Founding Fathers were a mixed lot

To the editor:

Joseph Goebbels said, "If you tell a lie, tell a big one. Never change it. If you tell it often enough and loud enough, it becomes accepted as truth, and you no longer have to tell it. The masses will believe and tell it for you."

Fundamentalists like the Limbaughs assert that revisionist historians have betrayed our Founding Fathers and that Christianity is under attack through sinister elements in our courts. They attempt to redefine secularism as atheism. Webster defines secular: "Not bound by monastic vows or rules; of, relating to, or forming clergy not belonging to a religious order or congregation."

Students of American history know that the Framers of our Constitution were a diverse and gifted group consisting of various Christians, deists, free thinkers and agnostics. By modern fundamentalist standards, several would likely have been labeled atheists and whipped.

Writings by Supreme Court justices reveal they agonized over decisions involving religion and were torn between Christian traditions and the need to protect secularism in government. Because they read history and understood the nasty tradition of church-on-church persecution, our Founding Fathers decided on a secular constitution. Thank God, these great men understood secularism is a good thing.

Reading James Madison's meticulously kept notes of the constitutional convention or a biography of Anne Hutchison might clear some of the fog for confused fundamentalists. Or maybe not.

WILL RICHARDSON

Jackson