If any candidate tells you that his God told him to run or that anyone else is Godless or if our government is a Christian Government tell him he is an idiot!
I decided to give a historian's rag on this question and so I have taken the exact quotations of our past great presidents and put them below. These are not excerpts..no the exact words...lets start with the guy that wrote all about us from the beginning in the Declaration of Independence..remember he said "Nature's God"....
Thomas Jefferson
"The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error." Statues of Virginia
Jefferson's religious views became a major public issue during the bitter party conflict between Federalists and Republicans in the late 1790s when Jefferson was often accused of being an atheist. Jefferson is considered a Diest!
How about the first president George Washington...
Washington commented on sermons only twice. In his writings, he never referred to "Jesus Christ." He attended church rarely, and did not take communion - though Martha did, requiring the family carriage to return back to the church to get her later.
When trying to arrange for workmen in 1784 at Mount Vernon, Washington made clear that he would accept "Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists." Washington wrote Lafayette in 1787,Being no bigot myself, I am disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church that road to
heaven which to them shall seem the most direct, plainest, easiest and least liable to exception." Washington believed in Providence!
How about Theodore Roosevelt (NYTimes)
President Theodore Roosevelt replies to one of several letters he received during the presidential campaign that tried to make a political issue of William Howard Taft’s religion. The letter writer in this case says that Taft is a Unitarian and that his wife and brother are Roman Catholics. These are reasons, the letter writer feels, “for not voting for Taft.”
Roosevelt writes: “I did not answer any of these letters during the campaign, because I regarded it as an outrage even to agitate such a question. … To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular Church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any Church, is an outrage against the liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. … I do not for one moment believe that the mass of our fellow-citizens, or that any considerable number of our fellow citizens, can be influenced by such narrow bigotry as to refuse to vote for any thoroughly upright and fit man because he happens to have a particular religious creed. … I believe that this Republic will endure for many centuries. If so, there will doubtless be among its Presidents Protestants and Catholics, and very probably at some time, Jews. … In my Cabinet at the present moment there sit side by side Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Jew, each man chosen because in my belief he is peculiarly fit to exercise on behalf of all our people the duties of the office. … In no case does a man’s religious belief in any way influence his discharge of his duties, save as it makes him more eager to act justly and uprightly in his relations to all men.” These “are the principles upon which all good Americans should act in choosing, whether by election or appointment, the men to fill any office, from the highest to the lowest in the land.”
Roosevelt writes: “I did not answer any of these letters during the campaign, because I regarded it as an outrage even to agitate such a question. … To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular Church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any Church, is an outrage against the liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. … I do not for one moment believe that the mass of our fellow-citizens, or that any considerable number of our fellow citizens, can be influenced by such narrow bigotry as to refuse to vote for any thoroughly upright and fit man because he happens to have a particular religious creed. … I believe that this Republic will endure for many centuries. If so, there will doubtless be among its Presidents Protestants and Catholics, and very probably at some time, Jews. … In my Cabinet at the present moment there sit side by side Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Jew, each man chosen because in my belief he is peculiarly fit to exercise on behalf of all our people the duties of the office. … In no case does a man’s religious belief in any way influence his discharge of his duties, save as it makes him more eager to act justly and uprightly in his relations to all men.” These “are the principles upon which all good Americans should act in choosing, whether by election or appointment, the men to fill any office, from the highest to the lowest in the land.”
And of course my favorite president Harry Truman
In my opinion people's religious beliefs are their own affair, and when I don't agree with 'em I just don't discuss religion. It has caused more wars and feuds than money, and that seems a shame too. (From a letter to Bess Truman, October 16, 1939. Papers Relating to Family, Business, and Personal Affairs.)
Amen.....
I think Harry's best quote is from a letter to Bess as well....
President Truman: I am by religion like everything else. I think there is more in acting than in talking. I had an uncle who said when one of his neighbors got religion strong on Sunday, he was going to lock his smokehouse on Monday. I think he was right from the little I have observed. (From a letter to Bess Wallace, February 7, 1911. Papers Relating to Family, Business, and Personal Affairs.)
I agree with Harry Let's lock the smokehouse for fear one of these yahoo's become President!
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