A Top Christian Nationalist Comes to Massachusetts
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.
Barton is speaking in Worcester, Massachusetts at a Christian homeschooling convention at the end of the month -- in the wake of a firestorm of criticism in Washington, DC about his bogus version of history, his attacks on the role of the federal judiciary, and concerns about his theocratic political agenda.
Barton is currently at the center of a series of controversies 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. In 2004, the notion that the U.S. is a Christian Nation was added to the Texas GOP platform. According to Americans United for Separation of Church and state, this action was denounced by both Jewish and Muslim groups.
Rev. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance urged Frist to "disassociate" himself from Barton. "I first became acquainted with Mr. Barton in the early 1970's," Gaddy wrote, "when I was a staff member of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. For the past 30 years, Barton has been evangelizing his extremist beliefs that the separation of church and state is a myth and that the United States was founded as and should be governed as a Christian nation; this is bad history and dangerous theology. By having Mr. Barton as a host of a religious heritage tour, you send a volatile message to all Americans that Washington has once again overstepped its bounds and is endorsing revisionist history along with advancing a right-wing agenda. Given the present mood of the country and the questionable role that religion has played in Washington recently, these are treacherous waters to be treading."
Ralph Neas, president of People for the American way also urged Frist, to disassociate himself from Barton, citing one of Barton's books. From Neas' description, the book sounds like a field manual for the current attacks on the state and federal judiciary by Christian Right leaders and their allies in Congress.
"Mr. Barton's 1996 book Impeachment!: Restraining an Over Active Judiciary," writes Neas, [is] "a 50 page handbook on how and why the right should push for impeachment of judges whose decisions they disagree with on abortion, school desegregation, homosexuality, and other subjects."
"Clearly stated," Neas concluded, "is Barton's agenda to intimidate federal judges, noting that even if impeachment does not succeed, the threat 'serves as a deterrent' and would cause judges to 'become more restrained.'"
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) denounced Barton's planned tour noting that Barton "intends to prove that the separation of church and state is a myth, and that America's Founders intended for the United States to be a Christian nation." He called on Frist to cancel his plan "to tour the U.S. Capitol with this man who says this should be a Christian-only country."
The Barton controversy figures into the widening attack on the judiciary by Christian Rightists and their allies in Congress. Some of rhetoric has seemed to justify violence against the judiciary. According to a report in The Washington Post, author Edwin Vieira told a recent conference "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny," in Washington DC, that Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy, "should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, 'upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.'"
"Ominously," the Post added, "Vieira continued by saying his 'bottom line' for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. 'He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,'" Vieira said.
"The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is 'Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.' Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly."
"A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to 'engage in violence.'"
"The people who have been speaking out on this, like Tom DeLay and Senator Cornyn, need to be backed up," longtime Christian Right leader Phyllis Schlafly said to applause at the conference.
When Barton is not giving capitol tours with Senator Frist, he often speaks at Christian Right political conferences, and conventions of Christian homeschoolers. Homeschools are key markets for the historical revisionist materials produced by Barton's and like minded groups. For example, Barton will be the keynote speaker at a Massachusetts statewide homeschooling convention at the Worcester Centrum on April 29th.
"We are pleased to welcome David Barton of WallBuilders," according to the conference web site, "as one of our keynote speakers this year. David will bless us with his passion for the clear truth of the Christian founding and principles of our nation. He will be presenting one workshop on Friday afternoon and a keynote address on Friday evening."
Barton will certainly not be the only controversial Christian Rightist in Worcester. One of the many exhibitors seeking to seek to sell thier wares and services at the Worcester conference, and at similar events around the country, will be the Home School Legal Defence Assocation, (HSLDA) headed by longtime Christian Right activist, Michael P. Farris, who was a featured speaker at the anti-judiciary conference. Farris said, according to The Washington Post, that Justice Kennedy, a Republican appointee of Ronald Reagan, "'should be the poster boy for impeachment' for citing international norms in his opinions. 'If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well.'"
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."
People concerned about the growth of the Christian nationalist movement, and its propagation through the Christian homeschooling network, might want to check out this list of home school conventions, and the speaking schedule of David Barton and his staff.
Barton is speaking in Worcester, Massachusetts at a Christian homeschooling convention at the end of the month -- in the wake of a firestorm of criticism in Washington, DC about his bogus version of history, his attacks on the role of the federal judiciary, and concerns about his theocratic political agenda.
Barton is currently at the center of a series of controversies 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. In 2004, the notion that the U.S. is a Christian Nation was added to the Texas GOP platform. According to Americans United for Separation of Church and state, this action was denounced by both Jewish and Muslim groups.
