April 8, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Benjamin Franklin was a printer, an inventor, a politician, and an all-around Renaissance man—but did he believe in God? Dr. D.G. Hart, author of Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant, alongside Dr. Thomas Kidd, courtesy of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University, tells the story of this remarkably complicated man—and why he may have also invented the most common form of religiosity in the Western world today.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story on the personal life of one of our most
important founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin. A true renaissance man, Franklin
was an inventor, a politician, a publisher, and an all
around important thinker who shaped and continues to shape American
thought and life. But what about his faith? You to
(00:33):
tell the story of ben Franklin's faith life is doctor
Daryl Hart, an associate professor of history at Hillsdale College
and the author of Benjamin Franklin Cultural Protestant. You'll also
hear from doctor Thomas Kidd giving a lecture on the
subject for the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University back
in twenty nineteen. Let's start with doctor Daryl Hart.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I don't think he was religious in a conventional sense.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
For most of his life, Franklin had traditional Christian inquirers,
especially family and friends, who asked him about the state
of his beliefs in the state of his soul. In
the last few weeks of Franklin's life, though, one more
inquirer came on the stage. Franklin had known Yale College
President Ezra Stiles ever since Yale granted Franklin an honorary
(01:27):
master's degree in seventeen fifty three in honor of Franklin's
electrical experiments. Styles realized that Franklin was near death. Quote,
you have merited and received all the honors of the
Republic of Letters, and are going to a world where
all sublinary glories will be lost in the glories of immortality.
(01:49):
Styles wrote him, I wish to know the opinion of
my venerable friend concerning Jesus of Nazareth.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Reverend, and dear sir, you desire to know something of
my religion. Here is my creed. I believe in one God,
creator of the universe, that he governs it by his providence,
and that he ought to be worshiped. That the most
acceptable service we render to him is doing good to
his other children. That the soul of man is immortal
(02:18):
and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting
its conduct in this These I take to be the
fundamental principles of all sound religion. As to Jesus of Nazareth,
my opinion, of whom you particularly desire, I think the
system of morals and his religion the best the world
ever saw. But I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes,
(02:42):
and I have some doubts as to his divinity, though
it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having
never studied it, and I think it needless to busy
myself with it now when I expect soon to have
an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble, for
I am now in my eighty fifth year and very.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
In spite of his qualms about traditional Christianity, he saw
no harm, however, and it's being believed God had always
been good to him, and Franklin saw no reason to
think that God's kindness would stop when he died, and
die he did on April seventeenth, seventeen ninety, and he
(03:21):
left the enigma of his faith unresolved.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
In the study of religion, but also among religious people themselves,
you'll often hear people talk about somebody being an observant
Jew or an observant Roman Catholic, as would be people
that follow the practices of the religious tradition and the
people that don't but are kind of part of it culturally,
who sort of have it in their bones in the
(03:48):
way that they still think about the world even if
they're not observant. People talk about those people as being
cultural Roman Catholics or cultural Jews. We don't use it
as much with Protestants, but I do think it's the
case that Franklin, among other Founders, would fall into that category,
somebody who didn't necessarily go to church, although I think
he did a little bit with his wife Deborah, because
(04:09):
he did rent a pew for a family at Christ
Church in Philadelphia. But I mean he had a sense
that there was a God. He had a sense that
morality was important, that people would be rewarded in the
next life according to their good works or according to
their misdeeds. So he had a kind of ethical outlook
(04:31):
very much shaped by Protestanism.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I think the key to understanding Franklin's faith is the
indelible imprint of his childhood Calvinism.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
The Protestism in which he grew up in Boston and
carried with him in some ways to Philadelphia.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Josiah, my father, married Yon and carried his wife with
three children into New England about sixteen eighty two, where
they expected to enjoy their mode of religion with freedom.
By the same wife, he had four children more born there,
and by a second wife, ten.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
More, this was common for women to die and men
to remarry, and so he had children with two women in.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
All, seventeen of which I remember thirteen sitting at one
time at his table, who all grew up to be
men and women and married.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Franklin was the tenth.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
I was the youngest son and the youngest child but two,
and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, the
second wife, was a Bia.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
His father was a candle maker, just a tradesman like
Franklin himself would become, and his father was active in
the local church. It was pretty much expected that you
would be. And he had kinds of responsibilities in the
city of Boston that were both civil and religious in
the sense of looking out for people to make sure
(05:55):
they were following good ways of living in the like
frank writes about reading scripture in the home and singing
psalms in the home.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
He was in genius, could draw prettily, was skilled a
little in music, and had a clear, pleasing voice, so
that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and
sung with aw it was extremely agreeable to hear. He
had a mechanical genius too, but his great excellence laid
in a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters,
(06:25):
both in private and in public affairs. In the latter, indeed,
he was never employed. The numerous family he had to
educate in the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close
to his trade. But what I remember well is his
being frequently visited by leading people who consulted him for
his opinion in affairs of the town or of the
church he belonged to, and showed a great deal of
(06:46):
respect for his judgment and advice. He was also much
consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred,
and frequently chosen as an arbitrator between two contending parties.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Puritan piety could be pretty intense. Franklin's home was of
a more moderate Puritan stripe, but still life was very
much oriented around the church, as it was for all Bostonians.
