Religion

With no academic credentials as a historian, David Barton toldThe Daily Show host Jon Stewart that his involvement in editing textbooks around the country was proof that he is a respected and esteemed historian. However, his work with textbooks if anything reveals his blatant partisanship and pseudo-scholarship.

As Mariah Blake writes in The Washington Monthly, Barton’s Christian nation mythology was indeed just one aspect of his role shaping the Texas textbooks as a consultant for the Texas School Board. Barton wanted to give a positive spin to Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist politics and “purge the standards of key figures of the civil rights era, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.” As Blake writes, Barton tried to diminish the work of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther Ling Jr. by arguing “that they shouldn’t be given credit for advancing the rights of minorities. As Barton put it, ‘Only majorities can expand political rights in America’s constitutional society.’ Ergo, any rights people of color have were handed to them by whites—in his view, mostly white Republican men.”

Barton, who was once vice-chair of the Texas GOP and a paid surrogate of the Republican National Committee, tirelessly works to convince black audiences that they should vote for Republicans and oppose the Democratic Party because the GOP is responsible for black civil rights.

But Barton’s claims that he writes about more than just America as a “Christian nation” shouldn’t distract from the reason Texas School Board members invited Barton to edit their textbooks in the first place. In fact, then-Texas School Board member Cynthia Dunbar admitted that it was the board’s goal to promote religion through the state’s textbooks to counteract “a Biblically illiterate society,” and another ex-member Don McLeroy said that it was his job at the School Board to fight “secular humanists” because “we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles” and “the way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel.”

Barton also told Jon Stewart that he was used to help write textbooks in other states, namely California. However, this is quite an exaggeration. Rob Boston writes that while Barton was invited by a conservative to advise California in its development of textbooks, his proposals went nowhere:

In 1998, a conservative member of the California Academic Standards Commission appointed Barton to an advisory position, asking the Texan to critique proposed social studies/history standards. From that perch, Barton attacked the portion of the standards that discussed the development of religious freedom, trying to remove every reference to separation of church and state.

He almost pulled it off. Commission members, unfamiliar with Barton’s agenda, seemed open to adopting his suggestions. They changed course only after intervention by Americans United’s Sacramento Chapter, AU’s national office and others.

Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation notes that this isn’t the only time Barton embellished his work with other states, as he also worked with Michele Bachmann when she was a Minnesota state legislator to ensure that schools display the Declaration of Independence.

Such a record of exaggeration demonstrates why real historians, including Christian historians, who have followed David Barton have repeatedly criticized and dismissed his faulty “scholarship.”

With guest Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), pseudo-historian David Barton cast doubt on President Obama’s religious beliefs and maintained that he wants to take God out of government. Barton lauded a resolution championed by Forbes which reaffirms and encourages the existing motto “In God We Trust” and claimed that Obama is imposing a “secularist” agenda, adding that “when you forget that God is part of the equation, you will lose your prosperity, you will lose your rights, you will lose your stability.”

Barton, who believes that Obama has “a worldview that is devoid of God,” has previously (and erroneously) suggested that the President tried to suppress the phrase “endowed by their Creator.” Channeling many right-wing conspiracy theories, Barton now alleges that Obama wants to do the same with “In God We Trust.”

Along with co-host Rick Green, Barton tried to link Obama’s “secularist” views with his administration’s decision to end “conscience-protection” clauses, which allow health care workers to refuse medical care if they say it conflicts with their religious beliefs. According to Barton, the Bush-era medical regulations were supported by the Founders and their repeal shows that government is moving away from God:

Barton: I don’t care what Obama says about his faith. He says he’s a Christian, fine, lots of people say that. What I know for sure is that he’s a secularist. Because seven times he’s deliberately omitted the word ‘Creator’ when he said the Declaration of Independence, he said that national motto doesn’t have ‘In God We Trust.’

And so if you’re a secularist, then you believe rights come from government, which is why his administration right now is repealing conscience-protection. Now conscience-protection was considered by the Founders as an inalienable, God-given right. We’re the first nation in the world to protect the rights of conscience.

