Reposted from the blog in 2005:
A quote:
Even the most tepid of believers among the Founders assumed that the health and success of the American republic depended on the vitality of religious belief. As George Washington put it in his "Farewell Address": "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports." Famed deist Thomas Jefferson once asked, "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?" Thomas Paine, accused of atheism, wrote at the beginning of The Age of Reason, "I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life." So too another Enlightenment hero, Benjamin Franklin: "Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His providence. That he ought to be worshipped."
And of course, the works of the many more numerous orthodox Christian Founders could provide an endless supply of quotations to show that teaching the Founding without taking into account the powerful role that Christianity played is an act not just of historical but of pedagogical malfeasance. Many of the Founding generation believed that it was impossible to teach republican virtue without teaching religion: "The only foundation for a useful education in a republic," Benjamin Rush wrote, "is to be laid in religion. Without it there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments."
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