Religious-right activist Chad Connelly appeared on the Truth & Liberty Coalition’s weekly livestream program Monday, where he announced that he and right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton will be launching a multi-week, 16-state, 40-city “American Restoration Tour” after Labor Day.
Connelly, a longtime GOP activist who now runs an organization called Faith Wins, said that Barton’s work has been “massively influential” to him, so he decided to take Barton to churches all around the country. The aim, he said, is to “teach Christians why God’s role in America is irreplaceable” and get them mobilized heading into the midterm elections in 2022.
A former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, Connelly led faith outreach efforts for the Republican National Committee during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
“We’re going to do meetings of pastors, and churches, and activists, and people that care about our nation, and we’re going to make sure they get to hear from David Barton,” Connelly said. “We’re going to be all over the nation. We want to fill venues. … We want to put as many people as we can in front of David Barton so we get a renewed interest and understanding of how special America is and how God’s had his hand on America from the very beginning.”
While the details are still being finalized, Connelly said the intention is for many of these events to be held during Sunday and Wednesday services at churches through the nation.
Barton, of course, is notorious for his misuse of history and the Bible in an effort to promote his Christian nationalist, right-wing political agenda—so much so that his book about Thomas Jefferson was pulled off the market by his own publisher in 2012 because it contained “historical details — matters of fact, not matters of opinion, that were not supported at all.”
