes,

I must respectfully disagree with the logic and conclusion of your August 8, 2013 commentary entitled, Dispelling the myth of a 'Christian nation'.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/dispelling-the-myth-of-a-christian-nation

The four paragraphs prior to the last paragraph of your commentary actually unravel your argument and lend support to the contention that America was in fact founded as a Christian nation.

As initial evidence in favor of the myth of a 'Christian nation', you set up a straw man argument by stating that a majority of the American people (51%) believes that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. Then you cite the fact that nowhere in the Constitution will you find mention of God, Christ or any intention to found a Christian nation. This is true. However, you very conveniently avoid any mention of our nation's other major founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which states:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

...And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

This document mentions "Nature's God" and His Laws, the Creator of all men and "a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence".

If these references don't specifically describe The One True God of the Bible and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, please explain to me how the truths they are referring to can be self-evident or how our Rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness can be unalienable?

The argument you made in your commentary with regards to our nation's Constitution founding document now collapses in light of the evidence from our nation's Declaration of Independence founding document.

Further on in your commentary you set up a second straw man argument by stating:

"This means that political power in the United States may never be limited to people of one faith – a necessary condition for a “Christian nation” – but must be open to people of all faiths or none."

You now arbitrarily specify a necessary condition for a "Christian nation" as limiting the political power in the United States to Christian people.

However, in the four paragraphs prior to the last paragraph of your commentary you, by your own words, utterly destroy your second straw man argument by validly pointing to the following true facts about a Christian nation founded according to the Christian principle of religious freedom. You state:

"In other words, religious diversity at America’s founding made a necessity of religious freedom because no one group had the power or the numbers to impose its version of true faith – Christian or otherwise – on all others.

It is worth remember

1/26/2014 07:46:05 am

Continuing the above comment, which was truncated...

It is worth remembering, however, that principles as much as practical politics inspired many of our founders to define religious freedom as requiring no establishment of religion.

Roger Williams, to cite the earliest and best example, founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1636 out of his conviction that only by erecting a “wall or hedge of separation” between the “garden of the church” and “the wilderness of the world” would it be possible to protect liberty of conscience as required by God.

Religious freedom, Williams argued, is itself a Christian principle."

The God of the Bible, Jesus Christ and any faithful born again Christian would not impose the Christian faith on all others. Saving faith in Jesus Christ is an individual choice, not an imposition.

True Christianity is this saving faith, made possible by Christ's shed blood and death for our sins, burial and resurrection and realized by our free choice to have a relationship with Him as our Lord, Savior, Bridegroom and Friend. All the principles enumerated in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution founding documents were specifically incorporated into those documents to protect that precious freedom of choice among all the inhabitants of our nation.

We were indeed founded as a Christian nation, Mr. Haynes, according to a more accurate description of a Christian nation than yours.

-----
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10

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Debating the Beliefs of the Founding Fathers

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