Calling ‘America’s Merlin’
Why We Need ‘Benjamin Franklin Consciousness’ Now More Than Ever
American Sage, Lamp Unto Our Feet
Sometimes the darkest, most chaotic times call forth genius.
Many are called but… who best exemplifies America’s zenith of enlightenment? No matter your answer, none can eclipse Benjamin Franklin.
If our most deeply held beliefs, mirrored by action best reflect our consciousness, then a divided America take heed: a preeminent negotiator and unifier, Franklin’s inspired actions sprang from his personal code of belief, “the founding father of a unique kind of American faith.”¹
As we wend our way through polarization nearly as stark as at the time of the American Revolution or Civil War, Franklin demonstrated an awareness and approach to bridge a chasmal divide— not simply what it takes to be “healthy, wealthy and wise.”
End of an Evolutionary Stage
In the words of Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth “we are arriving at an end of an evolutionary stage for humankind. Evolutionary transformation is no longer a luxury, no longer optional for humanity. For the first time in the history of humanity, a transformation of consciousness is a necessity to survive.”
It is not simply Franklin’s beliefs that are a light unto our path; it’s also the way he approached those with opposing views. The way Franklin masterfully negotiated the varying bevy of beliefs in the young nation-to-be is not only a blueprint for elevating our own consciousness, but is a template for creating common ground with those who differ with us politically or spiritually.
His Own Drummer
When it came to matters of belief, Benjamin Franklin did not follow the script.
Franklin openly admired George Whitfield’s evangelizing and kept a Bible in the top drawer of his desk at all times, making notations in the margins. But he became a Unitarian, believed in reincarnation and touted astrology in his Poor Richard’s Almanac. Franklin was so supple in matters of religion that he drove a frustrated John Adams to write: “The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker.”²
In a word, Franklin — like most of his founding colleagues — was a chameleon. His faith could not be pigeon-holed. Franklin reserved the right to change his mind. It’s no wonder that, much like Jefferson and other Founders, various religions and persuasions throughout the ages have used Franklin for their own purposes.
Rejecting Established Religion
Hailing from Boston, Franklin was raised in the Puritan religion. As a young boy, because his father was a devoted follower, he was expected to read the Bible and practice aspects of the Puritan faith.³ Franklin’s parents originally intended for him to join the ministry but they quickly saw that his questioning mind led him to doubt many of the Christian beliefs he had been taught. He moved from Massachusetts to Philadelphia largely due to his distrust of the Puritan fundamentalism in the region. By his own estimation, he could not get out of Boston soon enough.
Franklin rejected his birth religion because “it was more interested in dogma than a moral life.”⁴ His “main difficulty with established religion…had to do with its incapacity to help individuals be of service to each other and its tendency to set people against each other, rather than to support the formation of community.”⁵
Franklin spoke and interacted with people of varying persuasions and, being politically adept, reserved judgment of others’ beliefs. But clearly, over the arc of his life he was far more comfortable with Deism, Unitarianism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and the “inner light” of Quakerism, whose influences were all within his orbit.
The Opposite Effect
While living and running a business as a young man in Philadelphia, some men approached Franklin on religious issues. They provided him with information they thought would irrefutably demonstrate the ills of Deism. “Some books against Deism fell into my hands. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”⁶
Deism’s principle tenet, a natural theology based on reason, drew Franklin in, seeing “God as an eternal, transcendent force with divine intelligence, as the first cause; the architect behind the universe and natural laws.”⁷ Though Deism could be dryly logical — the God who created man and then left him on his own — the Deism of the early Founders was broader than this two-dimensional caricature. Franklin came to epitomize an expanded version.
In 1731 Franklin became a freemason. Within three years he was the grand master of all of Pennsylvania’s Masons.⁸ An active member of the Freemason “Brotherhood,” he may also have been associated with Rosicrucianism, a 17th- and 18th-century society dedicated to the study of metaphysical and mystical lore. Although his Rosicrucian membership cannot be proven, he most notably published the books of Johann Conrad Beissel, founder of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, the first Rosicrucian community in the New World. Bearing gifts, Franklin frequently visited this mystically-oriented enclave.⁹ The community was known for its spreading of ‘Ageless Wisdom’ in America. After its disbanding, most of its metaphysical library passed into Franklin’s keeping.¹⁰
Liberal and Conservative Spiritualities Meet
Franklin, much like co-founders Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and John Adams, was known to worship on occasion at Joseph Priestly’s Unitarian church in Philadelphia.¹¹ As with many of his colleagues, Franklin declined to align himself with any denomination. But Unitarianism’s rational approach to religion appealed to him. His creed was practical and simple: “I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern’d it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; I esteem’d the essentials of every religion; and being to be found in all the religions we had in our country, I respected them all… .”¹² If others wanted to believe that Jesus was the only son of God, Franklin had no objection, especially if it made his teachings better respected.¹³
For all of his esoteric leanings, it was Franklin’s appeal to conventional Christianity that may have saved the First Constitutional Convention of 1787. Meeting four years after the Revolution had officially ended, the Convention was tasked to create a Constitution that could be accepted and adhered to by all thirteen original colonies — and those that would follow. As with Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence years earlier, no one was under the illusion that the Madison-inspired document would sail through unmolested.