Franklin his parents wanted to send him eventually to Harvard
(07:21):
and have him trained to be a pastor, but it
doesn't seem that it really stuck. But still he was
well steeped in this sort of typical Protestant views, and
then when he went to Philadelphia, Eventually he tries to
go to church. He tries to go to the Presbyterian Church.
As he writes about in his autobiography, he didn't really
(07:43):
care for the kind of preaching that he found there.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Though I seldom attended any public worship, I still had
an opinion of its propriety and of its utility when
rightfully conducted, and I regularly paid my annual subscription for
the support of the only PRESBYTERI readminister or meeting we
had in Philadelphia. He used to visit me sometimes as
a friend, and admonished me to attend his administrations, and
(08:10):
I was now and then prevailed on to do so
once or five sundays in a row. Had he been,
in my opinion, a good preacher, perhaps I might have continued,
notwithstanding the occasion I had for the sunday's leisure in
my course of study. But his discourses were chiefly either
polemic arguments or explanations of the peculiar doctrines of our sect,
(08:31):
and were all to me very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying,
since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforced,
their aim seeming to rather make us good Presbyterians than
good citizens. At length, he took for his text that
verse of the fourth Chapter of Philippians. Finally, Brethren, whatever
(08:53):
things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report,
if there be any virtue or any praise, think on
these things. And I imagined, in a sermon on such
a text, we could not miss of having some morality.
But he confined himself to five points only one keeping
holy the sabath day, two being diligent and reading the
(09:13):
holy scriptures, three attending duly the public worship, four partaking
in the sacrament. Five paying a due respect of God's ministers.
These might be all good things, but as they were
not the kind of good things that I expected from
the text, I despaired of ever meeting with them. Was
disgusted and attended his preaching no more. My content might
(09:36):
be blamable, but I leave it without attempting further to
excuse it, my present purpose being to relate facts and
not make apologies for them.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
When we continue more of this story of Benjamin Franklin's
faith here on our American stories, and we returned to
(10:10):
our American stories and with the story of Benjamin Franklin's
faith when we last left off we learned that Franklin
didn't consider himself religious by the standards of his time,
but he did have a strict moral code, which we'll
shortly learn about. Let's return to the story. Here again
is doctor Thomas kid speaking at the Centennial Institute at
(10:31):
Colorado Christian University in twenty nineteen, followed by Hillsdale College's
doctor Darryl Hart.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
As a teenager. It's true he abandoned his parents' Puritan beliefs,
but that same traditional faith kept him from getting too
far away.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So he didn't necessarily go to church and use Sundays
to do reading and study because it was one day
that he didn't have to work. And Franklin did have
an incredible work ethic. He was the original Horatio Alger,
who worked himself up by his bootstraps.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
One of the most influential interpretations of Franklin's religion appeared
in Max Weber's classic study The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism, and for Weber, Franklin was a near
perfect example of how Protestantism, drained of its doctrinal particularity,
fostered modern capitalism.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
He was first and foremost a printer and publisher. He
took over a newspaper in Philadelphia that had been around.
There weren't many newspapers in the colonies in those days,
but he took that over and had a very successful
run as a publisher, not merely of newspapers, but of
books and journals and pamphlets. His almanacs were also very successful,
(11:50):
widely distributed, even though there were many other almanacs. Almanacs
back then were sort of like our smartphones. I mean,
people kept diaries in them, dates of anniversaries and birthdays
and whatnot. Anyway, Franklin was in that market, so he
was a very successful businessman, and along the way he
(12:12):
helped to establish in Philadelphia have a variety of civic organizations,
like the first hospital in North America, the first lending
library in Philadelphia, at least, an academy that eventually became
the University of Pennsylvania, one of the Ivy League institutions.
He helped establish a fire company. He raised the militia
(12:35):
in the seventeen forties because the residents of Philadelphia were
worried about the French all sorts of plans for cleaning
up sidewalks, installing street lamps. He was an inventor bifocal eyeglasses.
He invented the woodburning stove that was supposed to be
safer to prevent fires. He also invented lightning rods. So
(12:57):
he had all that going for him before he retired
at the young age of forty two. And that's a
kind of carryover of the so called Protestant work ethic.
