How much do fundies love David Barton and his “unconfirmed quotations” from the Founding Fathers? Well, so much that he holds an honorary doctorate from Pensacola Christian College. Impressive.
Here’s David doing what he does best:
26 thoughts on “David Barton”
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Love this guy! He gets it.
Oh man, I don’t know how many times we watched his videos at our church when I was growing up. And very nicely timed for the Independence Day weekend, Darrell.
It’s what I was led to post. Just like how on Mother’s Day the pastor gets led to preach about mothers.
+3 Fundy Street Cred for your Vague Leading.
“It’s what I was led to post. Just like how on Mother’s Day the pastor gets led to preach about mothers.”
Two minutes before it was time for you to preach, er, post. Apparently the Holy Spirit is a procrastinator.
David Barton is an embarrassment to the title of historian.
his history isn’t too far off, just his interpretation. the last time i checked, you had to believe that Jesus was God to be considered a christian, something most founding fathers didn’t believe. of course, i’m sure most “christians” today are actually practicing deists, so that makes it ok.
i read somewhere once that if the declaration of independence were presented to an international legal body today, it would be declared illegal. the only reason it was allowed was because america won.
I’ve heard lots of stuff pulled from his videos/books/works. I’ve never seen/heard/read him directly, till now, thankfully. I’ve always been curious to get like all of this fact checked. I have no idea if anything in the video is even close to true. I have high skepticism on just about everything he stated.
If @Joshua was going for the ironic/sarcastic comment, KUDOS! Got quite a laugh from that.
Thank God I never heard of this man before I saw this clip.
I just wish there was a way of “UN-hearing of him”
The whole idea of is America a Christian country misses everything. Was it religious? sure, but was it Christian? Not really at all. The battle that is now being fought misses the whole point, and misses the opportunity in an effort to rewrite history.
OK, I don’t have time to pick apart his nonsense. But I will point out that his very first argument is complete and utter hogwash.
He states that taxation without representation wasn’t the main concern of the DoI, but that it contained the subject matter of sermons preached for the past several decades. But he doesn’t expand on what these subject matters were. He seems to imply that the DoI has a religious overtone to it, freedom of religion and all that. He also implies that the DoI was not written with political/economic reasons in mind. But even a cursory glance at the DoI would prove this utterly false. Yes, taxation isn’t mentioned until #17. But every other clause in the DoI is entirely political or economical and the vast majority of them deal very specifically with the issue of representation or lack thereof by the British government. Not one of the 27 clauses deals even indirectly with religious matters.
“Every right set forth in the Declaration of Independence had been preached from the American pulpit prior to 1763….The Declaration of Independence is nothing more than a listing of the sermons that we’d been hearing in church for the past several decades leading up to the revolution. ” This is a rather odd statement since the only right mentioned in the DoI is “that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states.” And, it was not uncommon for pulpits to be used as political platforms to speak out against the government. He lets the audience think that the pulpits then were the same pulpits today.
On a side note, I find it interesting that he doesn’t mention who suggested prayer in the first place – the hedonistic, entirely unChristian Benjamin Franklin.
Living in the Washington D.c. area, I think of this kind of revisionist history every time I drive by George Washington’s whiskey distillery and the George Washington Masonic memorial. And a brief visit to Monticello and a cursory reading of Thomas Jefferson will reveal his tolerance of multiple religious views but an antagonism toward Jesus Christ.
Yes these people don’t realize that what they want is far worse then what they currently have. The history they are trying to rewrite is take a little of this and little of that and oh wasn’t it nice. The reality was that before the DoI you had to be a puritan to worship in New England. Baptists, catholics and anyone else be gone. If they understood the reality they’d never be preaching for that type of repression again. And the founding fathers were anything but Christian. Religion was a favorite pass time in those days. My guess is if George Washington were alive today the Baptists would throw him out of their church.
Don’t get me wrong; I am thankful for my country, and for the freedoms we have.
But if you want to tick off an IFBer (especially), tell them that the Revolutionary War was unbiblical. 🙂
The fundies need to read this: http://christianhumanist.net/christian_nation.aspx
aaand First Baptist Atlanta hits yet another home run with their 4th of July speaker…last year it was Newt Gingrich. What a slippery slope.
Very familiar with David Barton, but from the charismatic camp.
Frankly, I am a bit surprised that the IFB camp hasn’t officially disowned him due to (among other things) also holding a degree from Oral Roberts University and his being a regular guest on televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s programs.
@Jacob,
There is some odd unifying property in IFB when it comes to politics. You can ignore all other religious convictions and completely forget the doctrine of separation if the person agrees with you politically. In fact, regardless of the persons religious persuasions if you fall into the conservative camp you’re likely going to heaven…or at least fine better favor with God. But if you disagree with an IFB person politically, even if you’re a member of the church, you’re likely going to hell.
Just saw on Olbermann that Barton was on the first “episode” of “Beck U”. Same old BS. “Declaration of Independence is just a listing of sermons, etc”.
As someone who studies history as a hobby, I cringe every time some well-meaning person gives me some of Barton’s or another of his kind’s materials and asks me what I think. Fundies who blast the revisionists writing endlessly about slavery and the oppression of women (and I tend to agree with them) lose their credibility when their response is to produce a history that is just as revisionistic and just as inaccurate as the new liberal history.
PCC passed out honorary doctorate degrees like friggin CANDY!!! LMAO!!! I’d forgotten about that. Thanks for the laugh=D
This video no longer works due to being shut down by “copyright infringement” claims. 🙄
Ha! You didn’t miss much.
I remember watching one video of his in Fundie high school, and he claimed that sometime in America’s early history, someone denied the divinity of Jesus, apparently in a court of law, and the prosecutor instantly charged him with something comparable to blasphemy. I remember having a “Wait a Minute!?. . . . .” moment from the b.s. detector in my mind. This was presented in an America-was-all-so-godly-back-then fashion.
He also made a claim that American high school academic performance dropped right after the removal of public school prayer, but steadily rose again, when Christian school enrollment increased, I think he claimed, around the late ’70s. Even in the Bible Belt, parochial school enrollment does not rival public school enrollment numbers.
My teacher remarked, after the video, “Look how far we’ve fallen . . .” and I responded “Okay, what if he’s Jewish?” Burton seemed to claim that public life needed not one square yard of secular neutrality for practical reasons. He is totally out there.
I called out his “history” before.
I’m a college student as a history major.