“I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character.”
Intelligence Report: American Foundations #12
Beware The False Apostles of “Americanism”
May 18, 2016 | 09:16 GMT
BEWARE OF THE SPECIOUS CLAIM that America was founded by Christian men on Christian principles. The claim has long been touted by ideologues men (and women) who are in the business of falsifying information to suit their “noble” agenda. Their agenda includes other similar unsubstantiated and false claims made about the Catholic church.
These men and women (primarily Christian ideologues who correlate Christianity with the United States, capitalism, and the constitution) seem to have no problem distorting, changing, and twisting the Church’s sacred documents just as they mangle and pervert American historic documents so that they can present an untrue picture, a picture that matches their distorted script about God, history, current events and even the end of the world and a supposed pre-tribulation rapture.
False prophets such as these have difficulty distinguishing their religion from their politics. Somewhere along the line they conceived the idea that America is the “light of the world”, a nation with a God-given destiny to establish a “New Order of the Ages” or as it says on the nation’s currency, “Novus ordo seclorum. Men such as these place their political philosophy in front of their moral and spiritual theology. Then disguised as disciples of Christ, they attempt to foist their false political and messianic agenda on the world in the name of Christ. They are so convinced by the righteousness of their cause that they are willing to distort the truth in order to advance their highly cherished but fallacious world views.
Somehow, they seem to think that it is the will of God, the Supreme Law Maker and Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, that Americans should draft laws without Him, that He endorses the separation of church and state whereby He is shut out of the political, economic and social arenas, effectively denied a voice in the public affairs of the nation leaving it to elected officials to promulgate their own secular-statutory laws in disregard of the divine law given by God to mankind in both the Old and New Testaments.
Almost every American man woman and child has accepted this idea (the secularization of the state and promulgation of man-made laws rooted in the supposed sovereignty of the people rather than in the sovereignty of God). Popular sovereignty and the separation of church and state are liberal political slogans that have become sacred American dogma. Neoconservative politicians, who give requisite lip service to Christ, act like it is their sacrosanct duty to spread political, economic and social “Liberalism” aboard as if it were derived from God, when in fact, on many points, Americanism is antithetical to the laws given by God to govern His people – antithetical and deadly.
The ultimate consequence of this American dogma practically speaking (that is not theoretically, but practically, what in fact has, and is taking place) is the denial that the Gospel and the Church’s social teaching, (drawn from it) have any applicability in the broader political, social, and economic realm. These broad public realms were declared off-limits to the Church. As a result of the Framers privatization of religion, these realms have slowly become secularized and ultimately dehumanized “structures of sin” in a “culture of death“. As John Paul II indicated, in the absence of Christ we have created social, political, and economic “structures of sin” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 36-37-38-39-40). It is the exclusion of God from the public forum and the corollary rejection of divine law, inherent in the system bequeathed by the Framers that are the root causes of the problems that the church has condemned as “Americanism”.
By portraying the Founding Fathers as Christian men who bequeathed the nation a Christian Constitution, and then further insisting that it be treated as a sacred document, Americans have mistakenly replaced Divine Authority with human authority and elevated a secular man-made law over and above God-given divine law. Knowingly or not, we have exiled the omniscient and omnipresent God from the America political playing field and in the process institutionalized secular rule. This mistake is perpetuated by insisting that Founding Fathers, the “wise” and “virtuous” men who gave us a sacred Constitution, be continually placed on sacerdotal pedestals – including, wherever possible, church pedestals – when in fact, all they left us with is a secular Constitution subject to the whim of the “people” and to be freely interpreted by any political ideology that might suit the Justices. As long as the Founding Fathers are revered above the saints and the prophets or somehow judged to be equal in stature to them, we will continue to perpetuate the polysemous and ambiguous secular and philosophical ideas on which they founded this nation.
Love of country and patriotism are splendid assets; however, when people raise the Constitution with one hand and tout the bible in the other claiming they are both sacred documents from God, beware “Americanism”. Such people, in the guise of patriotism are often misguided and wayward “nationalists.”
