Ken Burns Distorts the Founders’ Religious Beliefs

After watching Ken Burns’s new documentary The American Revolution, I was tempted to riff on the old Henry Ford quip that its history is “more or less bunk.” But the quip risks obscuring more than it reveals, for the documentary does indeed have a lot of excellent history that correctly states most of the facts with the polished presentation characteristic of Burns’s documentaries. Still, this makes its historical sins of commission and omission, particularly with regard to the religious beliefs of the founders, all the more insidious.