Meet David Barton — the Evangelical Quack “Historian” Exposed as the Fake He Is

Although I have previously posted concerning Julie Ingersoll's book “Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction”this excerpt provided by Frank Schaeffer is an eye opener.  Delving into the mind of Barton can be a dangerous thing, but Ingersoll does a wonderful job of explaining how and why Barton thinks the way he does.

My only caveat, while I appreciate the work of Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter, they are not the first, nor the only individuals responsible for exposing Barton for the liar he is.  In 2006 Chris Rodda published Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, Vol. 1 followed by Debunking David Barton's Jefferson Lies: #2 - Jefferson Founded a Secular University in 2012 and Debunking David Barton's Jefferson Lies: #5 - Jefferson Advocated a Secular Public Square. During that time period, beginning in 2010, Chris also produced a series of videos that countered the crap Barton was spewing on Glen Beck.  Though a bit dated, the information is still relevant as Barton as still regurgitating the same lies. Chris is currently working on a fourth book addressing more of Barton's bullshit

There is perhaps no better example of Christian Reconstructionist influence on the broader culture than the work of Tea Party “historian” David Barton. Barton does not explicitly identify as a Christian Reconstructionist, and Christian Reconstructionists would not claim him as one of their own.Barton does have ties to several Reconstructionist groups, including the Providence Foundation; he occasionally cites the work of Rousas Rushdoony and promotes views on race and slavery that are rooted in Rushdoony. While Barton doesn’t use the language of theonomy or postmillennialism, as we will see, he speaks of dominion, biblical law, the necessity of bringing every area of life under the lordship of Christ, and sphere sovereignty of biblically ordained institutions. He embraces the whole range of political views advocated by Reconstructionists from the right-to-life and creationism to more narrowly held positions on issues such as the history of slavery and opposition to the Federal Reserve System. As we shall see, the approach to history that has made Barton famous is rooted in Rushdoony’s biblical philosophy of history.
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Barton’s work has been the subject of extensive critique by bloggers, reporters, and other critics, some of whom are scholars publishing peer-reviewed critiques, but, for the most part, scholars have not devoted a lot of attention to debunking his claims. Beginning in about 2011, two conservative Christian professors from Grove City College, Warren Throckmorton, professor of psychology, and Michael Coulter, professor of humanities and political science, published a critique of Barton’s The Jefferson Lies entitled Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President. The book was received well by scholars, and the authors’ credentials as conservative Christians undermined Barton’s defense that criticism of his work was ideological rather than factual. The Jefferson Lies was withdrawn by its publisher. One might expect under the weight of such resounding rejection, Barton would disappear into obscurity. Yet Barton’s supporters remain as devoted as before. Criticism from scholars (whether Christian or not) is dismissed as liberal, socialist, and even pagan. Discredited in the larger culture, Barton remains influential in the conservative Christian subculture.
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Many look at the US Constitution and see little mention of religion and wonder how conservative Christians can insist that it is a template for a Christian nation. But Barton is careful to speak, instead, of our “original national founding documents.” For Barton and his followers, the Declaration of Independence, though never ratified and carrying no legal authority, has the same status as the Constitution.   [<--a point I have a tendency to harp on]
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For him the Constitution represents a consensus—as though there is a singular view that can be attributed to “the founders.” Barton’s style of reading the Constitution is modeled on his style of reading the Bible, which he also treats as a coherent document that can be read from start to finish to yield a clear, undisputed, objective meaning, instead of a collection of fragmented texts written over a very long period of time in different cultures, assembled into larger texts, then chosen from an even larger collection of texts in a political process, translated from ancient languages, and finally interpreted in different ways by different communities. Every stage of that process continues to be profoundly disputed by scholars, and there is always an interpretative framework (albeit all too often an unrecognized one) underlying any reading of it. While the US Constitution is a newer document, and it is therefore somewhat less difficult to discern its meaning(s), the fact remains that it is the product of hard-fought compromise among leaders, bound in time and culture, who profoundly disagreed with each other. There is no reason to believe they thought they were writing a sacred text to which all subsequent generations of Americans were bound by a process that amounts to divining a singular “intent.”

Meet David Barton — the Evangelical Quack “Historian” Exposed as the Fake He Is

This Alabama Judge Has Figured Out How to Dismantle Roe v. Wade - ProPublica

Although this article deals with the man behind the "personhood" movement in regards to the abortion debate, there are some very serious implications that should be noted in regards to the strategy he has used.

In 2005, the Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy held a conference in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The school’s name was something of a misnomer: Rather than grant JDs, Witherspoon staged seminars and lectures offering lessons in what it summarized as “the comprehensive biblical foundation for our common law and constitutional government.” Its target audience was homeschooled young men. The school itself was a project of Vision Forum, a Texas-based ministry whose founder was also a leader in the Christian Patriarchy movement, which preaches, among other things, that husbands should vote for their wives.

Most sitting judges would go to great pains to avoid such a gathering. But Tom Parker, then a few months into his first term on the Alabama Supreme Court, gladly accepted an invitation to speak at that year’s Witherspoon retreat. Before his election to Alabama’s highest court, Parker had been an aide-de-camp to Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose installation of a granite Ten Commandments monument in the state judiciary building had touched off what became for Alabama both a considerable embarrassment and a genuine constitutional crisis. At Parker’s swearing-in, he made it clear that he had sought the bench to continue his old boss’s spiritual fight.

“The very God of Holy Scriptures, the Creator, is the source of law, life, and liberty,” he declared to an audience that included his eight unsmiling fellow justices.

