Whenever the Supreme Court makes a decision that in any way restricts the intrusion of religion into the affairs of government, a flood of editorials, articles, and letters protesting the ruling is sure to appear in the newspapers. Manyprotesters decry these decisions on the groundsthat they conflict with the wishes and intents of the "founding fathers."
Such a view of American history is completely contrary to known facts. The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the timeof the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solvingsocial and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from theuniverse after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection ofmany doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible,or even the divine inspiration of the Bible.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/myth.html
Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was fiercely anti-cleric. In a letter to Horatio Spafford in 1814, Jefferson said, "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than bydeserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached toman into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes" (George Seldes, The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey Citadel Press,1983, p. 371). In a letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith, he wrote, "It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities.
Given what we currently know, all of the first five presidents and most, if not all, of the Founding Fathers believed in God. Atheism was mostly unknown among the writers of Constitution and was very rare among those of European descent in the 18th- Century. However, it is not always easy to ascribe a particular denomination to an individual. Because of the rural nature of early America, many in colonial times chose churches based on convenience. Where theywent to church regularly may not be a perfect indicator of what faith they considered themselves. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was raised Episcopalian, donated a significant amount of money to building Episcopalian churches, attended a Episcopalian church, and yet is not considered an orthodox Episcopalian byany historian of note. Hisviews would be considered heretical by today's orthodox standards.
Further complicating thereligious beliefs of the Founding Fathers is the fact that, like a lot of us, their views changed overtime. Both Jefferson and Franklin, for example, became slightly more orthodox in their beliefs during the last decades of their lives (although this was more a matter of degree than substance).
http://earlyamericanhistory.net/founding_fathers.htm
One of the many attacks on our country from the Religious Right is the claim that our country is a Christian Nation...not just that the majority of people are Christians, but that the country itself was founded by Christians, for Christians. However, a little research into American history will show that this statement is a lie. Those people who spread this lie are known as Christian Revisionists. They are attempting to rewrite history, in much the same way as holocaust deniers are. The men responsible for building the foundation of the United States were men of The Enlightenment, not men of Christianity. They were Deists who did not believe the bible was true. They were Freethinkers who relied on their reason, not theirfaith.
If the U.S. was founded on the Christian religion, the Constitution would clearly say so--but it doesnot. Nowhere does the Constitution say: "The United States is a Christian Nation", or anything even close to that. In fact, the words"Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, Creator, Divine, and God"are never mentioned in the Constitution-- not even once. Nowhere in the Constitution is religion mentioned, except in exclusionary terms. When the Founders wrote the nation's Constitution, they specified that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article 6, section 3) This provision was radical in its day-- giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had.
http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html

Well that is simply nonsense as far as history is concerned.

Freedom from religious persecution was a major driving force in
the founding and settlement of the United States and it is exhaustively
documented. Of course there were a wide range of religions which
sought refuge in America even from the beginning but the overwhelming
majority were certainly Christian.

Here is a nice article from the Library of Congress on the Role of
Religion in the formation of the United States. Read it to learn more.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html

"Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the seventeenth century by men and women, who, in the face of European persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions and fled Europe. The New England colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were conceived and established "as plantations of religion." Some settlers who arrived in these areas came for secular motives--"to catch fish" as one New Englander put it--but the great majority left Europe to worship God in the way they believed to be correct. They enthusiastically supported the efforts of their leaders to create "a city on a hill" or a "holy experiment," whose success would prove that God's plan for his churches could be successfully realized in the American wilderness. Even colonies like Virginia, which were planned as commercial ventures, were led by entrepreneurs who considered themselves "militant Protestants" and who worked diligently to promote the prosperity of the church. "

Church-State Union Leads to Persecution of Minority Religions:

"Prior to and during [John] Locke’s time, it was difficult to determine where religion or church left off and government or state began. The powers of both were often combined. As a result, churches frequently used the force of the state to promote and enforce their interests and doctrines. This caused horrendous atrocities against Jews and heretics, as well as the European religious wars between Catholics and Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that resulted in the deaths of millions of people." Allen Jayne

"The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind - each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others." Carl Sagan

"People who govern in the name of God attribute their own personal preferences to God, and therefore recognize no limit in imposing those preferences on other people." Justice Douglas Johnstone, Alabama Supreme Court

"Conscientious objectors to government policy are willing to suffer greatly rather than violate their conscience; attempts to coerce religious conscience lead inevitably to persecution." Douglas Laycock

"[The Drafters of the Constitution] were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe." John M. Swomley

"Separation of Church and State is one of America’s greatest contributions to modern religion and politics. The adoption of this as a political principle marks an epoch in the history of mankind. Previously at least half the wars of Europe and half the internal troubles since the founding of Christianity had a religious basis. America put an end to religious wars. . . ." Edward Frank Humphrey

The founding father believed in Religious Freedom. Not in a lack of religion. In God they trusted. They were the religious leaders of their homes in families.

Laws:

Thou shalt not steal. (Law)
Thou shalt not lie. (Law)
Thou shalt not kill. (Law)
Remember the Sabbath keep it Holy. (Most companies still close on Sunday)
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (False report purgery)
Obey thy mother and thy father (Truancy Officers and Juvenile Hall)
You Shall not commit adultery (Laws)
'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.' (Trespassing, lewd and lascivious acts, theft)
You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain (cussing at someone and taking the of god name can be considered verbal assault and hence arrestable)

http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html





http://www.jameswatkins.com/foundingfathers.htm

The site from which I got the info on Ben Franklin lists some Christians among the founding fathers.

I'm emphasizing the case that there was a strong Deist influence - you can visit that site to see the evidence for the Christian influence.

I found this comment on that site interesting: