Thoughts On The Founding Fathers

Many conservatives say that we should “go back to what the Founders intended”.

2 issues:
They seem to take what they want and leave the rest. If you ask them if we should bring back slavery, they will say no. We see some women (Bachmann and Palin) saying we should have a society more in line with what the Founders wanted. The Founding Fathers did not give women the right to vote. If they did not give women the right to vote, then probably would not want women to hold office.

A lot of Christians say that we are a Christian nation and the Founders intended this to be a Christian nation. They seem to think that all the Founders were evangelicals. That was not true.

But a lot of conservatives seem to think that we must be Christian because they think the Founders were. They seem to think that we are limited to religions the Founders believed in. If we can only believe what the Founders believed, then are we really free?

“The Origin Of Species” was not published until 1859. How do you know that all of the Founders would have rejected it? Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movements were not around in the late 18th century, yet evangelicals never smack them down. The Dispensationalism of the Left Behind series was not around then. The Founders were anti-Catholic. Let’s see these Funda-gelicals come out and trash talk the Catholic Church some more the way John Hagee does.

I think that a lot of Christians project their beliefs onto the Founders. That is the fallacy that a lot of people point out. But like I said, I sometimes think people miss the other fallacy. Not only should we put the Founders into our straitjackets, but let’s not limit ourselves to what we think they thought.