My Letter To WND on Pat Boone's Latest Article:

I'll reproduce the relevant part. You can read Boone's article here.

Regarding the Founding Fathers, Boone is as ignorant as the secular leftist with whom he corresponds. He doesn't realize he partakes in his own "Christian Nation" errors just as his correspondent engages in "secular left" errors.

First, Boone claims that Jefferson "averred that he consulted no other source for his Declaration...." Boone refers either to "specific Christian churches" or Blackstone; I can't tell based on the way Boone wrote the passage. But, it doesn't matter, because Jefferson sourced NEITHER for the ideas of the DOI. Rather, in a letter to Richard Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, Jefferson lists "Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. ..." Not the Bible, not the Christian churches and not Blackstone.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=3

Further Blackstone's influence on the Founding was qualified. The FFs had a love/hate relationship with him and for good reason. He was authoritative on common law issues; but on the overarching issues, he was an English Tory who believed in absolute parliamentary supremacy and thought the American Revolution violated such. In other words, 1776 was precisely an anti-Blackstonian movement. No wonder the FFs could hate him as they loved him.

Re whether the FFs were "Christians" or "Deists," this creates a false dichotomy. Yes, all of the notable FFs, including the supposed "Deists" like Jefferson, Franklin and Wilson were in some way affiliated with Christian Churches. In other words they were "Christian" by association or club membership. And they tended to identify as "Christians" as well (as Jefferson did). However these "Christian" men are also on record, in their private letters, denying virtually every single tenet of orthodoxy that defines "Christianity" to a Pat Boone or a Joe Farah. I'm speaking of original sin, the trinity, incarnation, atonement, eternal damnation, infallibility of the Bible and so on.

Perhaps Pat Boone can answer whether one can be a "Christian" and deny these things. And lest you think it was just Jefferson and Franklin who believed this way, I'll close with good old conservative "Christian" John Adams, mocking Christ's Incarnation and Deity.

"An incarnate God!!! An eternal, self-existent, omnipresent omniscient Author of this stupendous Universe, suffering on a Cross!!! My Soul starts with horror, at the Idea, and it has stupified the Christian World. It has been the Source of almost all of the Corruptions of Christianity.”

-- John Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816

Regards,

Jon Rowe
Yardley, PA

Now, let me anticipate some criticism. First, instead of "Jefferson and Franklin," as the Deists or "not Christians" I have Jefferson, Franklin and J. Adams. Not exactly. I have smoking gun quotations from those three. However, it's not at all clear that Washington, Madison, G. Morris, Hamilton before his deathbed were "Christians" in the way that Pat Boone understands the term or disbelieved in the fundamentals as put forth by Jefferson, J. Adams and Franklin (i.e., there is an active personal God, Jesus was something special, but not the 2nd Person in the Trinity, that men are justified through works not grace).

Second, the fact that I am discussing an article written by Pat Boone at all. A bit strawmanish? Yes, I admit it is. However, he and I both share an interest in this subject matter. WND is widely read. Boone (like Chuck Norris) is a semi-celebrity.

And as a long time fan of rock and roll, I have a score to settle with a man who nearly ruined the genre before the Beatles emerged to save it.

That dude has no musical soul whatsoever. There is a video of him singing Tutti Fruitti somewhere where he snaps his fingers on the one and three (we were shown it in our "History Of Rock" class at Berklee College of Music). I'll try to find it.