Mortimer Adler Quotes
One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.
Adler, Mortimer J., ed. The Annals of America. Vol. 3, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968.
This quotation is one of the first to make the critical observation that the only time that tolerance of a religion is necessary is when there is an established church and others that deviate from it. If there is no established church, as the Founding Fathers envisioned, there is no preeminent church to do the tolerating. All are equal. In practice, Protestant churches were proportionately dominant in early America and up through the 20th century. So most of the issue of tolerance problems in America were cultural. And there is still a minority of Christians who believe that America should be a Christian country and other religions should be “tolerated.” However, Clinton and most of the founders did not want to see even general Christianity established as the national religion even they it was the majority religion.
Madison was a deist, but was firm that religion was to be an individual matter and not an area in which the state ought be involced.
Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California. He taught at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, served as chairman of the Encyclopædia Britannica Board of Editors, and founded his own Institute for Philosophical Research.
