1. The Untold History
Charles Thomson served as secretary of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1789 and helped design the Great Seal of the United States. Of all the men of the founding era, none stood closer to its events. Thomson wrote a detailed private history of the Revolution and the men celebrated within it, but he refused to publish it, reportedly saying:
"No, I ought not, for I should contradict all the histories of the great events of the revolution. Let the world admire the supposed wisdom and valor of our great men... I shall not undeceive future generations."
Thomson eventually destroyed the manuscript. What may have been the truest account of the American Revolution was lost for all time, and with it, a serious investigation into what Thomson meant, what he was hiding, and what later generations have been deceived about ever since.
This is the entry point for the central argument that follows: the public, sanitized image of the founders as devout Christians conceals their true, largely anti-Christian or Enlightenment-shaped religious views. The aim is to challenge "patriotic Christianity", the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation by Christian men, and to expose how promoting this idea, particularly by evangelical Christians and Christian Nationals, draws Christians into political activism rather than the real spiritual battle Scripture describes.
A historical dividing line runs through this account. The Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in 1620 were genuinely Christian, building their towns and schools on biblical teaching. But 150 years later, the Revolutionary generation that founded the United States held very different beliefs, shaped instead by Enlightenment rationalism.
2. Thomas Paine and the Age of Reason
Thomas Paine was the most influential, and later the most deliberately marginalized, figure of the Revolution. The Marquis de Lafayette said it plainly: "A free America without her Thomas Paine is unthinkable." Paine's pamphlet Common Sense directly inspired the Declaration of Independence; historians have long linked the two works closely. Benjamin Franklin met Paine in England, admired his writing, and encouraged him to emigrate to America and put his ideas into print. Paine's tombstone credits him, via a quote from John Adams, with the success of the Revolution itself: "Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain." It was Paine who coined the phrase "the United States of America."
Yet Paine was sidelined by historians for a reason: his book The Age of Reason attacked the Bible and Christian doctrine directly. He called the Bible "a history of the grossest vices" and described the Gospel story of Christ as "the fable of Jesus Christ." He attacked the virgin birth as "blasphemously obscene," writing that the Gospel asks readers to believe "the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married."
Paine's worldview was part of a broader Enlightenment cult of reason, the same impulse that drove the French Revolution to elevate a "goddess of reason" on a throne. Even the 1599 Geneva Bible's footnotes recognized this pagan pattern centuries earlier. The Enlightenment thinkers, Paine chief among them, held that anything in Scripture not verifiable by human reason, especially miracles like the virgin birth, should be rejected outright.
Paine's Death
Paine's death, documented by biographers Moncure D. Conway and John E. Remsburg, reveals the depth of his conviction. He surrounded himself with witnesses in his final days specifically so no one could later claim he had recanted his unbelief. When an elderly woman visited him claiming to be sent by God to warn him to repent, Paine dismissed her harshly, ordering his caretaker to "turn this messenger out." Remsburg documented roughly twenty deathbed witnesses who affirmed Paine never recanted. Paine's own will lists his authorship of Common Sense alongside a work arguing there are "no prophecies" concerning Jesus Christ.
If Paine's pen was the spirit behind the Revolution, the question worth asking is what kind of spirit that was. Scripture offers a framework: 1 John 4 and 2 John both describe "the spirit of Antichrist" as any spirit that denies Christ came in the flesh.
3. Secret Societies: Freemasonry and the Illuminati
The founders, especially Paine and Franklin, were connected to European secret societies, a link laid out in historian James H. Billington's book Fire in the Minds of Men. Billington describes the revolutionary spirit as shaped more by "the occultism and protoromanticism of Germany" than by French rationalism, with European aristocrats moving "their lighted candles from Christian altars to Masonic lodges."
The Bavarian Illuminati was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a Freemason, the same year as the Declaration of Independence, and the same date inscribed on the pyramid base of the Great Seal. Billington states that while Freemasonry gave the Revolution "a symbolic vocabulary," it was Illuminism that supplied "its basic structural model."
Paine's housemate in France from 1797 to 1802, Nicolas de Bonneville, was converted to Illuminist ideas by Weishaupt's associate Christian Bode, a direct link between Paine and the Illuminati. Thomas Jefferson himself suggested that Weishaupt's ideas would have been welcomed openly in America rather than needing secrecy at all.
Benjamin Franklin's Masonic activity ran deep. He missed only a handful of lodge meetings in his entire life, served as master of a Philadelphia lodge, and later became master of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris, a hub of Illuminati activity, where he reportedly initiated Voltaire himself.
The Hellfire Club
Franklin's membership in England's Hellfire Club, known formally as the Monks of Medmenham Abbey, has been covered by both Time magazine and the History Channel. The club's activities ranged from mocking traditional religion to, by some accounts, occult ritual. In 1998, the Sunday Times of London reported that the remains of ten bodies, four adults and six children, several showing signs of dissection, were found buried beneath Franklin's former London residence. The conventional explanation ties the remains to the medical experiments of Franklin's friend Dr. William Hewson, but the circumstances leave open the question of whether the Hellfire Club itself played a role.
4. The Founders' Private Writings on Christianity
A consistent pattern emerges across the founders: public, general religious language stands in sharp contrast to private letters that reveal far more skeptical, even openly anti-Christian, views.
Thomas Jefferson denied core Christian doctrines in his correspondence:
"[Revelation] I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."
