Read today in an online discussion:

“Most of the founding fathers were ministers moron.”

Since I can’t be bothered to go to the trouble to sign up for an account at the particular newspaper where I read that, and the information about what our founding fathers actually did for a living is rather interesting, I shall educate the masses here at my own blog.

Via Wikipedia:

The 1787 delegates practiced a wide range of high and middle-status occupations, and many pursued more than one career simultaneously. They did not differ dramatically from the Loyalists, except they were generally younger and less senior in their professions. Thirty-five were lawyers or had benefited from legal education, though not all of them relied on the profession for a livelihood. Some had also become judges.

* At the time of the convention, 13 men were merchants: Blount, Broom, Clymer, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Shields, Gilman, Gorham, Langdon, Robert Morris, Pierce, Sherman, and Wilson.

* Six were major land speculators: Blount, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Gorham, Robert Morris, and Wilson.

* Eleven speculated in securities on a large scale: Bedford, Blair, Clymer, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Franklin, King, Langdon, Robert Morris, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Sherman.

* Twelve owned or managed slave-operated plantations or large farms: Bassett, Blair, Blount, Butler, Carroll, Jenifer, Jefferson, Mason, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Rutledge, Spaight, and Washington. Madison also owned slaves, as did Franklin, who later freed his slaves and became an abolitionist.

* Broom and Few were small farmers.

* Eight of the men received a substantial part of their income from public office: Baldwin, Blair, Brearly, Gilman, Livingston, Madison, and Rutledge.

* Three had retired from active economic endeavors: Franklin, McHenry, and Mifflin.

* Franklin and Williamson were scientists, in addition to their other activities.

* McClurg, McHenry, and Williamson were physicians, and Johnson was a college president.

I certainly didn’t know all of them without looking it up, and they were all pretty much what I expected. Wealthy, white, educated, male, landowners in the middle to upper classes and having careers that suited their positions in life. And while it is recorded that a few of them had studied theology, and I am certain some of those often discussed theology privately and publicly (because I have read a number of their books and papers), not a one of them was actually a “minister” of any sort.

Furthermore … no, we don’t need to designate the first week of May as America’s Spiritual Heritage Week for “the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.” Nor do we need to designate 2010 as The Year of the Bible. Both of these things have been recently presented as plausible ideas by a few of our national elected representatives, because there are those who are so firmly of the belief the USA is a Christian nation, they feel the need to ram that idea down everyone’s throats.

I started a rant about this very subject last week and eventually trashed it, because it gets tiresome arguing about the same stuff all the time. All I have to say about whether or not we are a Christian nation is this:

Which particular sect of Christianity in the USA is representative of this supposed Christian nation everyone keeps telling me we are? In my travels and studies in the world of Christian believers, there are a vast number of differing sects all wearing the label of Christianity, and few of them agree on even the basic points of morality, dogma, or beliefs. So which of these Christian sects is it that is meant to represent the whole of America? Answer me that.