Wallbuilders

As we have noted before, Religious Right leaders - in particular, supporters of Newt Gingrich - are absolutely certain that the re-election of President Obama spells certain doom not only for America, but for all of Western Civilization.

Gingrich's most vocal supporter, Jim Garlow, was a guest on "Wallbuilders Live" today where he discussed the rise of the so-called "Evangelical Left."  Garlow insisted that he didn't even know what that term means because there is only one correct Biblical position on issues like abortion and marriage and those who do not hold such positions are simply violating Biblical truth. 

As such, there are those who are right and there are those, on the Left, who are wrong and it is time for pastors to take a stand in their pulpits and preach this message to their congregations.  Because if they don't, Garlow warned, the next election, and all hope for America, will be lost:

We have about ten months left to save this nation. It's not that the nation will cease to exist after November, it's just that the die will have been cast in such a way that we will never, ever be able to reclaim that which we once had. Whether it be in the arena of reclaiming safety for the womb, the definition of marriage, or of the economic fact that we're $15 trillion in the whole now and a $110 trillion in unfunded liabilities - this is a nation that will be decimated, it will be unsalvageable after November if we cannot get it turned. Even with the strongest leadership that we might be able to elect it is still going to be a very hard task because of how far down we have fallen both morally and economically as it relates to biblical understanding.

On Monday, Janet Parshall hosted David Barton to use Martin Luther King Jr. Day as an opportunity for Barton to spew his right-wing reading of U.S. history and the Constitution. While Barton does not have degrees in history or law, he claimed that the theory of evolution was responsible for the Supreme Court’s ruling in Everson v. Board of Education, which found that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause applies to the states because it was incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment — because it led to legal positivism.

As Barton explains, law students who learned about the theory of evolution, which he objects to since he believes the Founders settled “the entire debate on creation and evolution” and opposed the theory, consequently believed that the Constitution should evolve, and in turn made the Establishment Clause apply to the states. Barton has consistently opposed the Supreme Court’s definition of the Establishment Clause and its application to states and localities, even going as so far to tell Jon Stewart that he believes cities can even implement Sharia law, although he later denied saying it.

Barton: This may sound weird but it was the theory of evolution, we think it’s a science debate it is not, if you apply the theory of evolution to law you say, ‘wait a minute we can’t be bound by a two hundred year old document, we’ve evolved past that, what we need to have is an evolving document that meets the needs of society today and who best to evolve the document but judges, they’re the ones who deal with the law,’ so we got into this thing of what’s called legal positivism or evolutionary law, living constitution, and we started teaching that in the law schools in the 1920s. Take kids in the law schools in the 20s and, get this, they’re now in legal practice in the ’30s and now in the ’40s they’re adults with twenty years under their belt and they get appointed to the US Supreme Court and so in ’47 they simply implemented what they’ve been taught in law school twenty-five years earlier.

Rick Perry today appeared on WallBuilders Live with right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton and his cohost Rick Green, where he spent most of the time railing against President Obama’s spending policies while also criticizing his proposed cuts to the Defense Department budget. According to Perry, “America is paying a huge price” for electing someone who “is a socialist or was trained by socialists”:

Perry: Here’s what I tell people, I said, listen, if you’re looking for the best debater, we got a great debater in the White House right now, America is paying a huge price because they were enamored with hope and change and this president, who I truly believe is a socialist or was trained by socialists, put America in peril. Put America in peril from an economic standpoint, put America in peril from a military-preparedness standpoint, put America in peril from the standpoint of foreign policy.

Barton and Green went on to say that not only have they worked with Governor Perry but also with Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, who recently appeared on WallBuilders Live, surely to inform them that Jesus opposed the minimum wage and the capital gains tax while pastors are under the threat of arrest because of hate crimes laws:

Green: Look, I know we’re talking about all the positives on Perry, I know a lot of our listeners, we got folks who support Newt and support Bachmann, and we support those guys too, they’re good folks.

Barton: I’ve already helped a whole bunch of these guys in the campaign, I have worked directly with several of them at their request and I’m happy to do that.

Green: Yeah sure, and they stand for all the right things. But we just got to be honest about Governor Perry’s record and what he did. When we went up there to Iowa and we both went and spoke at some caucuses there, it forced me to really sit down and think, why, if I got to pick somebody to vote for, how do I measure these guys? I started thinking for me it’s got to be that they both believe what I do, they got my values, but they can also be effective. So I think some people do discount him a little be when they shouldn’t and they’re going to be surprised, if he gets the momentum back—there’s some good candidates in the race, we’ll see what South Carolinians think.

Barton: We’ve always taken the position we’ll help people who have the right values, so even when I went to Iowa and spoke for Governor Perry at one of the caucuses, I was right beside Michele Bachmann’s husband Marcus and we had a great time because I had just done some media interviews on behalf of Michele.

