I was just using In God We Trust because someone else mentioned it. I also listed many more earlier references to god by our founding fathers.
Here is some interesting founding father quotes. These are just the beginning founding fathers starting with A's. It goes on and on. The list reads like the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Imagine that!
Point is if someone cares to debate the idea that what our founding fathers hopes for America was doesn't matter any longer, then that a different subject, but for anyone to think our founding fathers DIDN'T have religious hopes for America then they just haven't done any research.
John Adams and John Hancock:
We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but
Jesus! [April 18, 1775]
“ The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”
• “[July 4th] ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
–John Adams in a letter written to Abigail on the day the Declaration was approved by Congress
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
--October 11, 1798
"I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen." December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson
"Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell." [John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817]
Samuel Adams:
“ He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all… Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.”
[ "American Independence," August 1, 1776. Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia]
“ Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity… and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”
[October 4, 1790] Benjamin Franklin:
“ God governs in the affairs of man. 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 in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel”
–Constitutional Convention of 1787
In Benjamin Franklin's
1749 plan of education for public schools in Pennsylvania, he insisted that schools teach "the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern."
Alexander Hamilton:
• Hamilton began work with the Rev. James Bayard to form the Christian Constitutional Society to help spread over the world the two things which Hamilton said made America great:
(1) Christianity
(2) a Constitution formed under Christianity.
“The Christian Constitutional Society, its object is first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States.”