David Barton

"David Barton, who recently has been tapped as an alleged "expert" on American history featured on the Glenn Beck show, has built a career upon his claim that United States government was founded on Biblical precepts. This creates a major problem - if America was founded as a Christian nation, how can we account for slavery ?

"In 1987, God reportedly told David Barton, a one-time science teacher at a fundamentalist Christian school that grew out of a church started by his own parents, that he was “to search the library and find the date that prayer had been prohibited in public schools [and] obtain a record of national SAT scores … spanning several decades.” Predictably, the result of Barton’s unscientific study was to find a “correlation” between theallegedbanning of prayer and a

"Christian nationalists believe in a revisionist history, which holds that the founders were devout Christians who never intended to create a secular republic; separation of church and state, according to this history, is a fraud perpetrated by God-hating subversives. One of the foremost Christian revisionist historians is David Barton, who , in addition to running an organization called Wallbuilders that disseminates Christian nationalist books, tracts and videos, is also the vice-chairman of the Texas Republican Party.

"The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America's supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement. No understanding of the Christian Right is remotely adequate without this foundational concept.

"On May 21, Texas School Board member Cynthia Dunbar opened the board’s meeting with an invocation: “Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England, or the charter of Massachusetts Bay, or the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the same objective is present—a Christian land governed by Christian principles.”

"But Bachmann's admiration of history revisionists wasn't the thing that really caught my attention in her speech at the conference. It was her detailed account of her family history, aimed at emphasizing her Iowa roots to this audience of Iowans.

"As we have been noting for nearly a year now, a theology known as "Seven Mountains" has been slowly creeping its way into "mainstream" Religious Right activism. 

"On Wednesday's Daily Show, Mike Huckabee defended his comments about David Barton being his favorite historian. On the same day, Barton aired an episode of his online radio show called "Why History Matters," offering a window into how Barton, and through his admiration, Huckabee, draws closely on R.J.

"On April 6, 2011 Jon Stewart questioned presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee about David Barton. Stewart missed a few things.

"Following the fold is a list of quotes from Rushdoony's books and other Christian nationalist texts, provided as documentation to accompany Bruce Wilson's recent article on Glenn Beck's promotion of the worldview which teaches this treatment of the issue of slavery.  When Rousas J.