To the editor:

It is important to correct the impression given by the Rev. Paul Gray in Pulse on Saturday, July 1, that America was “founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs and principles” and that they were “strong practicing Christians.”

The record shows that the majority of America’s founders were deists with only tangential connections to mainstream Christianity. Many, like Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Ethan Allen, were actively anti-established Christianity. Some, like James Monroe, identified with no tradition. Others like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were nominal Christians and outspoken deists. John Adams, a Unitarian, was championed as the “religious” candidate against Thomas Jefferson, the so-called “French infidel and atheist.”

Several books discuss the religious beliefs of the founding fathers including David Lynn Holmes’ “The Faiths of the Founding Fathers” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and Kerry S. Walters’ “The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic” (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992).

On discovering that George Washington did not cut down his father’s cherry tree, I do not feel it necessary to refuse to eat cherry pie on Feb. 22. On hearing pious inaccuracies about America’s founders, however, I do feel it necessary to protest against the misrepresentation of their intentions.

S. Daniel Breslauer,

Lawrence