Growing out of 17th-century English intellectual traditions, and expanding in the 18th century with the spread of the Enlightenment, deism retained faith in the idea that God created the world but downplayed the role of Scripture and organized religion. Deism also had an important impact on many leaders in the revolutionary generation.

The political and religious upheaval of 17th-century England caused some individuals to question the relationship between church and state. This questioning led to the beginnings of some toleration for different Protestant groups in England and colonial America. It also led to a general questioning among a few of the role of organized religion. Some individuals held that God was a supreme being--deity--who created the world. It was man's duty to worship this deity, but everyone should do so in a personal manner through a moral and virtuous life. These ideas seemed to fit the new intellectual climate of the 18th century represented by the Enlightenment, which emphasized the relationship between nature and reason, holding that nature was organized according to scientific laws dictated by reason. Within this context, deism became a way to explain the origin of natural law. God created the mechanisms that dictated how nature operated. Humans could study nature and, through reason, discover how those mechanisms operated, but ultimately the basis of nature and reason came from God. A few thinkers held that God was like a great clockmaker who created an elaborate machine--the world--wound it up, and allowed it to continue without his providential hand guiding every move. Prominent thinkers influenced by deism included John Locke in England and Voltaire in France.

Several Revolutionary leaders flirted with deism. Benjamin Franklin wrote a deistic pamphlet as a youth but abandoned his commitment to its tenets and regularly attended religious services later in life. Thomas Jefferson, too, was attracted to deism, and political opponents in the 1790s and early 1800s charged him with being godless, based on earlier statements of his that reflected deism's influence. Even George Washington, although always pious and a churchgoer, expressed some support for deist ideas.

The most explicit statements of deism came from the pens of Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine. In a long manifesto, Reason the Only Oracle of God (1785), Allen argued that the Bible was merely a pasting together of scattered documents without divine inspiration. He believed that morality and religion "as well as all other sciences, is acquired from reason and experience." Denying the divine origin of the Bible and placing reason over the "word of God" did not find a receptive audience in Vermont, and it contributed to the decline of Allen's political career. Thomas Paine wrote the most famous deistic tract while in Revolutionary France. His Age of Reason (1794-96) attacked all biblical revelation as falsehood. Paine, who had used the Bible to such good effect in Common Sense (1776), now declared that the Bible was a forgery and packed with contradictions and immorality: "It is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy for what is more blasphemous than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty." Paine retained his faith in God as a deity; he merely rejected the Bible and organized religion, asserting that "My own mind is my own church" and that state-sponsored churches were "human institutions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." Although some readers in the United States, especially artisans, found his arguments convincing, the book was extremely unpopular and led to his being condemned by many as godless.

Bibliography:

1) David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

2) Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

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