Paine took the time to harshly criticize the very faith that most of his neighbors lived by.
Yep, he did do that. He was certainly cynical about established religion.
His neighbors….Paine arrived in the colonies in 1774 with the help of Ben Franklin (also a deist. Note that Deism was common amongst the founding fathers…Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe are a few.) i do not believe that any of them voiced as sharp a criticism as did Paine. Paine settled in New Rochelle, NY. His neighbors were French Huegenots who had left France to escape Catholic persecution.
Paine wrote his famous tract “Common Sense” in 1776. Shortly after the war he travelled to France. He was arrested there and it was while incarcerated that he wrote “The Age of Reason” (1794) which contained the passage quoted earlier.
I must take exception with your choice of Deists among the founders of our nation. First off, I will give you Jefferson and possibly Monroe, but Washington and Madison..I reserve the right to quibble.
Deism claims that God created the world, then essentially walked off and left it..forgot it. That prayers directed to him would not reach Him.
Though any estimation of the depth of Franklin's belief is sketchy at best, he could not have been a pure Deist, since at the constitutional convention, he implored for God's intervention. Here's his prayer;
" therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service." Washington is a far different case. Gen Washington was an Episcopalian, and very open about it> ..And that was
when the Episcopalians were far more "Biblical" than they are today.
Gen Washington carried with him a 'book of prayers', mostly written by himself ..
One winter day Isaac Potts, a Tory resident of the Valley forge area, was walking through the woods when he came upon Washington in prayer. He even heard the prayer, and was so touched that he concluded right there, that the British had already lost the war.
This witness decades later, inspired Arnold Friberg to produce the painting shown below.
True, some of the founding fathers were skeptical concerning "organized religion', with the same skepticism that Luther held for the medieval church and Knox and our 'Pilgrims' held for the Anglicans...but they still believed in an active, loving, personal and just God.
