Steady on, Derb. I’m with you on the posthumous homosexualization of every great man of history, a trend that reached its absolute nadir with that revisionist biography of Kipling which was such a plonkingly literal case of imposing the assumptions of the present on the past that the case for his gayness rested on little more than a jacket photo of him with shaved head and big moustache looking like the sort of chap one might find oneself dancing with at two in the morning at a leather bar in the Village.

But with posthumous Christianization isn’t the opposite the case? We’re talking about people who were raised in an overwhelmingly Christian culture and thus the question is to what degree they dissented from it. An 18th century “skeptic” is very different from a 21st century post-Christian Euro-secularist born-and-bred of 40 or under, with not even a residual knowledge of old hymns or the big quotes from the Gospels. As someone said to me the other day, at least Nietzsche respected God enough to kill Him. There’s a big difference between freelance atheism by “skeptics” and atheism as the default faith system of a progressive culture largely ignorant of religion. I doubt the most skeptical Founder would enjoy discussing the subject with, say, John Edwards’ bloggers.