Green: And if it comes from God, government you can’t touch it and government should protect it.

Barton: That’s right. Government protects it. Well he’s saying, look, if you don’t want to perform abortions, you need to get out of the healthcare industry, you don’t have a right to be in healthcare industry, you don’t have a rights to you’re beliefs about abortion.

So all these conscience-protection regulations we’ve had are going away, but that makes sense if they didn’t come from God. And when you have a secular viewpoint—and that’s why it is so important to continue to preserve and fight for little bitty acknowledgments of God because it keeps reminding us that wait a minute, God’s part of our government, God is involved in our philosophy of government, God is part of what we have in our documents. We got to remember that. When you forget that, when you forget that God is part of the equation, you will lose your prosperity, you will lose your rights, you will lose your stability, you will lose all those things that have been at the base of that. So, this really is a big deal.

On Monday, Focus on the Family kicked off their first Day of Dialogue, which replaced the Day of Truth that had been sponsored by the “ex-gay” group Exodus International. Brad Clark, the executive director of One Colorado, wrote an open letter to Focus on the Family calling for them to work towards building “a true dialogue about what it means to be LGBT—instead of encouraging young people to spread harmful rhetoric to vulnerable youth in our schools.”

Focus on the Family has consistently claimed that anti-bullying programs send students a “homosexual message” and are part of a “pro-homosexual curriculum” made by “gay activists” who are “infiltrating classrooms under the cover of ‘anti-bullying’ or ‘safe schools’ initiatives.” Candi Cushman is the point person in their campaign against bullying-prevention programs, and heads their True Tolerance program and Day of Dialogue, which heavily propagates the view that gay people can change their sexual orientation through “reparative therapy.”

Unsurprisingly, Cushman accused Clark of promoting censorship and attacked the anti-bullying Day of Silence, where students remain silent throughout the school day to show solidarity with bullied and closeted LGBT students:

However, Clark's suggestion that kids merely expressing their faith-based viewpoints in a loving and peaceful way in their own schools is the moral equivalent of practicing sexual violence and physical harm is a rather frightening stance. Carried out to its full and logical conclusion, such reasoning becomes a convenient tool for censorship, an idea not only contrary to the tenets of academia, but contrary to the principles of free speech and thought that have not only made this country great - but that have made this country possible.

Consider, as an example, what occurred Monday: Thousands of Christian students in public high schools and colleges across 42 states and some foreign countries participated in a new, Focus on the Family-sponsored event called the Day of Dialogue. This event was designed to create a safe space and equal access for different viewpoints, including faith-based ones, partially in response to the Day of Silence, which has been celebrated in thousands of public schools nationwide for the past 15 years.

Sponsored by one of the nation's largest homosexual advocacy groups, Day of Silence is a day when educators are encouraged to have materials in their classroom addressing homosexual, bisexual and transgender topics from the sole perspective of that sponsoring group. What Day of Dialogue is meant to help facilitate is a true, free exchange of ideas and open conversations, rather than the silencing of certain viewpoints.

As Cody J. Sanders, a Baptist minister, notes in Religion Dispatches, by constantly playing the victim and attacking gays, Focus on the Family does not promote genuine dialogue at all:

Supposed “threats to religious freedom” and the language of “all-out, full-scale attack” produce war-like images that serve only to demonize those with whom one is to dialogue. It becomes a bit clearer why the Day of Dialogue site offers no assistance to students who wish to listen to the views of their dialogue partners. When the (LGBT) dialogue partner is constructed as the “enemy” whose way of being in the world is fundamentally evil, corrupt, pathological or anti-Christian, there is really no need to dialogue.

Since the language of “threat to freedom in America,” the corrosion of “constitutionally protected rights,” and “full-scale attack” is the language typically used when trying to justify engaging in the violence of war, one wonders if “dialogue” is just a polite cover for a more insidious intention.

