No Miracle on Ice: Secular Survival & Sacred Spin

Another Graham drapes Washington in the cloth of devout Christianity, tailoring history to fit his ideological agenda.

From the desk of your friendly neighborhood presidential historian: Study Marry Kill is solely funded by paid subscribers. To keep our weekly dispatches coming, SMK needs your support. Dislike Substack? Cut out the middleman on Venmo or Zelle.

---

Inauguration day was a whirlwind—as was the fact-checking. Here’s something you may have missed…

From my George Washington biography.

In my biography of George Washington, I offer a catalog of lies we've enshrined about the man who supposedly couldn't tell them. At Trump's inauguration, Rev. Franklin Graham trotted out #5: Washington kneeled to pray at Valley Forge.

The winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge was indeed a crucible, but not the pious snow globe Graham peddled to 4 million viewers. Eighteen miles from Philadelphia's British-occupied comforts, Washington faced a trinity of torments: bitter cold, inadequate supplies, unskilled soldiers, Congressional doubters, and the looming specter of defeat. From this frigid forge emerged not a miracle, but men–hardened, disciplined, and decidedly earthbound.

Those six months were heavily documented. There’s an abundance of letters, diaries, and recollections written in Washington's hands and by other eyewitnesses. I could quote dozens of sources to support, for example, that Washington approved a performance of “Cato,” his favorite play, in defiance of a Congressional ban. But when it comes to Washington allegedly falling to one knee, there’s deafening silence in the archives.

What we do have is an inconvenient truth: Washington was likely a deist, more aligned with a cosmic watchmaker than a personal savior. His writings, conspicuously devoid of "Jesus" or "Christ," speak volumes in their silence. Ministers who knew him confirm he was likely a deist.

That didn’t matter to the myth’s progenitor, either, who was also a man of god. Mason Weems, an itinerant minister and evangelical bookseller, promised his publisher a biography of Washington would “sell like flaxseeds.” In death, Weems transformed Washington from flesh and blood to marbled saint. In his earthly absence, the hero of the revolution became the embodiment of the nation’s most optimistic hopes.

Graham, like Weems, drapes Washington in the cloth of devout Christianity, tailoring history to fit an ideological agenda. It's a powerful narrative: If Washington appealed to God in the nation’s hour of need, they have a powerful narrative linking America's birth to divine favor. This helps Graham promote the United States as a fundamentally righteous, Christian nation from its very founding–and argue it should remain so.

There’s an abundance of rebuttals from the founding era. Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention where the framers built a wall between church and state. The 1796 Treaty of Tripoli stands as a stark rebuttal, declaring the U.S. "not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This truth bears the founders' fingerprints: negotiated under Washington, signed by John Adams, ratified unanimously by Congress.

According to the National Parks Service, which manages the Valley Forge historic site, Washington may not have been so desperate as to seek a moment of divine intervention.. That winter at Valley Forge was "'suffering as usual,’ for privation was the Continental soldier's constant companion." Perhaps Washington, who also led the Virginia militia into the wilds of Ohio as a young man, understood this better than Graham, who has never served.

The real Valley Forge story of human grit and strategic acumen is far more compelling than any divine intervention fable. And it's aligned with a crucial truth the founders and framers have told us from the very beginning: in the grand experiment of democracy, it's best to keep God as a spectator, not a player.

See you soonish! In the meantime, you can find me on Esty, Instagram, Bluesky, and Twitter. My books on Bookshop, Amazon, and your local bookstore or library. If you’d like me to sign or personalize my books, purchase copies from Oblong Books.