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The other delegates didn't agree to that. One reason was they didn't have any money. They couldn't pay [for a chaplain]—at least that's one reason often cited. But the proposal was treated respectfully.

The founders talked a lot about Providence, but they meant it in various ways.

I think every one of them believed in Providence, including Jefferson. You see quotations from Jefferson about believing in an overruling Providence a superintending Providence. I think it would be hard to find anybody who did not believe rather strongly in Providence. At that time, and I'm not a theologian, there still may be two conceptions of Providence. There was what people called a general Providence and a particular Providence. The general Providence was the idea of a watchmaker, that God started up the universe and withdrew and just watched things. The particular Providence was that God was actively intervening in human affairs constantly.

The phrase Abigail Adams used in her letters was that a sparrow doesn't fall without the knowledge of God. I think most people, it's not quite clear, but most of them believed in a particular Providence.

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May (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50