Fox News runs a banner:
Now, I don’t know exactly what it means to be ‘raised a Christian’. But I do know that it is more significant whether you are a Christian than whether you were raised as one. And, on that score, let’s take a look at some of our early presidents.
George Washington (1789-1797)- Washington was not a communicant (meaning he did not take communion in the Anglican church). In fact, his minister asked him to stop attending Sunday services because his failure to take communion was too conspicuous.
John Adams (1797-1801)- Adams was devout Unitarian. In other words, he did not believe in the Trinity.
Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)- Jefferson was so hostile to traditional Christianity that he wrote his own version of the New Testament with all the miracles stripped out.
James Madison (1809-1817)- James Madison was a Deist, although he did attend an Episcopalian church during his presidency.
James Monroe (1817-1825)- James Monrroe was a Deist, although he did attend an Episcopalian church during his presidency.
John Quincy Adams (1925-1829)- Like his father, Quincy Adams was a Unitarian.
So, we’ve now covered the first forty years of the Republic without encountering a president that believed in the trinity or the divinity of Christ. It is not until the election of Andrew Jackson that we find our first Christian president, as that term is normally understood.
Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) was raised a Presbyterian but he showed little interest in religion until later life and did not ‘join’ the Presbyterian church until after his presidency.
Martin Van Burn (1837-1841) was a member of the Dutch Reformed church, but his actual faith has been questioned. However, as least ostensibly, he was the first president to both belong to mainstream protestant church during his presidency and not express doubt about the trinity or Christ’s divinity. It only took 48 years for this to happen.
William Henry Harrison (1841) only served as president for a month, but he appears to have been a mainstream Episcopalian.
John Tyler (1841-1845)- was a Deist.
James Polk (1845-1849)- Polk was a Presbyterian that converted to Methodism on his death bed. He’s our first unambiguously devoutly Christian president. It only took 56 years.
To skip ahead a bit Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) read and quoted the Bible and attended church occasionally, but he never joined a church nor did he ever express adherence to orthodox Christian views. His successor, Andrew Johnson (1865-1869), is considered the least religious president of all time.
So, I guess my question to FOX News is: would you rather have a president that doesn’t believe in the Trinity or the divinity of Christ or one that does? How someone was raised hardly seems relevant in light of our nation’s history.
They need to distract as they’re on the run:
Fox and friends have cheered the country into bankruptcy; they are now running away from the economic pain and they dare not speak of the $100 trillion debt.
Who says it’s this high? No other than the President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, Richard W. Fisher. Do the math…the $99.2 trillion figure is without the Fannie and Freddie rescue.
Fox and friends won’t remind their viewers that
a surplus quickly squandered by their poster child president. So let’s talk church, let’s talk celeb.
Just when you think that they can’t sink any lower…
how do they get away with pulling these stunts…it is not credible journalism.
Speaking as one who self-identifies as a Christian, I have to say that this makes absolutely no difference whatever to me. Religiousness or lack thereof didn’t make Washington a better President or Fillmore a worse one, IMO.
“I do know that it is more significant whether you are a Christian than whether you were raised as one.”
I vote “neither”.
Just thanks for this history lesson.
I noticed that you never indicated that any of the early presidents you covered pretended to be Christian or a believer for political expediency. My question is: when did this shift among presidents’ religious beliefs occur?
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that none of these presidents pandered to Christian belief. They all did…even Jefferson. Yet, it was well understood for at least the first half of the nineteenth century that the county was literally founded on the principle that we could not hold together as a nation if Quaker (Pennsylvania) didn’t tolerate Congregationalist (Massachusetts), and Congregationalist didn’t tolerate Episcopalian (Virginia), and Episcopalian didn’t tolerate Presbyterian (New Jersey), and Presbyterian didn’t tolerate Baptist (The Carolinas and Georgia) and Baptists didn’t tolerate Catholics (Maryland).
Therefore, expressions of religious faith were suspect for a very long time.
I looked at this issue previously when I posted on this topic on another forum.
The issue itself is generally raised in the context of claims by Christians attempting to push their version of religion on others or argue via a contrived history that the founders bestowed a primacy upon Christian beliefs.
The impression I got after reading about the religious beliefs of our Presidents — particularly the early ones — was that deism was the predominant belief. [see link to a good Wikipedia article on the subject below]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Presidential_religious_affiliations
I would define deism as believing that god and nature are indistinct. It could also be defined as Agnosticism, which is misunderstood but means that divine intentions are unknowable. There is also a rejection of the credulous aspects of Christianity, i.e., the naive acceptance of miracles, the supernatural, superstition, etc. It’s hardly surprising that the Presidents’ beliefs were typical of Enlightenment intellectuals since they were both important contributers to that intellectual development as well as influenced by it.
An odd problem with Fox’s smear attempt is that many of the tenets that they use to define Christianity are not held by many or even a majority of those who call themselves Christians. Moreover, as should be apparent by the section on the beliefs of Presidents, these beliefs were also not held by many of our Presidents. One of the problems with ascribing Christian beliefs based on nominal membership is that it ignores the lack of consensus on many points. Perhaps even odder is the fact that the circumstances of birth are almost never considered important within Christian theology although adult conversion often is. What’s strange about Fox’s smear is that it puts them at odds with Christian belief.
Anglicans didn’t have weekly Communion. After his rebuke, Washington continued to attend that church on normal Sundays and visited other churches of various denominations on Communion Sundays. Which is kind of cool and probably increased Americans’ affection for him.
Seeing as religion is the root of all evil it’s most troubling we have ANY president muttering incantations to an imaginary supreme deity. A modified Rapture wherein Christians just go away, disappear from the planet, and leave the rest of us sane people to flourish on our own would be wonderful. Jesus is a fraud. Accept it.
I believe Lincoln attended services at the Presbyterian Church that is located on NY Avenue in Washington DC.
I haven’t followed his life carefully, but I thought Obama was raised by his Kansas grandparents. It is hard to believe that Kansas grandparents did not take him to church.
Jefferson didn’t think much of miracles, but he attended services at Bruton Parish Episcopal Church when he was at the House of Burgesses.
But this is all part of the Obama is different from you and me. I hope Obama strips NewsCorp of its FCC licenses.
Well played, Booman. Well played.
claim all them deists as our own. In the time of founding fathers, unitarianism (no universalism at that time, as it was a distinct group) was a distinct and clear heresy, which denied the trinity, but was otherwise Christian. The meaning of Christianity without the trinity is best left to more sophisticated religious writers.
Today’s Unitarianism is often quite quite Deist. Of course, there are Unitarian Deists, unitarian pagans, unitarian jews and all other combos.
If the deists lived today, they would all be Unitarians. That being so, they probably wouldn’t be elected to anything.
First of all, I suspect Obama was at least raised nominally as a Christian by his mother and grandparents.
Second of all, if I really had my druthers, I’ prefer a President who didn’t subscribe to Trinitarian nonsense. The Nicene Creed is a blight on religion. We have had 1600 years of Augustinian heresy. It’s time to end it.