“arose from [Hamilton’s] horror at the ‘atheistic’ French Revolution.”28 Interestingly, although Washington included this sentiment in his final speech, he omitted Hamilton’s next sentence: “does it [national morality] not require the aid of a generally received and divinely authoritative Religion?”29 Washington’s edit suggests that he believed that any religion, not just Christianity, could replace morality. The Farewell Address conceives of religion and morality as two separate, distinct things—not as synonyms expressing the same thought, though Christian nationalists misread it that way.
