Gregg L. Frazer's Religious Beliefs

The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders, by Gregg L. Frazer, takes a look at the Founding Fathers’ statements and writings in order to explore what beliefs they truly practiced and believed in. He wants to prove his findings without looking to deeply into what the Founding Fathers “meant”, but rather what they were recorded as saying. In his eyes, this means he can show their true beliefs without letting an outside agenda on either side work its way into the evidence. Frazer also wanted to examine whether the Founders’ religious beliefs had anything to do with their political stances and how they participated in the government. Finally, he will suggest a possible solution to the answer of what they believed and practiced which, in his mind, creates a new kind of belief system: theistic rationalism. Frazer explains how theistic rationalism combines parts of “natural religion, Christianity, and rationalism, with rationalism as the predominant element.” …show more content…
For example, he dissects each part of John Adams’ religious viewpoints by looking at his letters and personal writings, to prove that he believes in the three different parts of theistic rationalism. He pulls quotes directly from Adams’ letters to various recipients, as well as passages from Adams’ personal diary in order to prove his deistic and Christian views, and points out that Adams believed “the Platonic phylosophers [sic] probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity,” but also referred to Adams’ Christian beliefs that “God created the world and that God ought to be worshipped.” Frazer then pulls evidence for Adams’ beliefs from letters to a different recipient in order to prove that his beliefs, “like that of the other key Founders, [were] a sort of middle ground between protestantism and