Separating fact from fiction on the subject of our Founding Fathers has kept the folks at PolitiFact busy for years — mostly because of right-wingnuts who make all kinds of nonsensical claims about Washington, Jefferson & Co.
Yet, a correction by PolitiFact dating back to 2013 may cause some heads to explode on the far conservative edge of the political spectrum, especially among the Religious Right.
This fact-check was inspired by Bryan Fischer of the extremist group American Family Association. Fischer was in the news quite a bit a few weeks ago when his vile remarks about Jews, Nazis and gays came to light as the AFA — labeled a hate group by one civil rights group — paid for a trip to Israel by more than one-third of the Republican National Committee.
(As the travel plan became a controversy, the RNC refused to confirm or deny that the trip took place as scheduled.)
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In 2013, the Fischer statement that drew a “Pants on Fire” rating from PolitiFact was a claim that the First Amendment’s religious freedom only applies to Christianity.
In the course of shredding that lie, searching in vain for a kernel of truth, PolitiFact’s sister group, PolitiPundit, learned that the Founders’ believed that America’s religions should include Muslims, or “Mahometans,” as they were known in colonial days. (Islam was sometimes called “Mohammedanism.”)
Here’s a portion of what PolitiPundit reported:
Thomas Kidd, professor of history at Baylor University and the author of God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, said “the founders were certainly aware of other religions besides Christianity, and discussed them at length in their writings.”
Kidd pointed us to a 1818 letter from John Adams: “This country has done much. I wish it would do more; and annul every narrow idea in religion, government and commerce,” Adams wrote. “It has pleased the providence of the first cause, the universal cause, that Abraham should give religion not only to Hebrews, but to Christians and Mohomitans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world.”
Benjamin Franklin also weighed in on the subject. Jan Ellen Lewis, professor of history at Rutgers University, cited Franklin’s autobiography, when he praised a new meeting house built in Philadephia.
“The design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general,” Franklin wrote. “So that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”
In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson spoke directly to the debate over the crafting of a Virginia statute for religious freedom. Jefferson describes a proposal to add the phrase “the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.”
“The insertion was rejected by a great majority,” Jefferson wrote, “In proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”
