Originally Posted by meepa

Mojo, I don't know what your point was bringing up those two quotes. I can't tell if you're trying to say Franklin and Jefferson were Christian or what. Let me just point out that Franklin was most definitally not a Christian- he was a deist. Yes he believed in a god, and he believed that "the best praise to god is to do good works unto other men" (not a perfect quote, but that's the idea). Lots of people like to take religious quotes of him out of context to try and portray him as some sort of super religious advocate when in reality, he was no such thing. In Richard's Almanac he wrote something to the effect of "A lot of religion is worse than none at all". Yes he was no atheist, but no he was no diehard Christian. Also people seem to forget that he would often flavor his speeches with religion when he was speaking to a group full of Christians because he was one of the greatest diplomats of all time, and he knew how to work a crowd.

As for Jefferson, he too was certainly not a Christian, but a deist. In fact he took the Bible, and edited out all the 'superstitious, magical, etc' parts to see what could be left over from a rational point of view. He had a short pamphlet of Jesus' life ending with him being buried in his tomb. I am just saying this to illustrate that he was no Christian. A deist? Of course.

I'm not trying to jump down your throat in case you were just trying to prove that they did believe in some sort of deity, but it gets pretty annoying when people throw up quotes from the founding fathers without realizing their context or having done any research on the characters themselves.