Listening to a debate between Rabbi David Wolpe and Christopher "A British Accent Makes Me Sound Intelligent" Hitchens, Hitchens brayed out his usual claim that the Founding Fathers were Deist. As with most things that Hitchens says, the truth is to be found somewhere else:
Franklin's early commitment to deism, however, did not last very long. Some historians see his flirtation with deism as little more than a form of youthful rebellion against the strict Calvinism of his Puritan upbringing. As he grew older, Franklin came to believe in a Creator-God who possessed great wisdom, goodness, and power. God not only created this world, but he also sustained it. Franklin was amazed at the way God created the stars and the planets, but he was even more amazed that God continued "to govern them in their greatest Velocity as they shall not flie off out of their appointed Bounds nor dash against another, to their mutual Destruction." It was not laws of science that held the universe together, it was the sustaining power of an active God.
Franklin even believed that God could, on occasion, intervene in the lives of his human creation. Thirty-six years after he claimed to have embraced deism, Franklin sounded like anything but an adherent to this religious system: "Without the Belief of a Providence that takes Cognizance of, guards and guides and may favour particular Persons, there is no Motive to Worship a Deity, to fear its Displeasure, or to pray for its Protection." Franklin believed that God required worship, answers prayer, and intervenes in history to meet the needs of "particular Persons." By 1787, Franklin was requesting that the Constitutional Convention pause for prayer to seek guidance and reconciliation in the midst of one of its most heated debates.
Similarly, Thomas Jefferson believed in an active God who sustained the world by his providence. Jefferson wrote about God's "superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order." According to Jefferson, God kept the stars, sun, and planets in place. He called this Creator and Sustainer of the universe "Nature's God"—a God who he believed was best portrayed in Psalm 148:
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