Not because Protestants worked harder than Roman Catholics or Jews
or other people. But back in the sixteenth century, people
like Martin Luther argued that ordinary activities in the world,
(13:19):
ordinary work in the world, even in the home, mother
is changing diapers. This was work that was dignified, that
honored God, and that was part of the so called
priesthood of all believers. In Franklin, I think carried that
Protestant conception of work with him, And I don't know
(13:39):
how much he necessarily thought about it in theological categories,
but the work ethic that he exhibited, I think it's
possible to explain from his Protestant background. You know, I
think a lot of people also know Franklin for the
virtues that he pursues.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
The intense higheta of his Puritan parents acted as a
kind of a tether spiritually intellectually restraining Franklin's skepticism. He
would stretch his moral and doctrinal tether to the breaking
point by the end of a youthful sojourn he made
to London, and when he returned to Philadelphia in seventeen
(14:20):
twenty six, he resolved to conform more closely to his parents'
ethical code. Because he really sowed his wild oats in London.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
And he ended up broken.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You know, lots of problem.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
I do teach every year his autobiography, which has his
plan for moral perfection or improvement, and keeps a little
chart in a kind of OCD way, which I find
amusing and also kind of silly. But he was a
guy who liked to calculate things.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I made a little book in which I allotted a
page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page
with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one
for each day of the week, marking each column with
a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with
thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with
the first letter of one of the virtues on which
each line and in its proper column, I might mark
(15:19):
by a little black spot. Each fault I found, upon
examination to have committed respecting that virtue upon the day.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And the virtues that he pursues there are a mix
of Ancient and Christian.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
One temperance, Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation.
Two Silence, Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself.
Avoid trifling conversation. Order that all your things have their places,
that each part of your business have its time. Resolution,
(15:58):
Resolve to perform what you aunt perform without fail what
you resolve frugality, Make no expense but to do good
to others or yourself. Waste nothing industry.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Lose no time.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions. Sincerity, justice, moderation, friendliness, chastity, humility,
imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
You know, I think that general program again has a
lot of Christian morality behind it. This is relevant. I mean.
Franklin was a contemporary of the Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards.
They were born roughly at the same time. I think
Edwards was seventeen three, Franklin seventeen oh six. Anyway, Edwards,
(16:55):
who was a very intense zealous Protestant preacher. In addition
into being a theologian in his youth, he also had
a scheme for a kind of moral perfection or moral improvement,
and in many respects it resembles Franklin's. It's striking to
me that both of these men, even though with very
(17:18):
different understandings of Christianity, did something similar. And it makes
me think that in New England Protestantism or also known
as Puritanism, that this was a common practice among people
who wanted to improve their lives, to keep a journal
and have some kind of plan a scheme for moral improvement.
(17:41):
That similarity between those two figures of very different persuasions. Religiously,
you could argue that Franklin's ideas about morality and ethics
came from a Protestant background.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
He knew he needed to have a moral code, so
he wondered could off to Christianity that was centered on
virtue rather than on traditional doctrine and avoid alienating his parents.
At the same time, more importantly, could he, over the
long term, convince the evangelical figures in his life, his
(18:19):
sister Jane and the revivalist George Whitfield, that all was
well with his soul, and he would have more success
convincing his sister than George Whitfield.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
And we've been listening to doctor Thomas Kid and doctor
Daryl Hart tell the story of Benjamin Franklin's faith, and
clearly the Protestant background of his upbringing had a lot
to do with Franklin's work ethic, his values, his obsession
with ethics, and of course the Protestant work ethic. It
springs right from Luther's idea that work is dignified and
(18:58):
honored by guy and Franklin carried that idea with them
all the way to the end. The story of ben
Franklin's faith continues here on our American stories. And we
(19:38):
returned to our American stories and the final portion of
our story on Benjamin Franklin's faith when we last left off,
an important relationship in Franklin's life was alluded to the
professional relationship with evangelist George Woodfield. That relationship would say
a lot about Franklin's relationship with religion. Let's continue with
(20:00):
his story here again is Hillsdale College's doctor Daryl Hart.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
The evangelist revivalist George Whitfield, who was also an Anglican
priest associated with what people call the First Great Awakening.
I prefer to call it the first pretty good Awakening.
But Whitfield was just an incredible figure. He was an itinerant,
traveling preacher, traveling on horseback, preaching oftentimes twice a day,
(20:31):
preaching outside, with no amplification other than his own voice
and his own being to project himself.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Some would get the impression that he was just a
mobolotor who appealed to drunken milers, but this was far
from being the case. He was equally popular with the
gentry and the great in the land. It take, for instance,
the well known actor David Gedrick. Gedrick said he could
melt an ordons from euphoric joy to pears merely by
(21:05):
saying and pronouncing the word Mesopotamia in different ways.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Incredible speaker. And Franklin was intrigued by Whitfield and went
out to listen to him. And there's a famous part
of his autobiography where he admits that Whitfield was so
persuasive that.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
I happened to attend one of his sermons, in the
course of which I perceived he intended to finish with
a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing
from me. I had in my pocket a handful of
copper money in gold. As he proceeded, I began to
soft him, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke
of his oratory made me ashamed that and determined me
(21:46):
to give the silver. And he finished so admirably that
I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish golden.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
All he emptied his pockets, all of it into the
plate as it went by. And also he mentioned he
charts how Whitfield could speak, probably to twenty five thousand people.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his
words and sentences so perfectly that he might be heard
and understood at a great distance. I had the curiosity
to learn how far it could be heard, by retiring
backwards down the street towards the river, and I found
his voice distant till I came to Front Street, when
some noise in that street obscured it. Imagining then a semicircle,
(22:29):
of which my distance should be the radius, and then
it were filled with auditors, to each whom I allowed
two square feet, I computed that he might well be
heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconciled me to
the newspaper accounts of having preached to twenty five thousand
people in the fields, and to the ancient histories of
(22:50):
generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
But he and Whitfield also had. They had a business relationship.
