Religion and Presidents

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father... ~ Matthew 6:5-6

Nothing is more meaningless that a president's religion. When George Bush prays in public, which he does at every opportunity, he closes his eyes very tight and scrunches his face like he's trying to pass a strunkulis. It's quite a show. If anything, the performance displays his lack faith, the hypocrisy Jesus spoke about. Does Bush care what his pastor says? Apparently not as his own Austin pastor, Rev. James Mayfield, publicly chastised Bush in 1998.

Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again, not what kind of church I believe in -- for that should be important only to me -- but what kind of America I believe in. ~ John Kennedy, 1960

Many Republicans in 1960, as today, considered the Catholic Church apostate, the Great Whore as McCain supporter John Hagee has preached. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham urged Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee, to organize a Protestant campaign to prevent a Catholic president. Even Nixon found this idea repulsive and he steadfastly refused to use religion during the campaign.

Both [North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. ~ Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

Some people (me) believe that Abraham Lincoln was the closest any American president got to living a life that Jesus Christ would have approved of. The Second Inaugural stands with the Sermon on the Mount as one of the greatest speeches every delivered. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right. These are inspired words that live in history and few Americans have been able to live up to.

In his time Lincoln was called a prairie infidel, someone who was rarely seen on the inside of a church. His denominational faith is unclear, if he even had one. His faith was a private matter. Even today unreconstructed Confederates who continue to believe that emancipating slaves was an outrageous Federal act of theft attack The Cult of Lincoln because Abe was an infidel.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Founding Father. Author of the Declaration of Independence. Third President of the United States. Also denounced as an infidel in his lifetime. Jefferson was a Deist but definitely not a Judeo-Christian as defined by fundamentalists today. Jefferson wrote a translation of the Gospel that expunged all references to virgin births, miracles, and resurrection. His version, the Jefferson Bible, focused on the moral philosophy of Jesus without the supernatural mumbo-jumbo. He honored the teachings of Jesus while denying the divinity of Christ.

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. ~ Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom, 1786, Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia