Josh Hawley's fake quote about America's Christian founding has a dark origin story

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) marked the Fourth of July by tweeting theocratic propaganda through a fake quote incorrectly attributed to founding father Patrick Henry — and there's a dark implication to why he did it, wrote MSNBC's Steve Benen.

“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,” stated the quote Hawley posted. “For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

In reality, Henry never said that. This quote was falsely attributed to him in a 1956 article from The Virginian, an anti-Semitic and white nationalist magazine, and was later picked up by similarly racist publications like The American Mercury.

"On the surface, it’s obviously unfortunate to see a senator — a graduate of Stanford and Yale — make a mistake like this, especially as so many other Republicans also fall for fake quotes," wrote Benen. "But let’s not brush past the underlying point the Missouri Republican was trying to make by way of a made-up line: Hawley seems certain that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, with members of one faith tradition — his own — enjoying exalted status over others."

The historical record also shows multiple quotes that contradict Hawley's belief that America was founded as a Christianity-first nation.

In the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli ending war between the United States and the Barbary pirates, John Adams wrote, "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." Thomas Jefferson — who was as bitter an ideological rival to Adams as modern-day Democrats are to Republicans — agreed, writing, "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law," and saying the First Amendment establishes “a wall of separation between church and state.”

This is not the first time Hawley has come under fire for rewriting history. On Juneteenth, he proclaimed that "Christianity is the faith and America is the place slavery came to die," overlooking that Christians were on both sides of the Civil War and certain Christian sects were founded explicitly for the preservation of slavery.