Ten Demonstrably False Claims Made by David Barton

In honor of all the attention that David Barton's shoddy scholarship is currently receiving, we thought we'd take some time to pull together a list of some of the demonstrably false statements that he has made in just the last several months alone.

Keep in mind, these are not simply crazy things that he has said - like life begins before conception or that Jesus opposed the Minimum Wage or that the government should regulate gay sex - but rather verifiably false claims that can be easily refuted with a basic Google search.

• The Southern Poverty Law Center called him a "domestic terrorist." Nope.
• There are no grocery stores within the city of Detroit. Wrong.
• An elementary school student was yelled at for praying before lunch.  Didn't happen.
• Mentions of Jesus were banned at military funerals.  Not quite.
• Hate Crimes legislation was designed to imprison pastors. Please.
• Abstinence will make you richer.  Guess again.
• God created our system of elected government. Nice try.
• The Constitution quotes the Bible "verbatim." Huh?
• Again claiming the Constitution quotes the Bible "verbatim."  Still not true.
• Many of the clauses in the Constitution are "direct quotations out of the Bible." Are you seeing a pattern here?

Those are just ten examples we pulled together from recent months, though there are several others we could have also included.

It is too bad that Barton refuses to engage in debates because it would be nice to see him defend his own claims instead of always just complaining that people are attacking him because of his Christian faith.