Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention found itself bogged down over the issue of representation. Small states wanted equal representation in the national legislature. Large states wanted proportional representation. The dispute seemed irresolvable, and if it could not be resolved, the young American nation itself might not survive.Benjamin Franklin — America’s gray eminence, Pennsylvania’s delegate — proposed to solve the impasse by means of daily prayer, reasoning this way:"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and by-word down to future ages."Franklin’s proposal was defeated handily. “The Convention,” Franklin wrote, “except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.”This episode, from near the end of Franklin’s life, reveals several things about Franklin’s mature religious beliefs, not to mention the influence of religion on the American founding. Like other Founding Fathers — George Washington especially comes to mind — Franklin believed that God providentially ordered world events, particularly the formation of the United States of America. His public rhetoric was shot through with biblical imagery. And he believed in the social usefulness of religion for republican government; hence, the call to prayer.And yet, these mature religious beliefs, though sincere, were neither orthodox nor evangelical, a fact demonstrated in depth by Thomas S. Kidd in his recently published Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father. Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston to devout Puritans who raised him and his siblings in the doctrines of evangelical Calvinism. In his teenage years, under the influence of skeptical writings by Lord Shaftesbury and Anthony Collins, he left that faith and became, in his own words, “a thorough deist.”Unfortunately, the word deist conjures up the image of a clockmaker god who winds up the universe then leaves it alone. That does not accurately describe Franklin’s mature belief, however. Deists of that stripe, to point out the obvious, do not issue the kind of plea for prayers Franklin made at the Constitutional Convention.“The key to understanding Franklin’s ambivalent religion,” Kidd writes, “is the contrast between the skepticism of his adult life and the indelible imprint of his childhood Calvinism.” To be sure, Franklin was skeptical of orthodox Christology (i.e., the Incarnation) and evangelical soteriology (i.e., justification by faith). He was consistent on these points throughout his adult life, though he expressed the scope and intensity of his skepticism at different times and in various ways. What mattered to him more than what one believed was how one lived.This moralism was not atheism, however. Five weeks before he died, in a letter dated March 9, 1790, Franklin described his creed to Yale’s Ezra Stiles, an evangelical Christian, this way:"I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we can render to him, is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this."Not nothing, religiously speaking, but not fully Christian either.Franklin’s Calvinist rearing no doubt influenced his religious beliefs. Most obviously, it gave him a biblical idiom in which to express himself. Less obviously, warm relationships with evangelical Christians such as his sister Jane Mecom, evangelist George Whitefield, and others moderated his skeptical tone and made him appreciative of evangelicals’ good works. Throughout his life, these evangelicals pleaded with him to put his faith in Jesus, but at the end, all he would say is this: “I think the system of morals and his religion as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.” Again, not nothing, but not Christianity.Franklin’s ambivalent religion points to an important truth about the role of religion in America’s founding. Many evangelical Christians think of America as a Christian nation founded on biblical principles. This is not a new belief, and it is not entirely wrong. From the start of the colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth Bay and all the way to the present day, America has been a nation of self-professed Christians. Protestant political theology exercised tremendous influence on the American colonists; the Bible suffused their public rhetoric, and established churches shaped their public piety. In the 19th century, due to waves of revival, evangelical Christianity became the de facto established religion of the new nation.And yet, alongside this Christianity sits something less than Christian. Neither orthodox nor evangelical, we might call it non-doctrinaire, moralistic theism. It is a peculiarly American faith. Shaped by Christianity, but not Christian. Sounding like the Bible, but not biblical. This was Franklin’s faith, and the faith of other Founders too, such as Thomas Jefferson. When we query the role of religion in the American founding, we must take this non-doctrinaire, moralistic theism into account, for it was present and it was influential. This was the reason why, for example, in drafting the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson described God in generic terms — “Nature’s God”—rather than specifically biblical ones.This truth about the role of religion in America’s founding generates two points of application for evangelical Christians, in my opinion. First, we must recognize that the American experiment is a joint venture, not a sole proprietorship. Yes, orthodox and evangelical Christians played an important role in the establishment of America. They did not play the only role, however. Alongside them and sometimes in conflict with them, theists of a non-Christian variety exercised influence on the development of our nation. Benjamin Franklin is proof of that.(In fairness, the same reminder needs to be issued to skeptical Americans today who deny Christians a role in the Founding. Not only were they present and influential, but atheists played no role. Even the radically skeptical Thomas Paine argued for the necessity of belief in God, after all.)Second, given the foregoing point, it behooves orthodox and evangelical Christians to be more mindful of political rhetoric. Invocations of God — whether in American history or at the present time — are not necessarily invocations of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Too often, we read our Christian convictions into the theological pronouncements of the Founders, which means we misread them. By describing the religious life of Benjamin Franklin in detail over the course of his life, Thomas S. Kidd helps us better understand Franklin’s faith, which as much as American evangelicals love Franklin, was not our own.P.S. This review was written for Influence Magazine dot com and appears here by permission.

Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd’s “religious life” of Benjamin Franklin is nothing of the kind. On the key points of Franklin’s hidden life: his involvement with Freemasonry, and the Hell-Fire Club in Britain, Kidd’s book is a whitewash.Franklin’s masonic involvement barely engages the author (cf. pp. 76-78). He admits that “Freemasonry became like an alternative religion for many members.”It follows then, that in a biography centered on Franklin’s religion, that his involvement in the masonic religion would be fully explicated. Not so. Kidd writes, “...in spite of Franklin’s long membership and service in the society, we should not over-emphasize its significance in Franklin’s personal life.”Really? Even though Franklin rose to be the Grand Master of the most important masonic lodge in France, and Grand Master of the masonic lodge of Philapdelphia?Kidd gives the following reason for this judgment of his: “He (Franklin) did not often discuss it (Freemasonry) in his papers or in the “Autobiography...”Freemasonry is a secret society. Masons are sworn to secrecy on pain of death. To rely on Franklin’s public pronouncements alone as a reliable indicator of his actual involvement is a joke, but that’s precisely what the author does. He exhibits nearly zero curiosity about the extent of Franklin’s involvement with the Masons as Grand Master of two lodges in two nations, as well as the nature of his leadership role in the masonic religion.Where were the editors at the publishing company that issued this book (Yale University Press) when Kidd covered Franklin’s Freemasonry in five pages of what would seem to be something approaching masonic propaganda?Prof. Kidd appears to be unaware of the enormous outcry against the Masons after William Morgan was murdered in 1826. The seeds of that populist revolt were planted in Franklin’s time, as his masonic brotherhood used secrecy to gain power in business and government and establish an elite insider organization closed to the “cowans.”Kidd appears to be ignorant of the fact that the brotherhood’s pose as a Biblically-derived creed is a farce. With naiveté more typical of a high school sophomore term paper than a Yale University history volume, Kidd writes, “Deistically inclined as many Freemasons were, they still traced their history to the biblical record, and interwove the history of Masonry with events such as the construction of Solomon’s Temple.”The preceding is nearly an exact quote from pamphlets written by Freemasons about their order. Kidd takes them at face value. In truth, much of Freemasonry is derived from the rabbinic Kabbalah, with the Old Testament used as a prop for public consumption.Moreover, when he was 33-years-of-age Franklin was implicated in the still mysterious masonic murder of Daniel Rees by members of the Philadelphia masonic lodge. The “American Weekly Mercury” newspaper accused Franklin of involvement in the gruesome murder (Rees was set on fire and burned to death). A “Satanic oath” had been administered to Rees. Prof. Kidd does not deny that Franklin boastfully showed the oath to his friends while mocking Rees.Franklin was subsequently a witness at a criminal trial of Evan Jones, a Mason believed to have been the one who actually set Rees on fire. Jones was convicted of manslaughter -- and then released without fine or imprisonment, or any other punishment for having taken the life of Rees (other than being branded on one hand). Franklin walked free, without being convicted. (Cf. pp. 118-120).Prof. Kidd exhibits zero curiosity about how it was that the colonial court set free a perpetrator convicted of manslaughter. What role, if any, did the masonic brotherhood have in this miscarriage of justice? Kidd is oblivious. The Rees case is the most serious major scandal at the center of Franklin’s entire life, whether religious or diplomatic. Kidd deals with it in three pages. As the biographer of Franklin it should be incumbent on the author to do original archival research on the case, searching for