Rev. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance urged Frist to "disassociate" himself from Barton. "I first became acquainted with Mr. Barton in the early 1970's," Gaddy wrote, "when I was a staff member of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. For the past 30 years, Barton has been evangelizing his extremist beliefs that the separation of church and state is a myth and that the United States was founded as and should be governed as a Christian nation; this is bad history and dangerous theology. By having Mr. Barton as a host of a religious heritage tour, you send a volatile message to all Americans that Washington has once again overstepped its bounds and is endorsing revisionist history along with advancing a right-wing agenda. Given the present mood of the country and the questionable role that religion has played in Washington recently, these are treacherous waters to be treading."
Ralph Neas, president of People for the American way also urged Frist, to disassociate himself from Barton, citing one of Barton's books. From Neas' description, the book sounds like a field manual for the current attacks on the state and federal judiciary by Christian Right leaders and their allies in Congress.
"Mr. Barton's 1996 book Impeachment!: Restraining an Over Active Judiciary," writes Neas, [is] "a 50 page handbook on how and why the right should push for impeachment of judges whose decisions they disagree with on abortion, school desegregation, homosexuality, and other subjects."
"Clearly stated," Neas concluded, "is Barton's agenda to intimidate federal judges, noting that even if impeachment does not succeed, the threat 'serves as a deterrent' and would cause judges to 'become more restrained.'"
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) denounced Barton's planned tour noting that Barton "intends to prove that the separation of church and state is a myth, and that America's Founders intended for the United States to be a Christian nation." He called on Frist to cancel his plan "to tour the U.S. Capitol with this man who says this should be a Christian-only country."
The Barton controversy figures into the widening attack on the judiciary by Christian Rightists and their allies in Congress. Some of rhetoric has seemed to justify violence against the judiciary. According to a report in The Washington Post, author Edwin Vieira told a recent conference "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny," in Washington DC, that Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy, "should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, 'upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.'"
"Ominously," the Post added, "Vieira continued by saying his 'bottom line' for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. 'He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,'" Vieira said.
"The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is 'Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.' Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly."
"A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to 'engage in violence.'"
"The people who have been speaking out on this, like Tom DeLay and Senator Cornyn, need to be backed up," longtime Christian Right leader Phyllis Schlafly said to applause at the conference.
When Barton is not giving capitol tours with Senator Frist, he often speaks at Christian Right political conferences, and conventions of Christian homeschoolers. Homeschools are key markets for the historical revisionist materials produced by Barton's and like minded groups. For example, Barton will be the keynote speaker at a Massachusetts statewide homeschooling convention at the Worcester Centrum on April 29th.
"We are pleased to welcome David Barton of WallBuilders," according to the conference web site, "as one of our keynote speakers this year. David will bless us with his passion for the clear truth of the Christian founding and principles of our nation. He will be presenting one workshop on Friday afternoon and a keynote address on Friday evening."
Barton will certainly not be the only controversial Christian Rightist in Worcester. One of the many exhibitors seeking to seek to sell thier wares and services at the Worcester conference, and at similar events around the country, will be the Home School Legal Defence Assocation, (HSLDA) headed by longtime Christian Right activist, Michael P. Farris, who was a featured speaker at the anti-judiciary conference. Farris said, according to The Washington Post, that Justice Kennedy, a Republican appointee of Ronald Reagan, "'should be the poster boy for impeachment' for citing international norms in his opinions. 'If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well.'"
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."
People concerned about the growth of the Christian nationalist movement, and its propagation through the Christian homeschooling network, might want to check out this list of home school conventions, and the speaking schedule of David Barton and his staff.
posted by Frederick Clarkson at 12:12 AM
10 Comments:
Thank you for bringing Barton, and his association with Frist, to my attention, and I look forward to reading your book.
-Mark
http://www.markmaynard.com
This short piece from Rob Boston is also useful. It's a mirror from the old IFAS website that Skipp Porteous used to run - whatever happened to that, anyway?
Best two paras:
"In 1991 Barton addressed the Rocky Mountain Bible Retreat of Pastor Pete Peters' Scriptures for America, a group that espouses the racist "Christian Identity" theology. Advocates of this bizarre dogma insist that white Anglo-Saxons are the "true" chosen people of the Bible and charge that today's Jews are usurpers. Aside from being a virulent anti-Semite, Peters has advocated the death penalty for homosexuals. According to the Anti-Defamation League, other speakers at the event included white supremacist leader and 1992 presidential candidate James "Bo" Gritz, a leader of the radical and increasingly violent militia movement, and Malcolm Ross, a Holocaust denier from Canada. In November of that same year, Barton spoke at Kingdom Covenant College in Grants Pass, Oregon, another "Christian Identity" front group with ties to Peters.4
"Asked to explain these actions, Barton's reply amounted to a not very creative "I didn't know they were Nazis" dodge. In a July 1993 letter, Barton assistant Kit Marshall wrote, "At the time we were contacted by Pete Peters, we had absolutely no idea that he was 'part of the Nazi movement.' He contacted us for David to speak for Scriptures for America. The title is quite innocuous. In all the conversations that I personally had with Pete Peters, never once was there a hint that they were part of a Nazi movement. I would also like to point out that simply because David Barton gives a presentation to a group of people does not mean that he endorses all their beliefs."5 An excuse like that might have washed one time, but it stretches the bounds of credulity to accept that Barton was twice duped by innocuous-sounding extremist organizations."
