Evangelicals preach a revisionist history that teaches that America is a Christian nation founded on biblical values, and they vehemently proclaim that the founding fathers were fire-breathing Puritans.

Most of the founding fathers were deists, not theists, and if alive today they would be more comfortable attending a mainline Protestant church than an evangelical one.

Benjamin Franklin was a deist and member of the Hellfire Club, notorious for drunken debaucheries. Thomas Jefferson also a deist valued reason over revelation and rejected traditional Christian doctrines. In fact, he was so contemptuous of conventional Christian beliefs that he wrote “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”, commonly referred to as “The Jefferson Bible” which included no signs of Jesus’s divinity.

Shortly after being reelected as House Speaker, Christian Nationalist Mike Johnson read a prayer falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, which has been debunked by historians, scholars and even the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

The spurious quotation known as the “National Prayer for Peace” ends with the words:

“In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Jefferson, a staunch supporter of the separation of church and state, would have considered it anathema to invoke “Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Jefferson is probably rolling over in his grave at the thought of a self-righteous Christian politician misquoting him to mislead people into thinking he was a Bible thumper.