Founding Father Worship

Let me preface this post by saying a couple of things.  1) I am a registered Republican (so you know my bias).  2) I'm a dedicated patriot like my father and grandfather.  3) I graduated with a degree in history.

I struggle with something and I need your help.  As this election heats up and as controversies like the Chick-Fil-A controversy emerge our nation's founding fathers get brought up a lot. People wonder what they might think.  People bring up the fact that they were Christian to the core; that they established our nation as a Christian nation.

There are a few problems that I have with this.  First, as someone with a degree in history (that does not make me a historian) I see that our founding fathers were far from perfect and several were far from Christian.  Benjamin Franklin is believed to have frequented orgies, refused to recognize the deity of Jesus and was agnostic at best.  Thomas Jefferson rewrote the Bible to take the miracles of Christ out because the miracles didn't fit with his religion of reason.  The list goes on.

I will say that our nation was established on Judeo-Christian values to be sure.  Values that were mixed with values of the Age of Reason.  Our founding fathers did recognize that Judeo-Christian values were a great bedrock for society and many of our founding fathers were great Christian men.

I have a second problem with the constant questioning of "what would the founding fathers want?" or "what would the founding fathers think?"  I have a hard time believing that Christ would want us looking to our founding fathers more than Him.  Often I see people turning our founding fathers from brave men with vision to demi-gods.

My question for you is this: how do we honor our founding fathers without turning them into idols?  How should Christians show historical patriotism without dishonoring God?

I know this isn't my typical post but I'd appreciate your input today.