As I see it
Glenn Spencer -- December 15, 2007

Religion and Presidential Candidates

If we think the Republicans have the Democrats over the barrel on illegal immigration, there is another issue almost as damaging to Republicans -- Religion.

Huckabee's new campaign manager, Ed Rollins, told Lou Dobbs:

ROLLINS: 'You go back to the signing of the constitution I think 26 of the people that signed it were ministers. At the beginning of this country, we began with a nation under god. We began with prayer and the first prayer is before the congress were hours, not moments.' (Transcript)

My research shows that of the framers of the Constitution, only one was a minister.

There is overwhelming evidence that many of the founding fathers were deists. According to Wikipedia, deists typically reject supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and tend to assert that God does not interfere with human life and the laws of the universe.

Jim Walker writes: "The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy. Although they supported the free exercise of any religion, they understood the dangers of religion. Most of them believed in deism and attended Freemasonry lodges."

Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, was one of the most influential writers in the Revolutionary period. His Age of Reason was greatly influenced by the revolutionary thinking of Isaac Newton, as were the Founding Fathers.

(While studying both physics and American literature during a semester in college I wrote a paper on the influence of Issac Newton on Thomas Paine. I did so, not based on existing literature, but Paine's writing style that suggested an understanding of Newtonian physics. It wasn't until 40 years later that I found that scholars now agree with me.)

Republicans had better get a handle on the truth about religion in forming our nation and they had better return to those principles. We are secular nation based on the age of reason, not mythology. And, if we don't want an all out planet-wide religious war, we will not put a bible-thumping preacher in the White House.

Not only that - if the electorate reject the idea of a religious zealot in the White House and elect a Democrat, we will most certainly lose the Southwest to Mexico.