But after days of endless argument and stagnation, the Convention’s success appeared doubtful. With a new Constitution hanging in the balance, Franklin called upon the bickering representatives from the colonies to pray, saying:
“In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, & they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. Have we now forgotten that powerful friend? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth- that God Governs in the affairs of men.” ~Benjamin Franklin Constitutional Convention June 28, 1787¹⁴
Whether merely a ploy to appeal to the constituents’ religious orthodoxy, or more likely, something that Franklin genuinely believed, the impasse broke and America’s Constitution became the law of the land. Several years later, the first ten amendments would be added to the U.S. Constitution, further guaranteeing the personal rights of its citizens, regardless of the state in which they lived or the religion they had adopted.
‘A New and More Perfect Edition’
Franklin’s belief in the continuity of life after death parallels Hermetic and Perennial Wisdom. It echoed Rosicrucian and Freemason philosophies built on the metaphor of the human soul and successive lifetimes. Each incarnation is an opportunity to build upon the previous one, in its polishing of the human soul.¹⁵
Observing the great frugality of nature, which the Deity designed to ensure that nothing once created was lost, Franklin supposed that something similar applied to souls. “Thus finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or form, always exist; and with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine; hoping however that the errata of the last may be corrected.”¹⁶ This stance was true even early on in Franklin’s life when, as a young man in 1728, he composed his own mock epitaph which read:
The Body of
B. Franklin
Printer;
Like the Cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be wholly lost:
For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more,
In a new & more perfect Edition,
Corrected and Amended
By the Author.
He was born on January 6, 1706.
Died 17__ ¹⁷
To Franklin, life could take on many forms, even after the body expired. “A man is not completely born until he is dead. When then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals? We are spirits. That bodies should be lent to us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge or in doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way.”¹⁸
In Franklin’s universe, death was not to be feared. When recovering from yet another malady in his eighties, his daughter exclaimed “oh thank goodness! May you live another ten years!” To which her father replied “I should hope not!”¹⁹
“If You Can Keep It”
When asked what form of government would work best for the young nation, Franklin’s famous answer was “a republic, if you can keep it.” Founding Father, diplomat, inventor, innovator, and unorthodox believer, Franklin’s ecumenical inspiration and pragmatism got things done for the cause of the Revolution and for the budding republic.
Perhaps that is why today some call him “America’s Merlin.”²⁰ And why, in the midst of existential crises, it’s so critical to follow his lead.
______
¹ “How Benjamin Franklin, a Deist, became the Founding Father of a Unique Kind of American Faith,” The Washington Post, Perspective by Thomas S. Kidd, June 28, 2017.
² Meacham, Jon. American Gospel Random House Publishing Group, 2007, p. 12.
³ Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative History of the American Republic, quoting the third theme expressed in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, James West Davidson (Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 89.
⁴ The First American, H. W. Brands (Penguin Random House, 2002), p. 113
⁵The American Soul, Jacob Needleman (TarcherPerigee, 2003), p. 112.
⁶ Mitch Horowitz, quoted on New World Radio, WTAR 790 AM-Norfolk, Unity Online Radio, November 10, 2010.
⁷ Was Einstein a Deist? Christopher Finch PhD Theology, Philosopher, Historian, Deist https://www.quora.com/Was-Einstein-a-deist.
⁸ The First American, Brands p. 113.
⁹ Julius F. Sache, “The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania” in The Franklin Papers, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 323–325.
¹⁰ Corinne Heline, America’s Invisible Guidance, (Los Angeles, CA: New Age Press, 1949), p. 16.
¹¹ “Faith of Our Founding Fathers,” Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Tuolumne County, https://www.uuftc.org/minister/sermons/2008-sermons/faith-of-our-founding-fathers/.
¹² Quote from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771), cited in https://www.ushistory.org/franklin/autobiography/page37.htm
¹³ “Faith of Our Founding Fathers,” Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Tuolumne County, 2008.
¹⁴ “How Benjamin Franklin, a Deist, became the Founding Father of a Unique Kind of American Faith,” The Washington Post, Perspective by Thomas S. Kidd, June 28, 2017.
¹⁵ Peter Dawkins, Director of the Francis Bacon Research Trust and Saira Salmon, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCezov90Hjo and https://www.rosicrucian.org/history
¹⁶ The First American, Brands, p. 657–658.
¹⁷ Benjamin Franklin epitaph 1728, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0033.
¹⁸ The First American, Brands, p. 657
¹⁹ The First American, Brands, p. 444.
²⁰ Mitch Horowitz, quoted on New World Radio, November 11, 2010.
