'Stepping on one rake after another': Josh Hawley gets definitive smackdown from Princeton...

https://www.rawstory.com/josh-hawley [login to see] /
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) triggered mockery earlier this week with a Fourth of July Christian Nationalist post that falsely attributed a quote from an anti-Semitic, white nationalist magazine to founding father Patrick Henry.

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” said the fake quote posted to Twitter by Hawley. “For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

Princeton historian Kevin Kruse followed up with a thorough takedown of Hawley's claim.

"While Hawley’s proven to be especially inept at this game, this is a familiar routine by now," wrote Kruse on his personal Substack. "Someone linked to the Religious Right claims that America really is, or should be, a 'Christian nation' and we’re off on a thrilling game of Quote/Counterquote as conservatives and liberals go on a scavenger hunt looking for lines from letters and speeches to justify their own position on the role of religion in American government. The wide range of opinions trotted out in these debates never leads to any consensus, which, of course, is why we play this dumb game over and over again."

In reality, several founding fathers at all ends of the spectrum, from John Adams in the Treaty of Tripoli to Thomas Jefferson in the letter to the Danbury Baptists, made clear the laws of the country were not based on Christian theocracy and the law was entirely secular — but you don't even have to look at them, Kruse said.

You can just go to the Constitution itself.