There are those on the Religious Right who legitimately believe that God was a Republican…or something close to that. Though I’d argue that point to my last breath, I respect their right to their point of view. Their flavor of God is a harsh, judgmental, and vindictive deity with a hair-trigger temper, which contradicts my Lutheran upbringing, but they’re certainly free to believe as they see fit.
What they don’t have the right to do is to simply make stuff up as they go and pretend that their lunacy, ignorance, and bigotry has the imprimatur of the Almighty. Take, por ejemplo, David Barton, who while a…well, I’m not really sure what he does, but he does fancy himself quite the Christian scholar. Except that most of what he believes and the arguments he uses to support them are total B.S. (The government should regulate gay sex? Really? And what your demands for smaller government? Won’t it be tough recruiting people willing to work in the bedroom of gay men and…oh, never mind….)
Think I’m kidding? Try these on for size:
- Demonic powers control the government.
- The Founding Fathers opposed the teaching of evolution.
- Jesus opposed the minimum wage.
- The Bible opposes Net Neutrality.
- The US would have won the Vietnam war if it had flown just one more bombing run.
- Prayer stopped the BP oil spill.
- Intolerance of gays is a sign a nation is undergoing a spiritual revival.
- We can’t find a cure for AIDS because it is God’s punishment for sin.
- Life begins not at conception, but before conception.
- People are probably on welfare because they are not reading the Bible enough.
With a record like Barton’s, you’d really have to wonder how he could manage to find a publisher willing to help him broadcast his lunacy. Then again, the Rabid Religious Right takes care of their own.
David Barton may not be a well-known name outside the hate-based Christian community, but there are plenty of bloggers, journalists, and comedians/newscasters who are very familiar with Barton and his “scholarship.” I don’t know how to most accurately describe Barton, but “scholar” would definitely NOT be on the list of adjectives. At the very least, Barton is a Dominionist theocrat with with seems an abiding hatred for secular democracy.
- 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?
The list could go on, but you get the point, right?
I find it interesting that an individual who claims to love Jesus Christ and revere His teachings can be such a hateful, divisive, and intolerant personality. It seems that Barton must have been asleep in Sunday School when the lesson was Christian tolerance and charity. He’s certainly willing to pick and choose the Commandments he follows and selectively interpret them in a way that fits his hatred and prejudice.
Never mind that he’s as intellectually dishonest as he is hateful and dismissive of those who happen not to believe as he does. I could spend a day deconstructing the falsehoods and inaccuracies in Barton’s books, but plenty of folks have already traveled that path.
David Barton is to Christianity what Torquemada was to representative democracy. If Barton had his way, his methods would likely be almost indistinguishable from the Grand Inquisitor.