More Benjamin Franklin

Before I get too set in my beliefs about things, like, say, the concept of separation of church and state or whether the United States was intended to be a Christian nation founded on Christian principles, I have to remind myself that it's very often pretty useful to actually read history, rather than read about it.

For instance, I was pretty sure Benjamin Franklin was a deist. Actually, I'm still pretty sure Benjamin Franklin was a deist.

He did, after all, write, in the last year of his life, "I have some doubts as to [Jesus'] divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that, during the long hot summer of the Constitutional Convention, when the heat of the weather and the heat of the debate began to cause tempers to flare, Benjamin Franklin made a motion to begin every session of the Convention with a prayer, thinking it might well cool passions a bit.

But, imagine my even greater surprise when I learned that, the motion being put to a vote by the Founding Fathers of our republic, those very men who wrote and signed the Constitution of these United States, it failed. Apparently, the majority of those men who drafted our core document didn't see the necessity of publicly asking for divine intercession.

Or ... maybe ... they saw the risk in it.