{"id":4781,"date":"2025-09-24T14:52:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/?p=4781"},"modified":"2025-09-24T14:52:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:52:26","slug":"investigative-face-plant-vincenzo-barney-is-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/2025\/09\/24\/investigative-face-plant-vincenzo-barney-is-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigative Face Plant: Vincenzo Barney is Wrong."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='dropshadowboxes-container dropshadowboxes-center ' style='width:100%;'>\r\n                            <div class='dropshadowboxes-drop-shadow dropshadowboxes-rounded-corners dropshadowboxes-inside-and-outside-shadow dropshadowboxes-lifted-both dropshadowboxes-effect-default' style='width:auto; border: 1px solid #dddddd; height:; background-color:#ffffff;    '>\r\n                            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4782\" src=\"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Knowles-on-Barney.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"624\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Knowles-on-Barney.png 750w, https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Knowles-on-Barney-300x250.png 300w, https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Knowles-on-Barney-150x125.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/>\r\n                            <\/div>\r\n                        <\/div>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>Counter-Expos\u00e9: The Complex Reality of Founders&#8217; Faith<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Vincenzo Barney&#8217;s sweeping claim fundamentally misrepresents both the diversity of the Founding Fathers&#8217; religious beliefs and their intentions regarding religion in governance.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Vanity Fair is not sending its best! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SWzmjO0ugw\">https:\/\/t.co\/SWzmjO0ugw<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/bUkhSRMdNS\">pic.twitter.com\/bUkhSRMdNS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/michaeljknowles\/status\/1970580895292629436?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 23, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong>The Religious Spectrum Reality<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>Scholars trained in research universities have generally argued that the majority of the Founders were religious rationalists or Unitarians, not atheists or anti-theists.<\/strong><\/span> The religious landscape among key Founders was remarkably diverse:<\/p>\n<p>Orthodox Christians included Patrick Henry, Elias Boudinot, Samuel Adams, and John Jay, who used explicitly Christian language like<span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong> &#8220;Savior,&#8221; &#8220;Redeemer,&#8221;<\/strong> <\/em><\/span>and <span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong>&#8220;Resurrected Christ.&#8221;<\/strong><\/em><\/span> Several Founding Fathers, particularly Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, notably held deist or deist-influenced beliefs, while others like Washington and Adams occupied a middle ground that scholars describe as <span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong>&#8220;theistic rationalism.&#8221;<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong>The Secularism Misunderstanding<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>The Founders&#8217; approach to religion in governance was nuanced, not driven by anti-Christian animus.<\/strong><\/span> They sought to prevent religious establishment\u2014a principle that actually protected religious practice rather than eliminating it. Many Founders, including the deeply religious, supported this separation because they had witnessed how state churches in Europe corrupted both faith and government.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong>Historical Evidence vs. Modern Mythology<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Contemporary colonists understood John Adams, James Wilson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington to be orthodox Christians, according to those who knew them personally. The &#8220;all atheist&#8221; narrative ignores extensive documentary evidence of their religious expressions, church attendance, and integration of providential language into founding documents.<\/p>\n<p>Barney&#8217;s claim reflects modern political projection rather than 18th-century reality\u2014a period when outright atheism was both rare and politically untenable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"whitespace-normal break-words\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong>A Gentle Prescription for Historical Clarity<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"whitespace-normal break-words\">Perhaps Mr. Barney might benefit from a leisurely afternoon in the American History section of his local library, where he&#8217;ll discover that the relationship between faith and founding in early America proves far more intellectually stimulating than Twitter-sized generalizations allow. The nuanced religious landscape of the Founding era\u2014with its deists, Christians, and theistic rationalists navigating questions of conscience, governance, and liberty\u2014offers a complexity that rewards careful study over confident proclamation. <span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>One suspects that Madison, Jefferson, and their contemporaries would have appreciated such scholarly diligence before rendering sweeping judgments about their deepest convictions.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Counter-Expos\u00e9: The Complex Reality of Founders&#8217; Faith Vincenzo Barney&#8217;s sweeping claim fundamentally misrepresents both the diversity of the Founding Fathers&#8217; religious beliefs and their intentions regarding religion in governance. Vanity Fair is not sending its best! https:\/\/t.co\/SWzmjO0ugw pic.twitter.com\/bUkhSRMdNS \u2014 Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) September 23, 2025 The Religious Spectrum Reality Scholars trained in research universities have&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-must-read"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}