With Sen. John McCain's addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, we will undoubtedly suffer yet another campaign of constant claims about this nation's Christian foundation.
It is an amazing construction formulated in the decades after the death of George Washington, as the Second Great Awakening took hold of the country. It is also a lie.
Of course, some of the founding fathers were in fact Christians. Those most responsible for bringing the states together, fighting the war and constructing a new nation, however, were often vehemently anti-Christian in private and occasionally in public as well.
Alexander Hamilton pioneered the manipulation of religious fervor to gain votes in the election of 1800, crafting John Adams' attacks that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist.
Jefferson did refer to Christianity as this nation's "particular superstition." In a letter to his nephew, he instructed the teenager to "question with boldness even the existence of God."
However, Jefferson countered with remarkable foresight, calling Adams a devout Presbyterian. The response among the religious colonists was summed up by one man at a Jefferson rally in Philadelphia who said, "Better a man who cares nothing of religion, than one who cares for the wrong religion."
In truth, the two men's correspondence over nearly two decades after both had retired from public life repeatedly showed neither of them had the slightest of holy inclinations. John Adams remarked in one letter, "Christianity is the bloodiest thing man has ever created."
The harshest of Christian criticisms came from the man who authored the Constitution, James Madison.
"During almost fifteen centuries … Christianity has been on trial," he said. "What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
From where, then, did the idea that the nation's founders were devout Christians come? The United States was founded at the end of the Enlightenment and beginning of the Second Great Awakening, a religious transformation, of which the nation is still symptomatic.
At the time, traveling preachers and Bible salesmen sought to relieve locals of their money in return for religious comfort. One pioneering clergyman and author, Mason Weems, came up with the brilliant, albeit cynical, idea of lying. He authored the myths of Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree and of Washington praying at Valley Forge. He made a small fortune selling these lies.
Weems' legacy of feeding the nation's religious fires is continued today by the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the country.
It is true that many of the founding fathers, even the irreligious, regularly attended church, but they only did so for social and business purposes.
During his presidency, Washington attended every Sunday, until one evening he invited his church's pastor over for dinner. The pastor mentioned to him that although Washington would listen to the sermon, he always left before receiving communion.
The pastor then pressed Washington, saying that it sets a poor example for the nation's president to leave before taking communion. Washington agreed, and replied that it must be fixed. He would no longer leave before communion.
Washington never went to church again.
Wes Hunt is a history senior.