Frankly and published a lot of the evangelist diaries and
other works. He also published a lot of the critics
of Whitfield. Franklin could make money off both sides, but
they corresponded. Whitfield when he visited, would stay with Franklin sometimes.
There was even talk in the seventeen forties when the
(23:18):
colonists were thinking about adding a new colony inland More.
They were talking about Ohio as a potential colony to
the west, and Franklin wrote to Whitfield about maybe we
should start this colony together. So that, even though Franklin
didn't share Woodfield's pretty intense Protestant faith, they were friendly, cordial,
(23:42):
and Franklin recognized a lot of positive benefits that came
from Whitfield's time in America. Franklin was a kind of
skeptical guy about some of the claims especially the supernatural
or miraculous aspects of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Many recents have taken Franklin at his word by describing
him as a Deist.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
The odd thing about Deism, to me, at least, is
that there was no Deist club with people. A constitution
in bylaws and a set of beliefs, and you got
a membership card when you went through some kind of examination.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Some said they believed in the Bible as originally written,
Others doubted the Bible's reliability altogether. Some deists believe that
God remained involved with life on earth. Others saw God,
yes as the cosmic watchmaker, winding up the world and
then letting it run on his own.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
In that technical formal sense. I don't think Franklin was
a Deist, but I don't think many people were.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Diis doesn't quite capture the texture or trajectory of Ben
Franklin's beliefs.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
But he did have views that you could argue were
compatible with Deism, which is that there's a God, the
immortality of the soul. People are responsible for their actions,
and they will be judged in the world to come
for those actions. And so it's kind of a moral program,
and it has God in the picture. It's not so
(25:18):
much that he didn't like parts of Christianity, and the
parts of Christianity that he didn't believe. Things like the
deity of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the miracles that
Christ performed, they just weren't believable to him. I think
he might have found them somewhat charming, and the people
(25:40):
who believed in those parts of it somewhat charming, just
as I think he was kind of charmed by Islam
at times and other religious groups that he would read
about voracious curiosity. But he just he didn't believe it,
and he knew in some ways that to be a
decent Christian you had to believe those things what he
(26:00):
didn't believe, But I wouldn't put it in a hostile way.
He liked a lot of the other stuff, and he
really related well to prominent Protestant people from his time
and era.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
For Franklin, the point was never just belief, but virtuous action.
In his code of Doctrinalists moralized Christianity. He became the
founding father of perhaps the most pervasive kind of spirituality
in the Western world today.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Somebody who didn't necessarily go to church, but I mean
sense that there was a God. He had a sense
that morality was important. He had a kind of ethical
outlook very much shaped by Protestantism. The importance of the Bible,
which is like, well, kind of duh. Don't all Christians
(26:50):
believe in the importance of the Bible, Well, they do,
but the Protestants emphasized it in some ways more, which
then sets into motion other aspects of Protestant values. One
of those the importance of reading and reading the Bible.
It's not as if other Christians, such as Roman Catholics,
(27:10):
didn't believe in reading the Bible, but there were fears
among Roman Catholic clergy about if the lady gets a
hold of the Bible, will they get their own ideas
and begin to think contrary to the Church. In certain ways.
Protestants didn't want the genie to get out of the
bottle either, but their way outside of the Roman Catholic
(27:33):
Church was to promote the Bible, promote reading, and also
then in Protestant worship sermons. Long long sermons are a
big part of it, which also means that Protestants were
attached to words, to ideas, perhaps in ways differed from
Roman Catholics or maybe some other groups who would be
attached to liturgies or ceremonies or even art, and as
(27:57):
if Protestants didn't value art, but it just didn't have
as large a part of Protestant devotion. So the importance
of ideas, importance of words, importance of reading, the importance
of business and work, those who would all be Protestant values.
And again they almost fit Franklin to a t. And
(28:22):
we live in a world over three hundred years removed
from Franklin and over almost five hundred years removed from
Protestant Reformation, and so many of those values that I
mentioned we sort of take for granted. In the world
of American business and American society and middle class life,
(28:43):
we take parts of that so for granted that we
sort of lose a sense that they weren't always the
way that Europeans and British operated, and Protestantism encouraged it.
I'm not saying it's solely responsponsible for it, but even
somebody like Max Weber, the German sociologist, saw in Protestant
(29:07):
understandings of God and salvation and Protestant understanding of vocation
that is serving God in your ordinary activities. He saw
in this Protestant outlook ways that energized modern economics and
modern politics. So those are some of the Protestant values,
even though they sound very much like ordinary values that
(29:28):
a lot of people who aren't Protestant also shared.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery himself a Hillsdale College graduate.
And a special thanks to doctor Dale Hart and Associate
Professor of History at Hillsdale College and the author of
Benjamin Franklin Cultural Protestant. Also a special thanks to doctor
Thomas Kid giving a lecture on the subject for the
(29:54):
Centennial Institute of Colorado Christian University back in twenty nineteen.