…

When one dialogue partner defines gay marriage as a “controversial sexual topic” contrary to “God’s truth” prior to engaging the views of the other, what possibilities exist for dialogue? An a priori assumption about what constitutes the “true view” of the Divine (which is, of course, the view one already holds) disallows the necessity of actually listening to and engaging the views of other dialogue partners.

• The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has overruled an earlier decision that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. The Religious Right is, naturally, elated.
• WorldNetDaily is treating Peter LaBarbera's rantings as "news."
• Understatement of the day: "So maybe the Christian Right isn't so dead after all."
• "Morally-Sensitive Parents" are encouraged to keep their kids out of school tomorrow to avoid the "Day of Silence."
• From the Family Research Council's latest prayer update: "Pray that God will stir his people to participate in these budget-abortion battles, which could determine whether America live or dies -- both morally and economically. May God activate his people to be faithful citizen stewards. May their positive impact be felt on the front lines. May righteousness prevail in each individual budget battle and the larger spiritual, moral and ideological war for the soul of our nation! "
• Finally, this is a real thing:

• The Family Research Council announces that Ken Cuccinelli has been confirmed for the next Values Voter Summit.
• Tim Pawlenty is officially running for president ... just not officially.
• Hey, they found the nails used to crucify Jesus.
• Apparently California Christians need an amendment to the state constitution guaranteeing that they are free to "share Christianity without the persecution that comes with it."  Huh?
• Finally, Cindy Jacobs is apparently "Dr. Cindy Jacobs."  At least, that is how she introduced herself in her latest video.

On Friday Right Wing Watch reported that Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issue Analysis for the American Family Association, urged the U.S. to require immigrants, Muslims in particular, to “convert to Christianity.” At some point after it was posted, the AFA removed Fischer’s article from their website and he then rewrote the three paragraphs RWW highlighted so that now the article argues the exact opposite of what he originally said:

In the original article, Fischer said:

Allowing Muslims to immigrate into the United States, a Christian nation by origin, history and tradition, without insisting that they drop their allegiance to Allah, Muhammad, the Qur’an, and sharia law, is to commit cultural suicide. We believe in freedom of religion for Muslims like we do for everybody else. But if they insist on clinging to their religion, they will need to exercise their freedom of religion in a Muslim country which shares their values: death for those who leave Islam, the beating of wives by their husbands, and the labeling of Jews as apes and pigs.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our faith, our heroes, and our history. Someone with a Muslim background who wants to become an American had best be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island.

…

So ancient Israel offers a paradigm of what a sensible and sane immigration policy looks like. It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), convert to Christianity, fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself. If you commit to those things, you are welcome here. If you don’t or won’t, perhaps it’s best for you to stay home.

Now, the three paragraphs read:

Does this mean that folks need to convert before they immigrate? No, but at a minimum, it would mean making sure that immigrants to the United States affirm and believe in the superiority of the Judeo-Christian system of values and truth claims over alternative value systems such as sharia law.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our values, our heroes, and our history.

...

So ancient Israel offers a paradigm of what a sensible and sane immigration policy looks like. It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself. If you commit to those things, you are welcome here. If you don’t or won’t, perhaps it’s best for you to stay home.

This wouldn’t be the first time the AFA censored their chief spokesman, as the group in February scrubbed Fischer’s article where he said that Native Americans were rightfully expelled from their land and are punished with poverty and alcoholism for not converting to Christianity. Just last week, Fischer removed and altered his piece claiming that African Americans “rut like rabbits.”

Unfortunately for Fischer, we saved a version of his original post:

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is doubling-down on his view that the U.S. should ban Muslim immigration, and on Wednesday he called Muslim immigrants a “toxic cancer.” Fischer, who believes that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to Muslims, now claims that the U.S. should use the Book of Numbers when establishing its immigration policy and that Muslims should “be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island.” According to Fischer, all new immigrants must “convert to Christianity” or “stay home”:

Allowing Muslims to immigrate into the United States, a Christian nation by origin, history and tradition, without insisting that they drop their allegiance to Allah, Muhammad, the Qur’an, and sharia law, is to commit cultural suicide. We believe in freedom of religion for Muslims like we do for everybody else. But if they insist on clinging to their religion, they will need to exercise their freedom of religion in a Muslim country which shares their values: death for those who leave Islam, the beating of wives by their husbands, and the labeling of Jews as apes and pigs.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our faith, our heroes, and our history. Someone with a Muslim background who wants to become an American had best be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island.

