Q: How does your account most differ from other biographers or general historians?

A: Religion is not a prominent theme in most of the biographies of the past hundred years. Three points about Washington's religion are usually made: Washington was at best a lukewarm Anglican. Two, on balance, he was a Deist, not a Christian. Three, though he spoke often of Providence, he seemed to mean something like the Greek or Roman fortune or fate, not the biblical God.

We found that a careful study of the evidence overturns all of these conventions. Some, more thoroughly than others. . . .

For instance, in mid-September 1975 in Spain, five terrorists convicted of murdering policemen were sentenced to death. European liberal opinion was outraged that in this modern age a West European country should sentence people to death. Unheard of! There was an outcry of indignation, and strong pressures were brought to bear on the Spanish government. But in the Soviet Union and its satellite states during the same period, vastly greater numbers were being sentenced to death and executed; and, in Africa, Idi Amin was slaughtering hundreds of thousands, a large part of the population of Uganda. Hardly a murmur of protest in the Western world. . . .