The story of Benjamin Franklin's faith here on our American
Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story on the personal life of one of our most
important founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin. A true renaissance man, Franklin
was an inventor, a politician, a publisher, and an all
around important thinker who shaped and continues to shape American
thought and life. But what about his faith? You to
(00:33):
tell the story of ben Franklin's faith life is doctor
Daryl Hart, an associate professor of history at Hillsdale College
and the author of Benjamin Franklin Cultural Protestant. You'll also
hear from doctor Thomas Kidd giving a lecture on the
subject for the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University back
in twenty nineteen. Let's start with doctor Daryl Hart.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I don't think he was religious in a conventional sense.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
For most of his life, Franklin had traditional Christian inquirers,
especially family and friends, who asked him about the state
of his beliefs in the state of his soul. In
the last few weeks of Franklin's life, though, one more
inquirer came on the stage. Franklin had known Yale College
President Ezra Stiles ever since Yale granted Franklin an honorary
(01:27):
master's degree in seventeen fifty three in honor of Franklin's
electrical experiments. Styles realized that Franklin was near death. Quote,
you have merited and received all the honors of the
Republic of Letters, and are going to a world where
all sublinary glories will be lost in the glories of immortality.
(01:49):
Styles wrote him, I wish to know the opinion of
my venerable friend concerning Jesus of Nazareth.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Reverend, and dear sir, you desire to know something of
my religion. Here is my creed. I believe in one God,
creator of the universe, that he governs it by his providence,
and that he ought to be worshiped. That the most
acceptable service we render to him is doing good to
his other children. That the soul of man is immortal
(02:18):
and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting
its conduct in this These I take to be the
fundamental principles of all sound religion. As to Jesus of Nazareth,
my opinion, of whom you particularly desire, I think the
system of morals and his religion the best the world
ever saw. But I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes,
(02:42):
and I have some doubts as to his divinity, though
it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having
never studied it, and I think it needless to busy
myself with it now when I expect soon to have
an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble, for
I am now in my eighty fifth year and very.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
In spite of his qualms about traditional Christianity, he saw
no harm, however, and it's being believed God had always
been good to him, and Franklin saw no reason to
think that God's kindness would stop when he died, and
die he did on April seventeenth, seventeen ninety, and he
(03:21):
left the enigma of his faith unresolved.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
In the study of religion, but also among religious people themselves,
you'll often hear people talk about somebody being an observant
Jew or an observant Roman Catholic, as would be people
that follow the practices of the religious tradition and the
people that don't but are kind of part of it culturally,
who sort of have it in their bones in the
(03:48):
way that they still think about the world even if
they're not observant. People talk about those people as being
cultural Roman Catholics or cultural Jews. We don't use it
as much with Protestants, but I do think it's the
case that Franklin, among other Founders, would fall into that category,
somebody who didn't necessarily go to church, although I think
he did a little bit with his wife Deborah, because
(04:09):
he did rent a pew for a family at Christ
Church in Philadelphia. But I mean he had a sense
that there was a God. He had a sense that
morality was important, that people would be rewarded in the
next life according to their good works or according to
their misdeeds. So he had a kind of ethical outlook
(04:31):
very much shaped by Protestanism.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I think the key to understanding Franklin's faith is the
indelible imprint of his childhood Calvinism.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
The Protestism in which he grew up in Boston and
carried with him in some ways to Philadelphia.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Josiah, my father, married Yon and carried his wife with
three children into New England about sixteen eighty two, where
they expected to enjoy their mode of religion with freedom.
By the same wife, he had four children more born there,
and by a second wife, ten.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
More, this was common for women to die and men
to remarry, and so he had children with two women in.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
All, seventeen of which I remember thirteen sitting at one
time at his table, who all grew up to be
men and women and married.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Franklin was the tenth.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
I was the youngest son and the youngest child but two,
and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, the
second wife, was a Bia.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
His father was a candle maker, just a tradesman like
Franklin himself would become, and his father was active in
the local church. It was pretty much expected that you
would be. And he had kinds of responsibilities in the
city of Boston that were both civil and religious in
the sense of looking out for people to make sure
(05:55):
they were following good ways of living in the like
frank writes about reading scripture in the home and singing
psalms in the home.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
He was in genius, could draw prettily, was skilled a
little in music, and had a clear, pleasing voice, so
that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and
sung with aw it was extremely agreeable to hear. He
had a mechanical genius too, but his great excellence laid
in a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters,
(06:25):
both in private and in public affairs. In the latter, indeed,
he was never employed. The numerous family he had to
educate in the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close
to his trade. But what I remember well is his
being frequently visited by leading people who consulted him for
his opinion in affairs of the town or of the
church he belonged to, and showed a great deal of
(06:46):
respect for his judgment and advice. He was also much
consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred,
and frequently chosen as an arbitrator between two contending parties.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Puritan piety could be pretty intense. Franklin's home was of
a more moderate Puritan stripe, but still life was very
much oriented around the church, as it was for all Bostonians.