His "Jefferson Bible," officially titled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, was compiled by removing all supernatural elements: the virgin birth, the miracles, the resurrection. Jefferson described this process as separating "diamonds from dunghills." He predicted that belief in the virgin birth would someday be classed with pagan myth, and he told his nephew Peter Carr to weigh the Gospel accounts skeptically, urging him to "keep your reason firmly on the watch." When Jefferson heard of the bloodshed of the French Revolution, he remarked that he would rather have seen "half the earth desolated" than have the revolutionary cause fail, a glimpse of the radical philosophy underlying his public reserve.
John Adams, a Unitarian, denied the divinity of Christ outright. He called the idea of God taking human form "an awful blasphemy," and pointed to an "Indian Shasta" text as offering theology he found more compelling than parts of the Bible. When critics challenged his orthodoxy, Adams answered plainly: "Ye will say I am no Christian. I say ye are no Christians."
Benjamin Franklin, writing to Yale president Ezra Stiles shortly before his death, expressed doubt about the divinity of Jesus while praising his moral teaching:
"I have... some doubts as to his divinity... I think it needless to busy myself with it now when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."
Even facing death, Franklin never embraced orthodox Christian belief.
George Washington is the most consequential case. Despite his regular church attendance, the men who knew him best, his pastors, Bishop William White and Rev. James Abercrombie, and his chaplain, Ashbell Green, could not confirm he held orthodox Christian beliefs.
Washington reportedly left church services before communion was administered, a practice his step-granddaughter Nelly Custis confirmed and Rev. Abercrombie addressed publicly from the pulpit, after which Washington simply stopped attending church altogether on communion Sundays.
Bishop White said he could recall no fact proving Washington "to have been a believer in the Christian Revelation" beyond his general church attendance, and that he never once saw Washington kneel in prayer during services.
Abercrombie, asked directly about Washington's faith, answered: "Sir, Washington was a deist."
Thomas Jefferson's diary describes how Philadelphia clergy tried to maneuver Washington into a public statement of Christian faith before he left office, and that Washington skilfully avoided the request, described as being "too cunning" for them.
A disputed tradition, sourced to the Denver Register and Catholic publications, holds that Washington was baptized into the Catholic Church hours before his death by a Jesuit priest, Father Leonard Neale. The story was passed down among Washington's slaves and Catholic sources, though it never entered the official historical record.
Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli states plainly that the U.S. government "is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." Nineteenth-century historian Moncure Conway traced this clause to Washington himself, and the Senate passed it unanimously under Adams.
5. The Masonic and Jesuit Threads
The Masonic symbolism behind the Declaration of Independence runs deeper than most realize. The document itself was reportedly written on Masonic lambskin parchment, and the lambskin apron given to every initiated Mason carries deep theological weight: it represents covering one's own sin through good deeds, a works-righteousness theology that stands in direct contrast to the biblical account of God covering Adam and Eve's nakedness with animal skins in Genesis, the first sacrifice, pointing forward to Christ.
A second thread runs through Jesuit influence on the founding:
The design of the original Continental Army flag may trace back to Lorenzo Ricci, the Jesuit superior general, delivered through an unnamed "mysterious professor" who met with Washington and Franklin, according to 19th-century author Robert Allan Campbell and later researcher F. Tupper Saussy.
The U.S. Capitol echoes the architecture of St. Peter's Basilica, including an obelisk positioned similarly to the one in St. Peter's Square, and houses busts of Popes Innocent III and Gregory IX.
The Capitol's "Apotheosis of Washington" ceiling fresco mirrors the "apotheosis" frescoes of Ignatius Loyola found in Jesuit churches throughout Rome, the same pagan term, apotheosis, applied to mortal men ascending into godhood.
The constitutional doctrine of religious liberty traces back to England's 1688 "Declaration of Indulgence" under Catholic King James II, a measure 19th-century Bishop J.C. Ryle identified as Jesuit-engineered, designed to protect Catholic interests under the guise of general religious tolerance.
6. The Critique of David Barton
Finally, let's look at the arguments of many Christian activists who promote the "Christian nation" thesis. Their methods depend on selectively quoting founders out of context to make them appear more orthodox than their full body of writing supports.
The pattern is easy to demonstrate with modern figures. An isolated quote from Barack Obama affirming faith in Christ, or from Nancy Pelosi invoking "the Word," or Donald Trump frequently citing the Bible as his favourite book, can create a false impression of someone's beliefs when stripped of context, exactly the technique at work in many Christians treatment of the founders.
John Adams praising "the Christian religion" without ever mentioning Adams's private letters denying the divinity of Christ.
Jefferson saying, "I am a real Christian... a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus," a line that, read in full context, actually reflects Jefferson's rejection of Christ's divinity rather than an affirmation of orthodox belief.
On Glenn Beck's program, Christian activist David Barton quoted a John Adams letter about "the Holy Ghost" carrying on "the whole Christian system," but cut the quotation short. The fuller letter shows Adams being sarcastic about orthodox claims of religious and civil authority, not affirming them, closing with Adams calling such beliefs the product of "king craft, priestcraft, and devil's craft."
In his own book on Freemasonry and the founders, Barton describes Masonic theology accurately, a universalist "Great Architect of the Universe" open to "the Judeo-Christian god or a pagan or pantheistic god." yet this is precisely the god Washington and the other founders worshipped, even as Barton goes on to argue Washington was a committed Christian.
A 2007 congressional resolution, House Resolution 33, stated that "the founding fathers of this great nation and signers of the Constitution" were "most of [them] Freemasons," direct evidence against claims that Freemasonry had little influence on the founding.
The dividing line drawn at the outset holds firm to the end: the Puritans and Pilgrims who first settled America were genuinely Christian, but the Revolutionary generation that founded the United States was not. The founders' private writings, the testimony of their own pastors, and their documented associations with secret societies together stand against the popular narrative that the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian nation by devout Christian men.