Reply #14: Wallbuilders is David Barton's site...he's the main pusher of meme [View All]

[bobbieinok]

that all founders were christians

a major student of the religious right/dominionists has a good article on Barton and his 'lies'

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/4/10/234829/696

Top Christian Nationalist Feels the Heat
by Frederick Clarkson
Sun Apr 10th, 2005 at 11:48:29 PM EST

David Barton is perhaps the leading proponent of the notion that the U.S. was once, and should again be a "Christian Nation." He wants to sell you on that idea. He has books and tapes to sell too. The problem is that his slick products and presentations don't stand up to scrutiny. For example, in 1996, the mainstream Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs wrote a detailed critique, debunking Barton's Christian nationalist notions. (the original has a link to this)

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Barton is currently at the center of a growing series of contoversies in Washington, DC regarding his association with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN).


Frist recently invited his congressional colleagues to participate in a "private tour" of the U.S. Capitol building with Barton. Frist described the tour as a "Fresh Perspective on Our Nation's Religious Heritage" and that Barton is "a historian noted for his detailed research into the religious heritage of our nation."

A simple Google search turns up other disturbing information about Barton. Not only does he disseminate biased and misleading materials, he has a profound, and profoundly alarming political agenda. Last year, Beliefnet reported that Barton is on the board of The Providence Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist oriented organanizaton. Reconstructionism is an influential political theology whose proponents argue that the U.S. should be a Christian theocracy, under "Biblical law." (I wrote about this movement and its role in the Christian right in detail in my book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.)

Lest anyone think that this is a tempest in a teapot, and that Barton is a fringe figure of no signficance, Roll Call reports that Barton often conducts such tours under the sponsorship of Members of Congress. He is also the Vice-Chair of the Texas Republican Party.

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Farris, Barton, and others are disseminating Christian nationalist propaganda through a nationwide network of sectarian Christian schools and home schools, which many Christian Rightists see as the base for the longterm takeover the of the U.S. As I reported in Eternal Hostility, Chris Klicka, HSLDA's Senior Counsel and Director of State and International Relations has written, "Sending our children to public schools violates nearly every Biblical principle... It is tantamount to sending our children to be trained by the enemy."

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