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“It’s the judges who have legalized abortion and homosexuality … They are shaking the very foundation of our society.” Parker made it clear that he had no intention of letting legal precedent get in his way. “We cannot fall under that trap,” he insisted. “We have to stand for what’s right.” The one thing he most wished for the young men before him was that they find a way to gain positions of influence and turn them to God’s purpose. No opportunity to do so should be shrunk from or wasted.

This the same ideology behind the creation of Patrick Henry College.

Again and again, he has taken cases that do not directly concern reproductive rights, or even reproductive issues, and found ways to use them to argue for full legal status for the unborn.
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In state after state, they have been pushing to have their beliefs enshrined in policy.
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Even if both initiatives fall short, others will follow. The first one to pass doubtlessly will then be challenged in court, igniting the potentially decisive battle that personhood advocates really want. Their goal is to get to the U.S. Supreme Court — as quickly as possible, while conservatives still dominate.

That is the spaghetti they are trying to get to stick to the wall, these various court cases and legislative efforts concerning reproductive rights This tactic should sound a bit familiar, the rash of so-called "religious liberty" complaints. Do not be lulled into believing these "cases" came out of thin air.

Christian-educated lawyers have been preparing for that day, churning out articles published by Christian law journals, which are then cited in briefs submitted to courts by Christian-right legal organizations. But given their provenance, the impact of those arguments has been limited. Parker, a graduate of Dartmouth and Vanderbilt who counts Clarence Thomas as a role model, has the imprimatur of his office behind him, and he has used it to build a body of reasoning that can be cited and re-cited, helping to frame and refine the thinking of other lawyers and judges in the battles ahead. “Now, it’s not just an obscure law-review article making these arguments,” said Glen Halva-Neubauer, a Furman University political scientist who studies anti-abortion activism. “It’s not just some treatise that twenty-five of your right-to-life friends know about and nobody else. The mainstream effect is not inconsequential.”

And that, of course, was the idea all along. “What Justice Parker has done,” said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the nonprofit National Advocates for Pregnant Women, “is explicitly lay out the roadmap for overturning Roe v. Wade.”

But here is the interesting part, the method to Parker's madness (or genius).

Parker wrote the majority opinion,,,.Then he wrote some more. As a judge, Parker has developed the decidedly unusual habit of authoring concurring opinions to his own majority rulings in cases that hold particular interest for him.

Zeigler marvels at how Parker has used the concurrence to strategic effect. “It’s like he’s writing a law-review article without having to go through that process, plus he gets a much wider audience,” she said. And unlike a dissent, a concurrence conveys a certain legitimacy — the idea that the author is on the winning side. “It is much likelier to be noticed and captured and repeated in future cases.”

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Parker didn’t expect those battles to be easy. But knew that judges had strategic weapons at their disposal that could alter the course of the fight in the long term. Dissents and concurrences, for example, might not have the force of precedent, but they could signal new tactics, raise new arguments — and eventually change minds.

Parker is a Christian Nation advocate heavily influenced by the Christian Reconstructionist viewpoint and as  Frederick Clarkson points out.

The significance of the Reconstructionist movement is not its numbers, but the power of its ideas and their surprisingly rapid acceptance. Many on the Christian Right are unaware that they hold Reconstructionist ideas. Because as a theology it is controversial, even among evangelicals, many who are consciously influenced by it avoid the label. This furtiveness is not, however, as significant as the potency of the ideology itself. Generally, Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of "Biblical Law." Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.

With Judges like Parker and Moore and schools like Patrick Henry and Liberty we are going to see a lot more of these types of cases popping up. Next on their list will be the 19th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act (1965).

This Alabama Judge Has Figured Out How to Dismantle Roe v. Wade - ProPublica

The $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy You Haven’t Heard Of - The Daily Beast

Although the speakers list was not that over-the-top as far as names go, this "group" will bare watching.  As there is much to digest, I may have to revisit both articles for all the information to sink in.

Have you heard of the $1,750-per-person “Gathering,” which starts Thursday in Orlando, Florida?

Probably not. But if you’re female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state, your life has been affected by it.

The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders. Most of them are not household names, at least if your household isn’t evangelical. But that’s the point: The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest. They’re probably behind that, too.

Featured speakers have included many of the usual suspects: Alliance Defending Freedom President and CEO Alan Sears (2013), Focus on the Family President Jim Daly (2011), and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins (2006). This year, however, they are joined by David Brooks of The New York Times and Michael Gerson of The Washington Post. What’s going on? Has The Gathering gone mainstream?

Hardly, says Bruce Wilson, director of the advocacy group Truth Wins Out’s Center Against Religious Extremism and a leading researcher on The Gathering. The selection of this year’s speakers, he says, is just the latest in a long line of misdirections and canards.

To be sure, untangling webs of funders, organizations, and campaigns can often feel like conspiracy-mongering. Your brain begins to resemble one of those bulletin boards from A Beautiful Mind or Se7en, full of paranoid-seeming Post-Its and strings. Wilson has been untangling these webs for years, and sometimes it shows. His many publications and his emails to me are long-winded, occasionally exaggerated, and sometimes hard to follow.

But often he’s dead on. And beneath the hyperbole, The Gathering is as close to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” as you’re likely to find. So with this year’s conference about to get under way, Wilson gave The Daily Beast an exclusive interview over email—heavily redacted here—about this shadowy, powerful network of hard-right funders.

The $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy You Haven’t Heard Of - The Daily Beast

See also:

The Gathering: The Religious Right’s Cash Cow