George Washington was no deist: Exposing the modern myth about America’s founding

Bestselling author and cultural commentator Eric Metaxas set out with the intention to tell the true story of the American Revolution.

“I said, ‘I just want to write a very compelling, very readable, fun, gallop-through-our-history [book],’” he tells Glenn Beck.

But as Metaxas researched, he kept coming across details from our history that “astonished” him.

One of those details had to do with none other than America’s first president. Many modern historians have labeled Washington a deist — that is, one who believes in a distant God who created the world but does not intervene in human affairs. These are generally the same people who argue that America was not founded as a Christian nation.

Metaxas calls the claim that Washington was a deist "baloney."

“Washington was no deist. What a joke. What a lie,” he exclaims.

“These were men of profound Christian faith who set about doing something that had never been done since the Israelites were in the Sinai wilderness, where they left Pharaoh and left Egypt and looked directly to God without an earthly king. ... This is what the founders were trying to do,” he explains.

All of the founders, he argues, understood that the goal was to “bring the Bible into government.”

“I was so overwhelmed by the explicitly Christian nature of what was going on. ... Everywhere you look, this narrative comes out. It is inescapable,” Metaxas tells Glenn, noting that his book is not “a Christian book” but “a book of American history.”

For years, Glenn has been trying to debunk the same misleading narrative.

“In this one letter [George Washington wrote], I think it’s 24 different scriptures are quoted without him quoting it. It’s just part of his language,” he says.

Glenn notes that there are numerous accounts of the founders, including Washington, speaking about miracles.

“A deist cannot believe in miracles,” he remarks.

Agreeing, Metaxas says, “It is our duty to know this.”

But he could never find a book that told the full truth about America’s birth.

This gap is what inspired him to write “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World,” which just released last month.

“This is our 250th,” he says. “This is our last exit before the toll. We the people need to understand how our government works, ... that all of our founders understood our liberties come from God.”

To hear more about Metaxas’ new book, watch the video above.

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