…

So ancient Israel offers a paradigm of what a sensible and sane immigration policy looks like. It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), convert to Christianity, fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself. If you commit to those things, you are welcome here. If you don’t or won’t, perhaps it’s best for you to stay home.

With the Pentagon expecting to complete its training on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell by mid-summer, far-right activists are making a latch ditch effort to encourage fresh GOP attempts to block the repeal law’s implementation.

The head of the American Family Association’s Pennsylvania chapter is pushing her state’s congressmen who sit on the House Armed Services Committee to scuttle the repeal policy. Diane Gramley told the AFA’s media outlet OneNewsNow that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would literally “destroy” the military: “We are undermining our military [with this policy] and thus undermining our national defense, so we are encouraging them to get into the thick of the battle because that’s what it’s going to take to get this terrible law thrown out…If we allow this implementation to go forth, then it will destroy our military, and there’s no doubt about that. So we’re encouraging Pennsylvanians to contact Congressman Bill Shuster and Congressman Mark Critz and ask them to...protect our military.”

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, sent out an email to members that the chaplaincy would collapse following the repeal. A spokesman for the Army chief of chaplains told USA Today that training with chaplains is “going very well [and] in no way are we giving the message, shape up or ship out,” and so far just one chaplain quit over the policy’s repeal. But according to Sheldon, the implementation of the repeal policy could ultimately ban Christian preaching and create “homosexual privileges”:

Could you imagine America's military chaplains banned from sharing the message of the Holy Bible?

It’s happening... and I am urgently scrambling to raise awareness and fight back.

…

Should a chaplain privately counsel an American soldier, or should an American soldier share his Christian faith with others, the military brass would have the right to discharge that chaplain or soldier -- AND RUIN THEIR CAREER.

On April 7th (this Thursday) there will be a full hearing with the House Armed Services Committee to go over the impact the repeal of the 1993 ban on gays and transgenders serving in the military -- and unless we make sure there are firm, solid protections for the rights of conscience and religious liberty, America's chaplains will no longer be able to share and counsel according to Biblical principles.

This goes far beyond mere tolerance. This is the whitewashing of any other perspective other than the ones agreed upon by Barack Obama and the extremist liberals -- not to mention the homosexual lobby for whom Obama appears to be willing to bend over backwards.

…

Gays and transgenders are now pushing well beyond mere acceptance. They have a friendly White House administration, and the homosexuals are pushing their advantage.

Only if the U.S. House realizes that America's military chaplains are being told to "shut up or resign" will we be able to turn back this implementation of homosexual privileges in America's military.

After telling a reporter from Think Progress that he wouldn’t appoint any Muslims to his administration, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has doubled-down on his religious test for public office. Cain told the conservative site NewsMax that his opposition to Muslims serving in government comes fro his belief that “they are not free to infuse their religious beliefs into our laws”:

“They can accuse me of bigoted speech all they want,” Cain counters.

“I want people committed to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States in my administration. I don’t have the time or the desire to worry about somebody or some faction that wants to impose shariah law on this nation. I believe in American laws in American courts.

“The First Amendment says everybody can practice whatever religion they choose. [Muslims] are free to practice their religion in the United States, just like all other legitimate religions. But they are not free to infuse their religious beliefs into our laws. We don’t do that in the United States, and if I’m president I’m going to work to keep it that way.”

But in an interview with Bryan Fischer, Cain claimed that the US and the constitution is “based on biblical principles, [and] I want to get back to those principles as president.” He also said that he was called by God (via text message) to run for the office.

Another likely Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, similarly criticized Muslims for purportedly trying to bring their religious beliefs into politics while at the same time urging Christians to “try and change” laws since “civil laws are supposed to comport with God’s laws.”