Quotes on Christianity From Founding Fathers

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes; and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.

There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.

The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.

Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame.

...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.