Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers
by Brooke Allen
Summary
Brooke Allen shows decisively that the United States was founded not on Christian principles at all but on Enlightenment ideas. She provides fascinating chapters on the religious lives of six key Founding Fathers: Franklin, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton—skeptical intellectuals, and in some cases not even Christians at all.
Excerpt
Benjamin Franklin was one of the great figures of the international Enlightenment, revered in France even more, if possible, than he was in his native land. When he arrived in Paris in 1776 as American minister to France, his highly publicized experiments in electricity and countless other fields had earned him a place as perhaps the foremost scientist of the age. There he was greeted rapturously by his fellow philosophes and the salonnieres when he claimed that Franklin had “snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants.” Immanuel Kant dubbed him “the new Prometheus”; David Hume lauded him as America’s “first philosopher” and “first great man of letters.” The adulation poured upon him by the European intelligentsia equaled that accorded to Voltaire, and the staged meeting of the two philosopher-kings was one of the emblematic moments of the eighteenth century. It was amusingly described by Franklin’s grumpy colleague John Adams:
There presently arose a general cry that M. Voltaire and M. Franklin should be introduced to each other. This was done, and they bowed and spoke to each other. This was no satisfaction; there must be something more. Neither of our philosophers seemed to divine what was wished or expected; they however took each other by the hand. But this was not enough. The clamor continued until the explanation came out: Il faut s’embrasser a la francaise. The two aged actors upon this great theater of philosophy and frivolity then embraced each other by hugging one another in their arms and kissing each other’s cheeks, and then the tumult subsided. And the cry immediately spread through the kingdom, and I suppose all over Europe; Qu’il est charmant de voir embrasser Solon et Sophocle.
The toast of France’s intellectuals and would-be intellectuals, Franklin consorted not only with Voltaire, whose name at that time was a byword for atheism, but with all the other most famous skeptics of the time: Mirabeau, d’Holbach, d’Alembert, Buffon, and Condorcet. All these men were generally referred to as “freethinkers,” a term used to describe those who rejected the “leap of faith” necessary to accept revealed religion, instead subjecting religious claims to empirical examination. They took him, possibly correctly, for one of themselves, and a French acquaintance claimed that “our free-thinkers have adroitly sounded him on his religion, and they maintain that he is one of their own, that is that he has none at all.”
Adams, who knew Franklin well, seems to have agreed, at least if we are to credit this 1779 excerpt from his diary:
“All religions are tolerated in America,” said M. Marbois [the Marquis Francois de Barbe-Marbois]; “and the ambassadors have in all courts a right to a chapel in their own way; but Mr. Franklin never had any.” “No,” said I, laughing, “because Mr. Franklin had no—“ I was going to say what I did not say, and will not say here. I stopped short, and laughed.
Reprinted with permission of Ivan R. Dee Publishers. http://www.ivanrdee.com
Reviews
"Well documented, exuberantly argued and quite persuasive"—George Will, New York Times Sunday Book Review
"The thesis of this informative polemic is that the founders were deists, not devout Christians."—Editor’s Choice, New York Times
"[A]rationalist polemic against those who would make of the American Founders observant, believing Christians in the modern sense”-- Wall Street Journal
Author's Biography
Brooke Allen’s Twentieth Century was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her critical writing appears frequently in the Times Book Review, the Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.