We can’t seem to agree on much of anything in this country and almost every question or proposition will raise a fuss and sometimes an argument. Mick Huckabee raised quit a fuss awhile back when he said that half of the signers to the Declaration were clergyman. That seems excessive and probably wrong. Especially when you take into account that half of the signers had no college education at all. The great colleges that existed started as religious institutions. Places like Harvard, Yale and Princeton (college of New Jersey) started as religious schools but very quickly devolved. There is a belief out there that if you graduated from the initially religious schools you automatically received a divinity degree.
Many of the signers were church officers, elders, and members of what were called Bible Societies. They were religiously affiliated and many were the sons of clergymen. The only active clergyman that we know for sure that singed the Declaration of Independence was John Witherspoon. Three others had been clergyman at one time.
There is also little agreement on who the founding Fathers are. Three are those who believe that the founding Fathers are those who signed the Declaration. Others hold that only those who signed three important documents can be considered founders. Those documents are the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. There is another group that believe that those who were involved in one or more of these things can be considered “founders”. – signed the Declaration of Independence
– signed the Articles of Confederation
– attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787
– signed the Constitution of the United States of America
– served as Senators in the First Federal Congress (1789-1791)
– served as U.S. Representatives in the First Federal Congress.
As you can see things get complicated very quickly.
I found out however that there are five Lutherans who can be considered founders under the last set of criteria,
