Our founding fathers were Christians?

hmm 

but Catholic and Protestant are christans

No. Christianity is basically a religion that stems from the the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Its largest groups are the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Protestant churches. It also contains several independent churches of Eastern Christianity as well as numerous sects throughout the world.

Yes I understand what Christianity is as I am.  Unfortunatly I did not know as much of the set up of it as some.  Thank you for clearing that up then.

Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli between Tripoli and the United States, signed in 1796 (ratified 1797), provides:

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Text and proceedings of the Senate at http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tripoli1.htm

You can't get much clearer than "...not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion...."

The treaty was accepted with the above wording without debate by the Senate with 23 senators named as voting for it. No names are recorded as voting against, though there should have been 32 senators at the time (at least there were 16 states - but only 15 stripes on the flag )

The treaty was drawn up in Washington's second term, but submitted to the Senate by Adams.

The American leaders who founded the republic had mostly Protestant Episcopal religious backgrounds.  As products of the European "Enlightenment," reason rather than faith was more dominant in their thinking about religion, and much of the contemporary fashion of that has been characterized as "Deism"......that God was the creator and man was responsible after that for his own actions.  Little if any devine intercession was acknowledged.

Obviously not all those men thought alike, but it was a general consensus in late eighteenth century culture, and was the basis for the principal of "separation of church and state" in the U.S. constitution.  One was free to believe as he wished about God.  I do not think it was considered that important at the time.

As things change, and fashions and fads ebb and flow, there have been numerous revivals and erosions of Christian movements in America in 230 years.  The current evangelical Christian influence on the Republican right wing is an example.  Most of their more eloquent spokesmen are aging and will become less relevant.  Over time, the evangelicals will tend to piss off more people than they persuade.  We have seen it before and it will pass.  A lot of people say they are evangelicals because it is a current fashion.      

Originally posted by Jalisco Lancer Our founding fathers were all Catholics ( in Mexico , of course ),Hidalgo, Morelos, Matamoros, Antonio Torres were catholic priests. The Mexican Independence War was headed by the image of our Lady of Guadalupe.

 dont know if you have discussed this already but i was thinking about it today. Imagine a person who believes that Jesus sacrificed himself and was God's son and there is the holy spirit, the father and the son. What if that person murders someone. Will he still go to heaven because he believed in Jesus' sacrifice or not?

S

I watching something on Larry King live with people from different religeons and different sects of a religion also a person speaking for the athiest. There was a Protestant there and he said that even a killer can goto heaven as long as he says he believes in Jesus. All the other religeous leaders seemed to look at him like he had two heads.

I believe if there was a god and he judged you by your life, that he would let you go to a paradise of some sort by just being good in life and never having to be apart of a religeon. On the show thats what the Jewish Rabbai(spelling*) said, which kind of surprised me because they seem to be alittle strict in their religeon.

But I believe more strongly if there was a god or gods he/they would not care what we did in our lives because in the definition of a divine god we are insigifcant lives, why would they care so much about us and actually need our worship, its either for ego or probably and most likely all untrue. If every human died right now and a god existed what effect would it have on him? He could either raise us all from the dead or he could just create a whole new batch of humans, or most likely with a god of that kind of power probably wouldn't care and would go watch his other creations kill themselves through wars for divine land and genocides because a race is different for his own pleasure and entertainment.

And about Ben Franklin, he used to be apart of  the Hellfire Club which is known for being satanist. Heres a link and a small clip from the history channel if you scroll down alittle, it starts playing as soon as you open the page. http://www.infowars.com/articles/occult/hellfire.htm