It is good to come upon a book or article every so often that either confirms or challenges one's thinking. These experiences remind one of the value of a broad-based liberal education and lifelong learning. This is such an article:

http://religiondispatches.org/what-a-forgotten-19th-century-suffragist-can-teach-us-about-womens-rights-vs-the-religious-right/

One often hears the complaint that is phrased something like this: "The only problem with this country is that it is no longer a Christian nation." The assumption is made that the Founding Fathers were devout Christians and the documents they drafted embody Christian thought, morals, and theories of social organization.

The Founding Fathers (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine, as a representative selection) were either committed Deists or very sympathetic to that philosophy. During the Age of Enlightenment or Modern Rationalism (17th and 18th centuries), Deists did not identify themselves as Christians nor were they so identified by the various Christian sects of the day. Deism was seen as the antithesis of Christian theology and thought. These are the folks who then drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and much of the federal legislation of this era. Their roles in their respective colonies and later states found them drafting parallel documents and legislation on that level as well.

The above article points out the challenges faced by those during the Third Great Awakening (1850 to 1900), who were genuinely troubled by the absence of Christian underpinnings to the great American experiment in governance. They proposed a revision of the original documents to include specific Christian references. As they read the original documents, they clearly understood them to be irreligious to a fault. It is important that 21st century Americans understand this so that in our search for the intent and design of the Founding Fathers, we do not mistake the 1870's for the 1770's as we struggle to identify the original intent/originality of these documents and not read into them meaning that was never intended.

One might argue that the absence of a Christian component was an honest oversight by the authors of these documents. Such an argument is only valid if one ignores the conflict between Deism and the various Christian hierarchies in both the Old and New Worlds at this time. It also ignores the anti-Catholicism and the Christian denominational factionalism apparent within and among the original colonies during the 18th century. The Christian component is not there, and it is not there by design. The intent of the Founding Fathers was to found a state based on reason guided by that which they considered to be the soundest philosophy of their day. They may have been elitists or starry-eyed dreamers, but they were who they were. Whether we like it or not, we are their heirs; the inheritance is what it is. Our first charge is to do our due diligence and to understand that inheritance in terms which are aligned as closely as possible with the original intent of the authors. If we do so, I am confident we will find that the wisdom and foresight present therein are able to provide us with valuable guidance as we navigate the contemporary challenges of racial and ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and religious sectarianism.