No Phony God Talk From First Presidents

There is so much blabbering God talk coming from the phony politicians
today that you want to throw up. They can’t make a statement without ending
it with “God bless you…and God bless America.” Our first six
Presidents, Humanists and Deists, would find this talk repugnant.
A few facts: The Presidential oath of office, the only oath detailed
in the Constitution, does NOT contain the phrase “so help me God”
or any requirement to swear on a bible. All of that phony ritual is done
by the participants only to appease the bible thumpers.’ They can
be sworn in without any of it. Next fact:’ The words, “under God”
was not in the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954. And “In God we Trust”
was not on paper currency before 1956, when Congress, under Eisenhower,
inserted them. Since biographers have said that Eisenhower never attended
church services in his life until he became President, the hypocrisy of
it all is staggering. Please do not miss my point. NONE of all this presumptuous
“God talk” came from the Presidents who founded this nation and
wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
GEORGE WASHINGTON:‘ Martha Washington said that he refused
to kneel for prayer, and also refused to take communion when he attended
the Episcopal Church, calling it “superstitiion”. Episcopalian minister
Bird Wilson, in a sermon delivered in 1831, stated that “Washington
is no more than a Unitarian, if anything.”‘ Episcopalian minister
James Abercrombie criticized Washington from the pulpit for not kneeling
and not taking communion.’ Washington never again attended services.
Wrote Washington:’ “Religious controversies are always productive
of more irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”
In The Treaty of Tripoli, under Washington, Article Eleven, begins: “As
the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the
Christian religion..”‘ This treaty was ratified by the senate
in 1797 without a SINGLE OBJECTION and signed by then president John Adams.’
Article six of the U.S. Constitution made this treaty doubly binding by
saying “All treaties made under the authority of the United States shall
be bound thereby, anything in the laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”
It should be treasured today as the supreme document for the American doctrine
of the absolute separation of church and state. In his book “George
Washington and Religion” Professor Paul Boller of the University of
Massachusetts writes: “In all of Washington’s voluminous writing, not
once does he even speak of Jesus.”‘ Washington was deist, humanist,
and as many scholars have noted was the least religious of any of our first
six Presidents.
JOHN ADAMS:‘ Signed the Treaty of Tripoli.’ He did
not believe in any Christian doctrine, and in fact found such doctrines
repugnant. He wrote: “The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus has made
a convenient cover for absurdity. Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths,
are all trumpery.” The clergy of that day attacked him as an atheist.
Adams responded in this way;:’ “Go ahead and snarl, bite and howl,
all of you Christian Calvinistic Divines, all of you who say I am no Christian….well
I say to you that you are no Christian…so there we are even…the account
is balanced.”‘ In the Jefferson-Adams Letters, they both constantly
joke about the stupidity of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
Episcopalian minister Bird Wilson, in a sermon of October 1831, summed
up the religion of our founders in these words:’ “Among all of
our Presidents, from Washington downward, not one believed in Christianity.”

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“No Phony God Talk From First Presidents” is copyright © 2001
by William Edelen.

The electronic version is copyright © 2001 Internet Infidels
with the written permission of William Edelen.