Of Course Josh Hawley Tweeted a Fake Quote to Push Religious Propaganda - Vanity Fair

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The senator from Missouri celebrated the Fourth of July by falsely claiming the United States was founded “on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

By Bess Levin

July 5, 2023

Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021.By Tom Brenner/Reuters/Bloomberg

Josh Hawley is a man who needs no introduction, but the CliffsNotes, in case you’re not up on the senator from Missouri, are that he:

Oh, and he’s apparently also the kind of guy who uses fake quotes to make shit up about the United States’ founding to push religious propaganda. On an American holiday no less!

Per HuffPost:

Josh Hawley is under fire for a Fourth of July tweet that managed to include both a false claim and a false quote. Hawley tweeted a quote he claimed to be from founding father Patrick Henry saying the United States was founded “on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Just one problem: Henry—a slave owner perhaps best remembered for his “give me liberty or give me death” quote—never said it.… The quote is actually from a 1956 magazine article that discussed Henry’s faith.

Not surprisingly, the Republican lawmaker was summarily dragged on Twitter:

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As has been noted, Hawley received degrees from both Stanford and Yale, but one needn’t have attended some of the highest-ranked schools in the country to know that the United States was obviously not founded “on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” In fact, one would pretty much only need to know, like, the absolute most basic facts about the US to not make such a blatantly false claim about this nation. Of course, Hawley is not really as much of an idiot as his tweet suggests—and actually, one might argue that he knows exactly what he’s doing. As MSNBC notes:

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. Indeed, the GOP senator’s misguided tweet was part of a larger rhetorical push. It was just two weeks ago when Hawley spoke at a far-right event and declared his belief that the Christian faith had “formed the soul of this country.” He went on to say, “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord,” adding that he believes “the time for Christians to rise is now.”

It was against this backdrop that Hawley—on Independence Day—pushed the line that the United States was “founded…on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” It really wasn’t. The Constitution is a secular document that created a secular government. Thomas Jefferson—in an actual quote—wrote in 1802 that our First Amendment built “a wall of separation between church and state.” In 1797, John Adams agreed: “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

Clearly, the senator from Missouri is not about to let those inconvenient facts stop him.