Faiths of the Founding Fathers

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. He was first educated as a Presbyterian and had a Calvinist family background, but he said he had "ever let others enjoy their religious sentiments." He believed that "God governs in the affairs of men" and that without divine aid, the founding fathers would succeed "no better than the builders of Babel." Benjamin Franklin John Adams Thomas Paine Samuel Adams

2. He was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. John Witherspoon Jonathan Edwards John Adams John Hancock

3. He was reared as an Anglican but claimed that he "never told [his] own religion, nor scrutinized that of another." He was considered a Deist. His beliefs, he said, resulted from "a life of inquiry and reflection, and are very different from the Anti-Christian system attributed to me . . . To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself." George Washington Alexander Hamilton Thomas Jefferson Thomas Paine

4. Disturbed by wide spread atheism in France, he founded the "Theophilanthropy" movement, which emphasized that God exists and that the soul is immortal. In America, however, he considered dogmatism, and not atheism, to be the primary opponent of religion. Thomas Jefferson Thomas Paine John Adams John Witherspoon

5. He was unique not only in being one of the most radical revolutionaries, but also in being one of the rare non-ecumenical ones. He denounced Catholicism as the "idolatry of Christians" and said that nothing could rival "the barefaced falsehood of the Quakers." John Adams Samuel Adams Alexander Hamilton Thomas Paine