What was Ben Franklins religion?
Franklin was raised Calvinist, but briefly visited and contributed to a Presbytarian Church (a friend of his was the minister, and he endorsed the “civilizing” impact of religion). In his early 20s, Franklin briefly adopted a stark version of Deism, in no part due to his reading of popular magazines of the day. Later, and for the rest of his life, he frequently celebrated the “Providence” of a Creator God, and worked from a liturgy and belief statement he wrote for himself. The best description of Franklin’s beliefs may be that he was a “theological perspectivist,” i.e. he believed that those religions which best served to comfort, encourage, and enlighten humanity were those which came the closest to ideal, but that, because of the infinite mystery of the Divine, none was literally true. See Kerry Walter’s “Benjamin Franklin and his Gods” for more info.
