The Trump Administration keeps lying about George Washington praying at Valley Forge

A widely debunked story about Washington praying has now became official government messaging

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On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Labor posted the following image featuring George Washington honoring the Christian God.

The words are real—he said them in his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789, long before we knew anything about evolution—but there was no mention of the fact that the painting is based on a myth. It wasn’t a depiction of anything Washington did while in battle; rather, it’s a painting of something Christian Nationalists wish Washington did and which they’ve basically willed into existence by repeatedly lying about it.

(Incidentally, that same year, Washington sent a letter to the United Baptists Churches of Virginia in which he reminded them that every man “ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”)

So where did that image come from?

It’s from The Prayer at Valley Forge, a 1975 painting made by Arnold Friberg for America’s bicentennial the following year. The Museum of the Bible where that painting is now displayed describes it this way on its website: “Washington is depicted kneeling in a moment of solitary prayer, seeking guidance and strength from God. This moment has been depicted by other artists, but never as remarkably as this original work by Arnold Friberg.”

But even the museum acknowledges none of this happened. The placard next to the painting apparently says it “portrays an imagined moment of prayer” (emphasis mine).

That painting isn’t original, though. Another version of it was drawn by Henry Brueckner in 1889, and others have also been drawn, though none have become as ubiquitous as Friberg’s work.

How did that myth even come about? Constitutional scholar Andrew Seidel wrote in The Founding Myth (affiliate link) about how that all became canon in conservative Christian circles:

For all [the painting’s] ubiquity, there is no historical evidence to support the tale. [Priest Mason] Weems designed the story to portray a devout Washington… But historical facts tell us of a different Washington. He was a man of little or no religion with a strong character that, had he been religious, would have prevented showy religious displays...

On the rare occasions when Washington actually attended church (perhaps twelve times a year pre-presidency and only three times in his last three years), Washington refused to take communion, even though his wife did… Washington refused to have a priest or religious rituals at his deathbed, a startling lapse if he were truly devout. As historian Joseph Ellis put it, “there were no ministers in the room, no prayers uttered, no Christian rituals offering the solace of everlasting life.... He died as a Roman stoic rather than a Christian saint.”

If he was religious, Washington was exceedingly private about those beliefs, even in personal letters and papers… The ostentatious show Weems invented is simply not in keeping with Washington’s strong, silent character.

In fact, in Weems’ book about Washington, first published after Washington died and then republished multiple times with ever-more embellished stories, he appeared to be more interested in building up what the president symbolized than trying to depict him accurately. It’s the same book, after all, that gave us the myth about the cherry tree.

Reporter Jack Jenkins wrote about this lie months ago for Religion News Service:

… historians doubt the specific story of Washington praying at Valley Forge often forwarded by those who advocate for a Christian U.S.

…

… Lindsay M. Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, said in an email that the account was further popularized by a painting of Washington praying in the woods. “There is no evidence that the specific event depicted in that painting ever occurred,” said Chervinsky, who noted that Weems “regularly fabricated facts to spin a good story.”

And yet conservative Christians, fueled by the lies of people like pseudo-historian David Barton, keep acting like the image is an actual photograph.

Christian Nationalist Pastor Robert Jeffress is one who’s spread the lie. In 2020, Jeffress insisted Washington’s critics at the time “accused him of a photo-op when he knelt down in prayer at Valley Forge.” (Not only did that never happen, cameras were not around back then.)

Fellow Christian Nationalist preacher Jack Hibbs also claimed the image was an “absolute fact” based on the idea that a spy saw Washington doing it. (Also not true.)

The White House has been pushing the same mythology. When it launched an “America Prays” website in anticipation of the nation’s 250th anniversary, the Friberg image was front and center.

Pete Hegseth has also perpetuated the lie. In November, the Department of Defense (or War) posted the painting with a caption reading “For 250 years, America’s military has appealed to Heaven.”

And the Department of Labor followed two weeks later with a post saying “May God bless our Nation and her People”:

When Hegseth spoke at the Pentagon’s “Christmas Worship Service” on December 17, he insisted regular Christian prayer sessions would continue because “as George Washington did that first year, he went on bended knee for providence in impossible tasks.”

You get the idea here. The Christian Nationalists in the Trump administration and the ones who prop up their constant lies are using this image to suggest our nation is, first and foremost, a Christian one despite all evidence to the contrary. But the image portrays and event that never happened. They’re basing their fantasy on a lie. It’s what they do. As we know by now, Jesus apparently condones lying as long as it helps Republicans.

None of this is an accident. It’s all a deliberate strategy. It’s propaganda. Facts don’t support the idea that we are or ever were a Christian nation, so Trump and his allies are choosing to ignore the facts. They don’t have reverence for history, only contempt for it.

Christian Nationalists are clinging to this lie because it provides them divine cover for all the anti-Constitutional shit they’re doing. If Washington can be remade into a proto–Christian Nationalist, then dissenters can be treated as heretics and traitors. That’s why this needs to be called out every time—before the facts are overrun by the repetition of lies.

The real lesson of Washington’s life—one of the better lessons, anyway—wasn’t that he prayed theatrically in the woods, but that he helped build a nation where belief was a private matter and being an American wasn’t contingent on your theology. The people now lying about what he stood for are tarnishing the very legacy they’re claiming to protect.

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