by Becca Cougill

Created on: May 03, 2008

Tomas Payne Author of the Revolutionary paper "Common Sense", a man seen by many to be a defacto founding father once said, "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." Tomas Jefferson said in a letter to John Adams, "The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills." Ben Franklin said "As to Jesus of Nazareth ... I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity."

When you take things like that into consideration, along with the first Amendment, you have to argue that this nation was not based upon Christian beliefs, but on beliefs that came out of the burning times. These men knew the history of religious strife in Europe. Thanks to the Salam Witch Trials they had seen first hand what religious persecution could evolve into. They felt the two most important things they could give the people first and foremost was the freedom for the people to believe in whatever God and religion they wished to and that the press could say anything it wanted or needed to. Those things were given to us to protect us from not only our own government but from other people as well.

Have we forgotten so easily the war between the Catholics and Protestants that brought about the splitting of Ireland? Have we forgotten so easily, the burning times, where anyone accused of witchcraft, were burned at the stake? Jews and Pagans were the main focus of the burning times, but in the name of finding those hiding within the Christian faith, they often burned their own people.

This nation was founded as a secular nation by men who felt their spiritual path was their own to walk. They believed it was a personal private thing that shouldn't matter to anyone but the individual. Our founding fathers could have been Christan. Many of them were, I am sure. But, they were smart enough to realize even then, that the two things, most people should never discuss are politics and religion. They gave us a system where we are pretty much forced to talk about politics. They had to give us the freedom to ignore religion.

*For more information into Tomas Jefferson and his beliefs on the bible You can check out his own personal verson of the bible known as The Jefferson Bible at http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/

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