Deism was the faith of the first five presidents of the United States.[1] Their ideas were shaped by a history of over a hundred years of European religious wars, which followed the the invention of the printing press and the subsequent Reformation. While Deism allows all practitioners to structure their own belief system, there were certain concepts that were central.  They rejected the trinity and believed that god, the Great Builder, created the universe then left people free to construct their own societies and political systems. The Father or Great Builder was based on a Newtonian view of a linear universe and was related to the international society of Free Masons and independent Free Thinkers.

The New Deism is shaped by a universe as seen through Einstein's filter of a dynamic, non linear, elliptical universe. In addition to Einstein’s theories, recent scientific discoveries have found that meteorites are made of approximately 14% water and also contain several strands of amino acids, the basic elements of life. All that is needed to generate life is an electrical charge, electricity generated from lightened. [see Ben Franklin blow]

The discovery of the meteorite’s physical properties validates both the metaphysical and mystical concept of the universality of life. Today’s Deists upgrades the Father or Great Builder to the universal Spirit that permeates the universe; different yet in some ways similar to Karl Jung’s Collective Unconsciousness. Some might equate this to the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity, others to the Great Spirit of Native Americans but Spirits are universal to all traditions.

Today Indigenous People resisting Neo-Liberal Globalization refer to Mother Earth as well as the Great Spirit. It is not only ironic but tragic that the “civilized” European concepts of religion and the “primitive” belief of “savages” have been reversed by science.

Though restoration of the female deity is symbolic, we must understand that symbolism, mythology and history are the building blocks of civilizations. Western civilization’s patriarchal deities of Zeus and Yahweh are gods of war and destruction. In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons. Demeter is a symbol of the earth’s bounty and the environment. And of course all female deities represent procreation and nurturing of the body and spirit. Politically, the usurpation of the female deity’s power is paralleled by the suppression of woman’s rights in the formation of patriarchal societies.

In the 15th & 16th Centuries, during the late Renaissance, the Inquisition took a new direction, the witch-hunt. Woman of the period were healers and intricately connected to the village structure. The Medieval peasants had access to common lands and a form of communal living that allowed a certain degree of autonomy. These rights and privileges were lost during the enclosure of the commons and the shift to a new economy that imposed a wage based labor system on the peasants. But peasant resistance to privatization often turned violent with women at the center of the revolts and in some cases the leaders. For this and other historical reasons, thousands of women were persecuted, tortured and killed for practicing witchcraft. Interestingly, the dawn of the modern economic order also initiated a new forms of intercontinental slavery that was tied to what is now referred to as Free Trade. Other hallmarks of the age included the enslavement and genocide of the indigenous peoples from the colonies and the persecution of Jews and heretics as well as women.[2]

It is within this context that we demand an end to the patriarchal Gods of War and their Industrial Complexes. Return of the female deity, Mother Earth the nurturer, healer.

[1] The Faith of the Founding Fathers, by David L. Holmes

   Oxford University Press NY NY 10016  (c) 2006

[2] Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici, Autonomedia 2004.

Benjamin Franklin was one of many Deist who shaped the American Revolution and government.  Before famously flying the kite, he published theories on electric connectivity. His theories, which include positive and negative attraction and repulsion, are still valid. His subsequent discovery of the lighting rod symbolically took the lighten bolt out of Zeus’ hand and provided a scientific correlation for the Enlightenment. Please note that his reputation as a scientist, an Enlightened Free Mason and Free Thinker won the hearts and minds of the English and French aristocracy, intellectuals and commoners. He was the common man from the colonial wilderness who was the living embodiment of the principle that “All [people] are created equal.” As the American Ambassador to France, Franklin won the support of the French King to send a fleet of ships with an army to defeat the British army in the American colonies.

Franklin won the American Revolution at the French Court, within the boudoirs and parlors of Versailles and taverns of Paris. A victory that General George Washington could not win on the battle field. The American Revolution was a revolution for Universal Human Rights that captured the Hearts and Minds of the world with Franklin and Voltaire as the embodiment of the era and philosophy.

Many historians have written that Ben Franklin invented America. It should also be noted that Franklin was a proto-socialist:

• 1750 — "THAT WHAT WE HAVE ABOVE WHAT WE CAN USE, IS NOT PROPERLY OURS, THO' WE POSSESS IT." Ben Franklin

• 1776 — For the  Pennsylvania State Constitution, Franklin gave his approval to a Declaration of Rights that did include a Natural Right to acquire, possess, and protect property; BUT FRANKLIN’S PROVISION that was later dropped, it read: "THAT AN ENORMOUS PORTION OF PROPERTY VESTED IN A FEW INDIVIDUALS IS DANGEROUS TO THE RIGHTS, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE COMMON HAPPINESS, OF MANKIND; AND THEREFORE EVERY FREE STATE HATH A RIGHT BY IT LAWS TO DISCOURAGE THE POSSESSION OF SUCH PROPERTY."

Benjamin Franklin  by Edmund S. Morgan, Yale Nota Bene—Yale Univ. Press, New Haven & London (c) 2002