Deists or Christians?

Many people today believe that America's founding Fathers were all (or almost all) Deists. There were some prominent men among the Founding Fathers that were Deist. Thomas Jefferson is the most renown of them, but Jefferson kept his religious views concealed from the general public.

No one can see into his neighbour’s soul to see for certainty that he/she knows Christ. This is true today and it is true of the Founders as well. We do know that the great majority of the Founders were outwardly adherents to the Christian faith.
These men understood the union of the United States, which was formed first under the Articles of Confederation and than under the Constitution to be part of what was known as Christendom (Christ Kingdom). The secularised, central government, that exists today and has replaced the federal union created by the Constitution, is not what the Founders had in mind.

The best way for our generation to know what kind of people the Founders were and what they intended is to read their own writings. That is a bit tedious, though I enjoy that kind of reading. I can recommend two books have done much of the tedious work for you. Original Intentions: On The Making And Ratification Of The United States Constitution - and - Founding Fathers: Brief Lives Of The Framers Of The United States Constitution both books are by a renown scholar M. E. Bradford.

Bradford says this of those Judges, academics and others who want to make the framers out as Deists or secularists:
Either these Framers were elaborate hypocrites in being Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Methodist, and Presbyterian or the justices are confused. Or, better still, they are pretending to be confused... Of course the most unmistakable evidence of orthodoxy comes in references made by the Framers to Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Son of God.

Bradford adds that 95% of the framers were confessing Christians and not deists.
America’s Founding Fathers lived at a time before liberal anti-Christian theologies captured many of the mainline denominations like they have today. I don't believe that the moral, spiritual, cultural and political corruption that is prevalent in America today would surprise most of them. They knew history and Scripture. They understood that human nature, fallen as it is, is bent toward this sort of departure from sound government, religion and morality.

We need to re-learn what has been lost and teach our children; perhaps then (by God’s grace) we will live to see true political, moral and Christian reformation come to our land.

Coram Deo,
Kenith