Elizabeth I Quotes
There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith. All else is a dispute over trifles.
Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth I. Jonathan Cape, 1934, p. 283.
Jefferson was a deist but had little love for the organized religions and did not consider the Bible as the revealed word of God.
Some of the founding fathers were deeply religious men while others were not so. Some varied in their believes at different times of their lives, and a number were not very favorable towards orthodox religion. At the time, Roman Catholic and Protestant churches were persecuting other religions throughout Europe and people were still being killed for their “heretical” beliefs. Most important to some of them, kings and other monarchs whom they abhorred, all at the time claimed the Divine Right of Kings and the established churches were the most important support for monarchs. At the time most organized religions were opposed to freedom of conscience and certainly opponents of separation of church and state. American churches tended to take on American values but were never given the chance to dominate the American government they way many religions had in Europe and the rest of the world.
Reading this quotation, one would think that it was uttered in the early 21st century when the Christian Fundamentalists drove Christian liberals out of many of the evangelical churches and out of the Republican Party. However, this process and conflict has been ongoing for almost a century. This quotation was made in 1922.
Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.