Franklin his parents wanted to send him eventually to Harvard
(07:21):
and have him trained to be a pastor, but it
doesn't seem that it really stuck. But still he was
well steeped in this sort of typical Protestant views, and
then when he went to Philadelphia, Eventually he tries to
go to church. He tries to go to the Presbyterian Church.
As he writes about in his autobiography, he didn't really
(07:43):
care for the kind of preaching that he found there.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Though I seldom attended any public worship, I still had
an opinion of its propriety and of its utility when
rightfully conducted, and I regularly paid my annual subscription for
the support of the only PRESBYTERI readminister or meeting we
had in Philadelphia. He used to visit me sometimes as
a friend, and admonished me to attend his administrations, and
(08:10):
I was now and then prevailed on to do so
once or five sundays in a row. Had he been,
in my opinion, a good preacher, perhaps I might have continued,
notwithstanding the occasion I had for the sunday's leisure in
my course of study. But his discourses were chiefly either
polemic arguments or explanations of the peculiar doctrines of our sect,
(08:31):
and were all to me very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying,
since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforced,
their aim seeming to rather make us good Presbyterians than
good citizens. At length, he took for his text that
verse of the fourth Chapter of Philippians. Finally, Brethren, whatever
(08:53):
things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report,
if there be any virtue or any praise, think on
these things. And I imagined, in a sermon on such
a text, we could not miss of having some morality.
But he confined himself to five points only one keeping
holy the sabath day, two being diligent and reading the
(09:13):
holy scriptures, three attending duly the public worship, four partaking
in the sacrament. Five paying a due respect of God's ministers.
These might be all good things, but as they were
not the kind of good things that I expected from
the text, I despaired of ever meeting with them. Was
disgusted and attended his preaching no more. My content might
(09:36):
be blamable, but I leave it without attempting further to
excuse it, my present purpose being to relate facts and
not make apologies for them.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
When we continue more of this story of Benjamin Franklin's
faith here on our American stories, and we returned to
(10:10):
our American stories and with the story of Benjamin Franklin's
faith when we last left off we learned that Franklin
didn't consider himself religious by the standards of his time,
but he did have a strict moral code, which we'll
shortly learn about. Let's return to the story. Here again
is doctor Thomas kid speaking at the Centennial Institute at
(10:31):
Colorado Christian University in twenty nineteen, followed by Hillsdale College's
doctor Darryl Hart.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
As a teenager. It's true he abandoned his parents' Puritan beliefs,
but that same traditional faith kept him from getting too
far away.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So he didn't necessarily go to church and use Sundays
to do reading and study because it was one day
that he didn't have to work. And Franklin did have
an incredible work ethic. He was the original Horatio Alger,
who worked himself up by his bootstraps.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
One of the most influential interpretations of Franklin's religion appeared
in Max Weber's classic study The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism, and for Weber, Franklin was a near
perfect example of how Protestantism, drained of its doctrinal particularity,
fostered modern capitalism.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
He was first and foremost a printer and publisher. He
took over a newspaper in Philadelphia that had been around.
There weren't many newspapers in the colonies in those days,
but he took that over and had a very successful
run as a publisher, not merely of newspapers, but of
books and journals and pamphlets. His almanacs were also very successful,
(11:50):
widely distributed, even though there were many other almanacs. Almanacs
back then were sort of like our smartphones. I mean,
people kept diaries in them, dates of anniversaries and birthdays
and whatnot. Anyway, Franklin was in that market, so he
was a very successful businessman, and along the way he
(12:12):
helped to establish in Philadelphia have a variety of civic organizations,
like the first hospital in North America, the first lending
library in Philadelphia, at least, an academy that eventually became
the University of Pennsylvania, one of the Ivy League institutions.
He helped establish a fire company. He raised the militia
(12:35):
in the seventeen forties because the residents of Philadelphia were
worried about the French all sorts of plans for cleaning
up sidewalks, installing street lamps. He was an inventor bifocal eyeglasses.
He invented the woodburning stove that was supposed to be
safer to prevent fires. He also invented lightning rods. So
(12:57):
he had all that going for him before he retired
at the young age of forty two. And that's a
kind of carryover of the so called Protestant work ethic.
Not because Protestants worked harder than Roman Catholics or Jews
or other people. But back in the sixteenth century, people
like Martin Luther argued that ordinary activities in the world,
(13:19):
ordinary work in the world, even in the home, mother
is changing diapers. This was work that was dignified, that
honored God, and that was part of the so called
priesthood of all believers. In Franklin, I think carried that
Protestant conception of work with him, And I don't know
(13:39):
how much he necessarily thought about it in theological categories,
but the work ethic that he exhibited, I think it's
possible to explain from his Protestant background. You know, I
think a lot of people also know Franklin for the
virtues that he pursues.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
The intense higheta of his Puritan parents acted as a
kind of a tether spiritually intellectually restraining Franklin's skepticism. He
would stretch his moral and doctrinal tether to the breaking
point by the end of a youthful sojourn he made
to London, and when he returned to Philadelphia in seventeen
(14:20):
twenty six, he resolved to conform more closely to his parents'
ethical code. Because he really sowed his wild oats in London.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
And he ended up broken.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You know, lots of problem.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
I do teach every year his autobiography, which has his
plan for moral perfection or improvement, and keeps a little
chart in a kind of OCD way, which I find
amusing and also kind of silly. But he was a
guy who liked to calculate things.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I made a little book in which I allotted a
page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page
with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one
for each day of the week, marking each column with
a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with
thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with
the first letter of one of the virtues on which
each line and in its proper column, I might mark
(15:19):
by a little black spot. Each fault I found, upon
examination to have committed respecting that virtue upon the day.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And the virtues that he pursues there are a mix
of Ancient and Christian.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
One temperance, Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation.