letters, diaries and similar evidence. Again, Kidd will have none of it. He insinuates the standard masonic narrative: the affair was unfortunate and Franklin exhibited poor judgement. The circumstances of the murder and the Satanism do not interest Thomas Kidd, who appears to have checked a few published sources and then proceeded no further with an investigation. This is history?As for Franklin’s membership in Sir Francis Dashwood’s Satanic Hell-Fire Club, Mr. Kidd assures us that, “...there is no evidence that Franklin himself participated in these lewd activities...” (p. 200). On what basis does Kidd exculpate Franklin? We are not told.Of Franklin, the Grand Master of the Paris Lodge of Freemasons, and the associate of the Hell Fire Club, he writes: “Franklin was too rooted in traditional Christianity to sanction overt antagonism of it.” Concerning covert antagonism Kidd is not interested.The reader of this biography of Franklin’s religious life is not supposed to be either.Mr. Kidd has a dogma: Franklin the Freemason preserved sufficient vestigial Calvinism from his youth to render him a sincere and lifelong promoter of Christianity. This thesis will not survive the excavation of Franklin’s occult activities, so Kidd does not undertake the excavation.Some of Kidd’s other dogmas are also troubling. He is determined to make Cotton Mather a flawed hero by omitting key information about him. He acknowledges that Mather is, to his critics, “one of the chief culprits behind the Salem witchcraft controversy that ravaged Massachusetts in 1692.” However, he adds, “Mather’s defenders have argued he was really ‘peripheral’ to the proceedings at Salem.”Peripheral? To maintain this fiction, Kidd omits all mention of Mather’s 1689 book, “Memorable Providences,” which upholds demon possession of the Goodwin children in Boston, for which a woman, Goody Glover, was executed. Mather’s book contributed to the witch hunting hysteria in Salem in 1692, which Mather justified in his 1693 book of nonsense, “Wonders of the Invisible World.” Kidd is silent on all of this. He prefers his dogma: upholding Mather as a medical pioneer responsible for the “courageous defense of inoculation.”Lastly, Kidd situates the “English” in a vacuum, as perpetrators who “committed grotesque violence against Native Americans...Puritan fighters slaughtered hundreds of Indians, many of them women and children...” (p. 15).Politically-correct “history” is monotonous in the extreme, as is all parroting of clichés. Kidd neglects to mention the horrendous Indian atrocities inflicted on Puritan civilians. Some of the survivors of those attacks were traumatized girls who would be the principals in the Salem hysteria, brought on by post-traumatic stress in the wake of the savage slaughter they witnessed, as Mary Beth Norton demonstrates in her important revisionist history, “In the Devil’s Snare” (2003).Thomas Kidd’s “Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father” is a failure. It is a victim of its author’s predetermined axiom that Franklin was not an enemy of Christianity and that he was in some respects a more sincere respecter of the Christian religion than many of the other founders. This notion can only obtain cachet if Franklin’s masonic and Satanic activities are airbrushed out of his curriculum vitae or, where that is not entirely possible, explained away with cosmetic accounts reeking of masonic disinformation.The book contains notes and an index but lacks a bibliography.I am reluctant to give a one-star rating. Kidd’s scholarly industry is obvious in other parts the book, particularly the section on Franklin and George Whitefield. But in its abysmal neglect of the years of Franklin’s masonic membership, and indeed his leadership of Freemasonry in the U.S. and France, as well as involvement in the Rees case and the Hell Fire Club, all of which are enormously significant for determining Franklin’s authentic religious life, the book fails to fulfill its promise; it is instead a volume of misdirection, and a disservice as such.