I was enjoying a bike ride yesterday when a Metrobus from the Washington, D.C., transit system caught my eye.
The bus was decorated with a giant ad depicting an image of George Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge. Beneath the image was the word “CHRISTIAN?” and a website for the Christian Nationalist group WallBuilders.
I could only shake my head. WallBuilders, a group founded by notorious pseudo-historian David Barton, claims to tell the true story of the founders’ relationship to Christianity and their alleged hostility toward separation of church and state. And it is illustrating that on D.C.-area buses with an ad depicting an incident that never happened.
The story that Washington knelt in the snow at Valley Forge and prayed for divine guidance before battle during the Revolutionary War is beloved by Christian Nationalists. It is also fictional. It was invented out of whole cloth by a writer named Mason Locke Weems, a minister often known as Parson Weems, who put together a biography of Washington a year after his death.
Actually, “biography” isn’t the right word, since much of Weems’ tome is fabricated. Weems’ goal was to present Washington as a saintly man of great virtue and a moral example for young people, so he just made up a bunch of stuff. (That famous story about the young Washington admitting he chopped down a cherry tree because, “I cannot tell a lie”? Never happened. Weems again.)
In Weems’ retelling, Washington was a devout Christian because it fit Weems’ ideological agenda. So, what did Washington actually believe? He was nominally an Episcopalian, but most scholars agree that our first president embraced Deism, a belief in an impersonal God who created the universe but does not supernaturally interact with humankind. Three ministers who knew him well affirmed Washington’s Deism, and scholars have noted that in his writings, Washington never mentioned Jesus. (Read more about Washington’s beliefs here.)
WallBuilders may place these ads, as misleading as they may be, because courts have ruled that ads on D.C.-area buses and the subway system cannot be banned simply because some people consider them controversial. (The American Civil Liberties Union partnered with First Liberty Institute, a Christian Nationalist legal group, to represent WallBuilders in federal court.)
WallBuilders has the right to use public forums, like bus ads, to tell lies. That makes it all the more incumbent upon groups like Americans United and its supporters to counter them with the truth. You can start here.
Photo: An old print depicts the fictional story of George Washington praying at Valley Forge.