Two Silence, Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself.
Avoid trifling conversation. Order that all your things have their places,
that each part of your business have its time. Resolution,
(15:58):
Resolve to perform what you aunt perform without fail what
you resolve frugality, Make no expense but to do good
to others or yourself. Waste nothing industry.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Lose no time.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions. Sincerity, justice, moderation, friendliness, chastity, humility,
imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
You know, I think that general program again has a
lot of Christian morality behind it. This is relevant. I mean.
Franklin was a contemporary of the Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards.
They were born roughly at the same time. I think
Edwards was seventeen three, Franklin seventeen oh six. Anyway, Edwards,
(16:55):
who was a very intense zealous Protestant preacher. In addition
into being a theologian in his youth, he also had
a scheme for a kind of moral perfection or moral improvement,
and in many respects it resembles Franklin's. It's striking to
me that both of these men, even though with very
(17:18):
different understandings of Christianity, did something similar. And it makes
me think that in New England Protestantism or also known
as Puritanism, that this was a common practice among people
who wanted to improve their lives, to keep a journal
and have some kind of plan a scheme for moral improvement.
(17:41):
That similarity between those two figures of very different persuasions. Religiously,
you could argue that Franklin's ideas about morality and ethics
came from a Protestant background.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
He knew he needed to have a moral code, so
he wondered could off to Christianity that was centered on
virtue rather than on traditional doctrine and avoid alienating his parents.
At the same time, more importantly, could he, over the
long term, convince the evangelical figures in his life, his
(18:19):
sister Jane and the revivalist George Whitfield, that all was
well with his soul, and he would have more success
convincing his sister than George Whitfield.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
And we've been listening to doctor Thomas Kid and doctor
Daryl Hart tell the story of Benjamin Franklin's faith, and
clearly the Protestant background of his upbringing had a lot
to do with Franklin's work ethic, his values, his obsession
with ethics, and of course the Protestant work ethic. It
springs right from Luther's idea that work is dignified and
(18:58):
honored by guy and Franklin carried that idea with them
all the way to the end. The story of ben
Franklin's faith continues here on our American stories. And we
(19:38):
returned to our American stories and the final portion of
our story on Benjamin Franklin's faith when we last left off,
an important relationship in Franklin's life was alluded to the
professional relationship with evangelist George Woodfield. That relationship would say
a lot about Franklin's relationship with religion. Let's continue with
(20:00):
his story here again is Hillsdale College's doctor Daryl Hart.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
The evangelist revivalist George Whitfield, who was also an Anglican
priest associated with what people call the First Great Awakening.
I prefer to call it the first pretty good Awakening.
But Whitfield was just an incredible figure. He was an itinerant,
traveling preacher, traveling on horseback, preaching oftentimes twice a day,
(20:31):
preaching outside, with no amplification other than his own voice
and his own being to project himself.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Some would get the impression that he was just a
mobolotor who appealed to drunken milers, but this was far
from being the case. He was equally popular with the
gentry and the great in the land. It take, for instance,
the well known actor David Gedrick. Gedrick said he could
melt an ordons from euphoric joy to pears merely by
(21:05):
saying and pronouncing the word Mesopotamia in different ways.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Incredible speaker. And Franklin was intrigued by Whitfield and went
out to listen to him. And there's a famous part
of his autobiography where he admits that Whitfield was so
persuasive that.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
I happened to attend one of his sermons, in the
course of which I perceived he intended to finish with
a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing
from me. I had in my pocket a handful of
copper money in gold. As he proceeded, I began to
soft him, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke
of his oratory made me ashamed that and determined me
(21:46):
to give the silver. And he finished so admirably that
I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish golden.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
All he emptied his pockets, all of it into the
plate as it went by. And also he mentioned he
charts how Whitfield could speak, probably to twenty five thousand people.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his
words and sentences so perfectly that he might be heard
and understood at a great distance. I had the curiosity
to learn how far it could be heard, by retiring
backwards down the street towards the river, and I found
his voice distant till I came to Front Street, when
some noise in that street obscured it. Imagining then a semicircle,
(22:29):
of which my distance should be the radius, and then
it were filled with auditors, to each whom I allowed
two square feet, I computed that he might well be
heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconciled me to
the newspaper accounts of having preached to twenty five thousand
people in the fields, and to the ancient histories of
(22:50):
generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
But he and Whitfield also had. They had a business relationship.
