Christian Evangelical Researches the Founding Fathers and Discovers the Truth

As an evangelical Christian and a member of the Christian Coalition, I felt obliged to expose a misquote of John Adams' I found in an article entitled "America's Unchristian Beginnings"1 by the self-avowed atheist Dr. Steven Morris. However, what happened next changed my focus to the use of misquotes, unconfirmed quotes, and misleading attributions by the religious right.
In the process of attempting to correct Morris, I was guilty of using several misquotes myself. Professor John George of the University of Central Oklahoma political science department and coauthor (with Paul Boller Jr.) of the book They Never Said It!2 set me straight. George pointed out that George Washington never said, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."3 I had cited page 18 of the 1927 edition of Halley's Bible Handbook. This quote was probably generated by a similar statement that appears in A Life of Washington4 by James Paulding. Sadly, no one has been able to verify any of the quotes in Paulding's book since no footnotes were offered.
After reading They Never Said It! I had a better understanding of how widespread the problem of misquotes is. Furthermore, I discovered that many of these had been used by the leaders of the religious right. I decided to confront some individuals concerning their misquotes. WallBuilders, the publisher of David Barton's The Myth of Separation, responded by providing me with their "questionable quote" list which contained dozens of quotes widely used by the religious right.