Yet, that hasn't stopped an endless parade of folks like Rev. Jeffress from spreading them.  Perhaps if Barton didn't whitewash the matter by terming the quotations "unconfirmed" and just said "look, these are fake, I messed up, so stop citing them," more folks would have taken his caution to heart.

Barton argues there is ample evidence to prove America was founded as a "Christian Nation" without the unconfirmed quotations.  You have to wonder then, why Christian Nationalists first seem to jump on them and not what the Founders actually said.

Maybe it's because those are the ones that seem so on point and without them there is not much "there there."  

For instance, the following attributed to Patrick Henry really seems to settle the matter:

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!

Too bad he never said it.

There is one accurate quotation the Christian Nation crowd oft-cites by John Adams.  But the context destroys their intended meaning of it. As John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1813:

The general Principles, on which the Fathers Atchieved Independence, were...the general Principles of Christianity....

The problem is Adams, like Jefferson was a fervent theological unitarian and his actual meaning of the quotation is not at all something that orthodox evangelicals like Barton or Jeffress would endorse.  Indeed, if they really understood what Adams meant they'd term it blasphemous heresy.

In that very letter Adams explains exactly what he means:

Who composed that Army of fine young Fellows that was then before my Eyes? There were among them, Roman Catholicks, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anababtists, German Lutherans, German Calvinists Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants and House Protestants, Deists and Atheists; and "Protestans qui ne croyent rien ["Protestants who believe nothing"]." Very few however of several of these Species. Nevertheless all Educated in the general Principles of Christianity: and the general Principles of English and American Liberty.

In other words, Unitarians [Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians], Universalists, Deists and Atheists were all united under the "general principles of Christianity" as Adams understood them.  This clearly isn't the "Christianity" of today's evangelicals (or the "orthodox Christians" of the Founding era).  Indeed, they would argue this isn't "historic Christianity" at all.

One Christian Nationalist blogger wonders how is it that Adams could have possibly meant that atheists could be united with Christians under the "general principles of Christianity?"

The answer is simple:  According to Adams, being a Christian meant being a good person.  If an atheist was a good person, he was a "Christian."  

Indeed this is how Adams defined "Christianity" in an 1820 letter to Samuel Miller:

"I believe with Justin Martyr, that all good men are Christians, and I believe there have been, and are, good men in all nations, sincere and conscientious."

But to answer my above question, no I don't think we are too hard on Barton.  Whenever I start to think we are, I invariably come across some Christian Nationalist, often a Reverend with a big following like Jeffress, peddling nonsense about America's Founding and I realize Barton and his cohorts are in large part to blame.

As long as they continue to peddle fake history and millions of folks continue to believe it, our mission should continue.