An excellent question, to which I don't have an answer. But I'll bet your hunch is right. One of the architects and advisors to the network of private "Christian academies" that sprung up in response to the integration of the public schools was R.J. Rushdoony, the leading thinker of Christian Reconstructionism.
Why are you so concerned about christianity? The faith is freeing, not restricting, and promotes love for all.
Tim
I just got back from hearing David Barton in person. I spoke to him afterwards.
What he sadi tonight, and what he told me afterwords seems very different from the man you describe.
In particular, when asked "Is America a Christian Nation?" he said "I don't know - that depends upon your definition." And then he went on to present several reasonable and popular definitions of "Christian Nation", and to answer the question under each of those definitions. And his answers were such that any reasonable person would have agreed with them.
Nothing threatening here.
does anybody really swallow this garbage that Fred Clarkson is putting out? David Barton has dealt with all of these complaints on his website and has admitted when he used quotations from sources that could not always trace to primary source documents. check out wallbuilders.com for the truth. does Fred attack the woodward book from the 1920's which outright lied about George Washington sleeping with his slaves? this books was full of lies but no documentation and yet thousands of professors and teachers have repeated the lie, does this make them all liars???? where are you Fred?
Barton has documented all of quotations since in his excellent reference 'Original Intent'. do extreme leftists like Clarkson need to lie in order to try and win the argument about America's spiritual heritage? apparently so, since they are fighting the truth, that AMerica was the first nation in history to declare that all of our rights come from God and not some government or ruler as apparently mr. clarkson would prefer. Rabbi Lappin says, you have to reinvent our history, to change our government, and this is what 'secularists' educators have attempted to do. tell the truth Fred, it will make you free, ..God Bless...Charley
I was a big fan of David Barton, and still respect his labors for Christ. However, he blatently lied by saying Pastor Peters was part of a "nazi movement" or even associating him with any "nazi" affiliation.
Pastor Peters simply proclaims the truth of who the modern day Israelites are, the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Germanic, Celtic and kindred peoples who heard the voice of Jesus Christ, and have been a blessing to all the nations of the earth.
If the modern day Jews are Israel as they claim in public (there own writings admit they are of Esua/Edom) then the burden of proof lies with them. Have they became a "multitude of nations" or are they proped up by the tax dollars of Americans? Have they carried the Word of God to the nations as missionaries, or is it illegal to pass out New Testements in the streets of Jewish occupied Palastine? Did they "hear" Christs' voice as He said His "Sheep" would, or have they rejected him? Have they fulfilled the vast majority of other "fingerprints" that the above Caucasian peoples have?
Mr. Barton cowtowed to the gods of political correctness to save his career and chose to call Pastor Peters a "nazi" along with his masters. Choose ye this day whom you will serve Mr. Barton. While you are watching your checkbook, remember Christ sees the hearts of men.
Colonel Dyer
I have toured D.C. with Barton and it was a great experience. While he is passionate he is in no way a radical as you make him out to be. While on this tour we were permitted to read original documents written by our “atheist” founding fathers. When you read what they had to say they were in fact not “atheist” at all. Perhaps if you were to open your mind and be invited on one of these tours you would learn not a revisionist history but a corrected and amended history.
Please avoid "condemnation by association" attacks when critiquing statements made by others. For example, in an attempt to discredit some other statement by a person, an association is sometimes made between that person and some easily disreputable position, group, or individual. The problem with this approach is one of logic: "Because person A is a [pick-what-you-despise], then person A's statement about X is just untrustworthy." This assertion fails because the association has nothing directly to do with the statement in question. According to this logic, if applied consistently, one would have to discredit all of what "person A" states, even if it is true. The fallicy (sp?) of this approch is easy to see as soon as "person A" makes a true statement, such as "the sky is blue on a clear day at noon".
David Barton distortions go against everything that the Bible teaches .
As well as that Nazi creep Pete Peters . About truth and honesty ,
no matter how loud you keep shouting
a lie out in the end it is still a lie .
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