Newcombe on "Hillary Clinton, Saul Alinsky, Ben Carson and Lucifer"

From Jerry Newcombe at World Net Daily here. I'm writing about this because the author finds a way to connect the piece to his Christian nationalist assertions for which he is known. 

Saul Alinsky was a very interesting and intelligent character whose ideas deserve to be studied and taken seriously. No less than William F. Buckley said Alinsky was "very close to being an organizational genius."

Alinsky was not religious; that is he was either an atheist or agnostic. Yes, indeed he did say:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history … the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.

I think he has a point. You don't have to be a devil worshipper to appreciate it. In fact Alinsky said as between the Heaven and Hell in which he didn't believe, he'd choose Hell because that's where the have nots are and he'd like to organize it.

Alinsky's point is more akin to that made by Professor Jennings in Animal House that Satan was the most "intriguing" character in John Milton's "Paradise Lost."

But somehow Jerry Newcombe finds a way to make the following point in his article:

The original Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – is worthy of our worship and fidelity. The vast majority of the Founding Fathers held this view.

For example, when Ben Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens and John Adams negotiated the official peace treaty between the United States and Great Britain in 1783 – the Treaty of Paris – it opened this way: “[I]n the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.”

I think Newcombe shoots too far if he thinks he can speak for the "vast majority" of the Founding Fathers. It's apparent though, from his listed figures, the "key Founders" didn't tend to believe in the Trinity. I usually see Franklin, J. Adams, and Jay credited for the "Treaty of Paris." I know little about Laurens' religious views. I would concede Jay as "orthodox Trinitarian," though even he flirted with the anti-creedalism present in the air that often led to rejection of that doctrine. 

John Adams was a militant anti-Trinitarian. And Ben Franklin, while not so militant, associated himself with the unitarians, called them "honest" and was present at, supported, and lauded the grand opening of the first officially Unitarian Church in England.  And at the very end of his life claimed he "doubted" Jesus' divinity, never studying or taking seriously the issue. 

So we end up with Newcombe's assertion that the "vast majority" of the Founding Fathers believed in the Trinity, but with the cited authoritative figures constituting maybe 50% (2/4) endorsement of the doctrine. 

What about the language cited from the Treaty? Arguably it's because Great Britain, and not America, was the "Christian nation," as it had an officially established Anglican Church that endorsed the Trinity. 

It was language to placate them. 

Maybe. Maybe not. But this is the same argument Christian nationalists use to try to explain away the Treaty of Tripoli which states:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

 You can't have it both ways.