Frankly and published a lot of the evangelist diaries and
other works. He also published a lot of the critics
of Whitfield. Franklin could make money off both sides, but
they corresponded. Whitfield when he visited, would stay with Franklin sometimes.
There was even talk in the seventeen forties when the
(23:18):
colonists were thinking about adding a new colony inland More.
They were talking about Ohio as a potential colony to
the west, and Franklin wrote to Whitfield about maybe we
should start this colony together. So that, even though Franklin
didn't share Woodfield's pretty intense Protestant faith, they were friendly, cordial,
(23:42):
and Franklin recognized a lot of positive benefits that came
from Whitfield's time in America. Franklin was a kind of
skeptical guy about some of the claims especially the supernatural
or miraculous aspects of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Many recents have taken Franklin at his word by describing
him as a Deist.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
The odd thing about Deism, to me, at least, is
that there was no Deist club with people. A constitution
in bylaws and a set of beliefs, and you got
a membership card when you went through some kind of examination.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Some said they believed in the Bible as originally written,
Others doubted the Bible's reliability altogether. Some deists believe that
God remained involved with life on earth. Others saw God,
yes as the cosmic watchmaker, winding up the world and
then letting it run on his own.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
In that technical formal sense. I don't think Franklin was
a Deist, but I don't think many people were.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Diis doesn't quite capture the texture or trajectory of Ben
Franklin's beliefs.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
But he did have views that you could argue were
compatible with Deism, which is that there's a God, the
immortality of the soul. People are responsible for their actions,
and they will be judged in the world to come
for those actions. And so it's kind of a moral program,
and it has God in the picture. It's not so
(25:18):
much that he didn't like parts of Christianity, and the
parts of Christianity that he didn't believe. Things like the
deity of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the miracles that
Christ performed, they just weren't believable to him. I think
he might have found them somewhat charming, and the people
(25:40):
who believed in those parts of it somewhat charming, just
as I think he was kind of charmed by Islam
at times and other religious groups that he would read
about voracious curiosity. But he just he didn't believe it,
and he knew in some ways that to be a
decent Christian you had to believe those things what he
(26:00):
didn't believe, But I wouldn't put it in a hostile way.
He liked a lot of the other stuff, and he
really related well to prominent Protestant people from his time
and era.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
For Franklin, the point was never just belief, but virtuous action.
In his code of Doctrinalists moralized Christianity. He became the
founding father of perhaps the most pervasive kind of spirituality
in the Western world today.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Somebody who didn't necessarily go to church, but I mean
sense that there was a God. He had a sense
that morality was important. He had a kind of ethical
outlook very much shaped by Protestantism. The importance of the Bible,
which is like, well, kind of duh. Don't all Christians
(26:50):
believe in the importance of the Bible, Well, they do,
but the Protestants emphasized it in some ways more, which
then sets into motion other aspects of Protestant values. One
of those the importance of reading and reading the Bible.
It's not as if other Christians, such as Roman Catholics,
(27:10):
didn't believe in reading the Bible, but there were fears
among Roman Catholic clergy about if the lady gets a
hold of the Bible, will they get their own ideas
and begin to think contrary to the Church. In certain ways.
Protestants didn't want the genie to get out of the
bottle either, but their way outside of the Roman Catholic
(27:33):
Church was to promote the Bible, promote reading, and also
then in Protestant worship sermons. Long long sermons are a
big part of it, which also means that Protestants were
attached to words, to ideas, perhaps in ways differed from
Roman Catholics or maybe some other groups who would be
attached to liturgies or ceremonies or even art, and as
(27:57):
if Protestants didn't value art, but it just didn't have
as large a part of Protestant devotion. So the importance
of ideas, importance of words, importance of reading, the importance
of business and work, those who would all be Protestant values.
And again they almost fit Franklin to a t. And
(28:22):
we live in a world over three hundred years removed
from Franklin and over almost five hundred years removed from
Protestant Reformation, and so many of those values that I
mentioned we sort of take for granted. In the world
of American business and American society and middle class life,
(28:43):
we take parts of that so for granted that we
sort of lose a sense that they weren't always the
way that Europeans and British operated, and Protestantism encouraged it.
I'm not saying it's solely responsponsible for it, but even
somebody like Max Weber, the German sociologist, saw in Protestant
(29:07):
understandings of God and salvation and Protestant understanding of vocation
that is serving God in your ordinary activities. He saw
in this Protestant outlook ways that energized modern economics and
modern politics. So those are some of the Protestant values,
even though they sound very much like ordinary values that
(29:28):
a lot of people who aren't Protestant also shared.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery himself a Hillsdale College graduate.
And a special thanks to doctor Dale Hart and Associate
Professor of History at Hillsdale College and the author of
Benjamin Franklin Cultural Protestant. Also a special thanks to doctor
Thomas Kid giving a lecture on the subject for the
(29:54):
Centennial Institute of Colorado Christian University back in twenty nineteen.
The story of Benjamin Franklin's faith here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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