How Christian Were the Founders? The Case of James Madison
Professor Dr. Gary Smith, chairman of the History Department at Pennsylvania’s excellent Grove City College, corrects recent misinformation about James Madison’s religious beliefs and practices. Dr. Smith uses the best of evidences, going to Madison’s own writings for the truth.
An example:
What Madison actually said in his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” (1785) was that “the legal establishment of Christianity” had produced these [negative, harmful] results. Rather than criticizing Christianity, Madison was calling for its disestablishment [as the official Virginia state denomination] because the “duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”
Madison, like many other founders, believed that Christianity was much more likely to thrive when it was voluntary. The Virginian argued in his Memorial that Christianity “flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid, but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence.” Moreover, in the 1820s Madison rejoiced that ministers of every denomination were zealously providing religious instruction in Virginia and winning people to Christian faith by “the purity of their lives.”
Read more at the full article here:
How Christian Were the Founders? The Case of Madison and Jefferson.
