Old Book Blows Smoke...:

About America's "Christian" Foundations. Conservative websites such as Townhall, American Vision, and WorldNetDaily promote or sell this book, written in 1864, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States ... By Benjamin Franklin Morris, which supposedly settled the fact of American government's Christian heritage before the secularists came along and stole that history by revising it. I'm sure many have bought the book (which, given that it's in the public domain, they didn't have to; they could have legally downloaded it for free); but probably few have read it.

History, like science, given both involve acquiring knowledge, tends to improve with time and experience. Seriously, this is like appealing to a science book written in 1864 to settle a factual matter. I haven't even scratched the surface of this book and have found it riddled with factual errors. The book immediately begins citing the phony quotations most notably associated with David Barton and it sources many of the myths for which serious historians ridicule the "Christian Nation" crowd.

For instance on page 520 Morris repeats Parson Mason Weems' fraudulent account of Washington's "Christian" death. (For the real story see the following).

Great as he was in life, he was also great in death. He had fought the good fight, and death to him had no terrors." His death was worthy of his Christian faith and character. " I die hard," said he; "but I am not afraid to die. I should have been glad, had it pleased God, to die a little easier; but I doubt not it is for my good. 'Tis well! Father of mercies, take me to thyself." On his dying bed lay an open Bible, the book of God, which he had read in the family circle and in his private devotions, and in the light of its heavenly truths his great soul passed, doubtless, into the light and immortality of heaven.

From what I've been able to garner, this book's historiography is laughable.