Green: That’s right, and I went out to Iowa in August for Michele for the straw poll, and we’ve both helped Newt and Santorum, so yeah there are good people running.

Barton: There are good people running and this is fine and we’re not taking positions, but we are pointing out positive things.

While Religious Right leaders themselves might be fractured on who to support in the race, Republican candidates for president all seem to agree on who to pander to: David Barton.

David Barton has been actively promoting his soon-to-be-released book, The Jefferson Lies, and one of Barton’s central claims is that Jefferson actually wanted to use “The Jefferson Bible” to evangelize Native Americans. Craig Ferhman in the Los Angeles Times yesterday discussed the Jefferson Bible and dissected Barton’s erroneous assertions, writing that Barton “cherry-picked” and “distorted” Jefferson’s work in order to make it “fit the Religious Right’s agenda.” Barton has a long track record of misrepresenting history to make it seem that Jefferson was trying to proselytize the Native Americans, and Ferhman says that the right-wing pseudo-historian even used an “outrageous fabrication” while arguing that Jefferson gave “The Jefferson Bible” to missionaries.

Ferhman also details how many of Jefferson’s opponents tried to stoke fears that he was an enemy of Christianity and that “some families buried their Bibles in their gardens” following his election as President. Much like today when Republican and conservative leaders say Obama is leading a “war on religion” and is “hostile toward Christianity,” many of Jefferson’s adversaries warned that a vote for Jefferson was “no less than rebellion against God” and a “sin against God,” dubbing him an “an open enemy to their religion, their Redeemer.” Barton himself consistently stokes fears about Obama and his religious faith, telling voters that God will hold those accountable who don’t vote the way Barton would like them to.

Ferhman appropriately writes that “Barton loves to cherry-pick a phrase and manipulate it support his side in a partisan, present-day debate,” and notes that presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry continue to give Barton unmerited praise:

In a presidential campaign, and in the hands of Jefferson's enemies, this passage became proof of the candidate's radicalism. One popular pamphlet from a pro-Adams minister quoted "Notes," then countered it: "Let my neighbor once persuade himself that there is no God," the minister warned, "and he will soon pick my pocket, and break not only my leg but my neck."

Such attacks proved effective enough that, when Jefferson did win the election, some families buried their Bibles in their gardens, fearing the new president would burn them. So it made sense that Jefferson continued to keep his religious views private. Years later, after he and Adams had resumed a correspondence, Jefferson described Jesus' teachings as "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals." The problem, he wrote in another letter to Adams, came in the "artificial scaffolding" that surrounded those teachings — the Virgin Birth, the miracles and so on.

"The Jefferson Bible" is his attempt to tear down that scaffolding. Jefferson took his first stab at it while still president. In the White House, "after getting through the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day," he used a razor to slice Jesus' teachings out of a couple of King James Bibles, then grouped them by subject (e.g., "false teachers") and pasted them into a scrapbook. Its title page included these words: "an abridgment ... for the use of the Indians." Scholars agree it was most likely a sly joke about the impossibility of circulating such a genuinely radical book, or perhaps a joke about Adams' political allies, whom Jefferson referred to as "Indians" in his second inaugural.

…

Today, the facts about "The Jefferson Bible" might seem like an impossible obstacle to anyone who wants to fashion Jefferson as a hero for right-leaning Christians — and America as a "Christian nation." Instead, the book has been distorted to fit the religious right's agenda.

There's no better example of this than David Barton, an amateur historian who's become quite popular with Perry, Santorum and Michele Bachmann. Barton loves archival flourishes — his Texas offices include a concrete vault filled with 18th century arcana — but his true concerns lie in the present. Though Barton admits that "The Jefferson Bible" often comes up as proof that its namesake wasn't the evangelical Christian conservatives want him to be, he also says he can refute this. In a TV appearance in 2010, Barton fixated on Jefferson's "Indians" title page, mixed in some unrelated material about Jefferson's Indian policy, then pivoted to an outrageous fabrication: "He then gave it to a missionary," Barton said of Jefferson and his Bible, "and he said, 'Here, if you get this printed, and you use this as you evangelize the Indians.'"

There's absolutely no evidence of Jefferson giving either version of his Bible to anyone other than his bookbinder. Perhaps it's no surprise that last year, in Iowa, Newt Gingrich said, "I never listen to David Barton without learning a whole lot of new things." That's because Barton loves to cherry-pick a phrase and manipulate it support his side in a partisan, present-day debate.

But there's a bigger problem with Barton's method: He strips history of its complex human appeal. After all, "The Jefferson Bible" stands as one of the most interesting and iconoclastic moments in America's religious past — one man with a razor, a pot of paste and a unique and private set of ideas. They were intricate ideas: Jefferson was no more a Bible thumper than he was a Bible burner. And that's why he and his handmade book have enjoyed such an odd and exciting afterlife. After one politician got his 14 copies of the 1904 edition, he reported receiving more than 2,000 requests from his constituents.