A few weeks ago, we posted a clip of Bryan Fischer rewriting American history in order to claim that the American Revolution was not a rebellion because, according to the Bible, rebellion against governing authorities is rebellion against God since Romans 13 says that all governing authorities have been established by God.
We see this sort of re-framing American history quite often from the Religious Right, mainly because their entire worldview depends on it. Since, in their view, America was founded by God and established for the propagation of Christianity, then everything good that has happened has been because Christians were following the Bible while everything bad was a result of not having Christians in charge and not following the Bible.
We see this mentality at work in the way the Religious Right proclaims that it was Christians who ended slavery and in the assertion that they are the ideological descendents of civil rights champions like Martin Luther King Jr.
How a movement dominated by Southern conservative Christian fundamentalists has managed to convince itself that it is the modern-day bearer of MLK’s legacy has always been something of a mystery to us. After all, if fundamentalist Christians were the ones championing the Civil Rights struggle, then who were the ones standing in the way and turning the fire hoses on the activists?
As Fischer explained yesterday, it was the liberals:
Ladies and gentlemen, who was it that abolished the institution of slavery? It was the Republican Party, it was a Republican President, it was a conservative who abolished the institution of slavery.
Who was it that filibustered the Civil Rights Acts in the Sixties? It was liberals, it was progressives. It was conservative Republicans that voted in greater percentages that voted for the Civil Rights Act then Democrats did.
Who where the ones that were standing hosing people off with fire hoses? Those were Democrats, those were liberals that were doing that.
