Religion & the Founding: Holmes' 'The Faiths of the Founding Fathers' | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: This seems to be an interesting book. I had not known my five times great-grandfather John Wing Allen's cousin Silas was a Deist. Of course, John's great-grandfather, Ralph Allen, was one of the original Quakers. John was not, however, as his mother was Rebecca Wing, who was descended from the founders of Anabaptism both here and in England. The family religion, when it was created, were Disciples of Christ (First Christian Church - who even before Vatican II tried to emulate the faith of the disciples - the one before Constantine made Orthodox Catholicism an organ of the Empire. So, no, Elizabeth was not the first. Indeed, many Catholic potentates of her time extracted from Rome the ability to appoint bishops - Phillip II of Spain being one of those. That this happened in America is no shock. The shock is that it stopped.
As for our Founding Fathers' Deism - it seems like a public face for membership in Freemasonry. Unlike today's Shriners, there were mini-cars and hospals. Indeed, it could be argued that the Lodge was a way to operate covertly during the Revolution. Of course, it was not only the leaders who were Masons. My mother's family were, as you see, religious chamelions. Indeed, before she met my father and become Catholic, my mother bounced around religions with her parents (that's what Protestants used to do, based on economic class - although now people usually stick to one faith). What was constant, however, for the men, was the Lodge (and White Shrine for the women). Deism borrowed from that as anything else. I suspect that the Deistic first mover and master builder (sounds like Aquinas) was also the All Seeing Eye. The question then arises, if they wish to invoke the founders, do the Bishops wish to join the Lodge? (0h, as for the terror, that was egalitarianism run amok, not Deism. The killing fields of Camabodia are the same phenomenon).
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