Pope Leo XIII addressed these concerns in his encyclical Testem Benevolentiae Nostraeto in which he condemned several false ideas that Catholic prelates were introducing to the church in America; thereby slowly transforming her into an institution governed by, and therefore subject to, the same secular and democratic ideas that the United States government was founded upon, ideas such as majority rule, the cherishing of practical action and social work over prayer and contemplation, popular sovereignty, and the separation of church and state and a deficient idea of the “natural law’. Pope Leo was, in effect, attempting to protect the church from the false prophets of Americanism; these were the men (and women) who had blindly subordinated their faith to their politics, and were bringing the latter into the church rather than the former into the latter.
They quickly became advocates of “American Exceptionalism”, of liberal ideas such as the separation of church and state, and popular sovereignty. In the nation’s new public schools, curricula were established by anti-Christian atheists, such as John Dewey, to overcome the effects of too much Christianity. Due to the increased secularization of American education, virtue was increasingly understood as utilitarian excellence and the ability to achieve practical results strengthened by a democratic character marked by increased tolerance, nihilism, skepticism, and an ever increasing acceptance of moral relativity as evidenced by Dewey’s disdain for philosophy and Christian religion.
“There is no god and there is no soul. Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional (Christian) religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed law or permanent moral absolutes” (The Spiritual Perils of Modern Secular Education, Program VC1464, a video tape from Living his Life Abundantly).
The ideals and liberal values of the new secular government were slowly but inevitably incorporated in the curricula of newly created public schools until the privatized religious and moral sphere became more and more congruent with the secular version of morality introduced in the public sphere.
According to men like Dewey:
“The behavioral sciences are providing new “natural explanations of phenomena so extraordinary that once their supernatural origin was, so to say, the natural explanation.”
“Geological discoveries …have displaced Creation myths which once bulked large.” and
“The social sciences have provided a “radically different version of the historic events and personages upon which Christian religions have built” (John Dewey, A Common Faith, Yale University Press, 1934, pg 84.).
Making progress on all these fronts vis a vis Christianity, Dewey , as early as 1908, was able to proudly proclaim that the new civic religion of America was replacing the Christian religion:
“Our schools … are performing an infinitely significant religious work. They are promoting the social unity out of which in the end genuine religious unity must grow. …dogmatic beliefs (articles of Christian faith)…we see disappearing…. It is the part of men to… work for the transformation of all practical instrumentalities of education till they are in harmony with these (above) ideas” (John Dewey (1908) The Hibbert Journal, Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. Chronology of Education, pg. 11.).
The secular “experiment” undertaken by the Framers in 1787 bore its penultimate fruit in 1933, when John Dewey and a group of leading American intellectuals signed the “Humanist Manifesto”, which brought the slowly developing secular program into plain view; listed below are its more salient points:
- Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.
- Man is a part of nature and that has emerged as the result of a continuous process.
- The traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.
- The nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.
- Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power of its achievement.
Clearly, educational framers such as Dewey set the nation’s schools on a secular path by promoting their own version of sacred dogma.Secular liberal dogmas in the guise of religion were to replace long held sacred beliefs; after successful implementation throughout the nation, it was America’s God-given task to carry these dogmas throughout the world.
Students therefore imbibed large droughts of “Manifest Destiny” a civic brew served up in civics classes throughout the nation, a brew so intoxicating that it was preached from church pulpits thereby successfully giving birth to a new civic-religion containing doctrines that in many ways stood in opposition to the doctrines given them by Jesus Christ. Inebriated and pumped with missionary zeal and love of country, they welcomed ideas about exceptionalism and zealously manned the ramparts when their teachers told them that it was their “manifest destiny” to spread Americanism abroad. They were so pumped with love of country that they failed to see the blasphemy in their newly acquired views that somehow America was the “light of the world” and the “city set on a hilltop” ordained by God to lead the nation of the world to freedom.
This is nothing but political hype repeated by zealous nationalists, men and women who place the Constitution on a pedestal along with the Holy Bible and then proceed to enthusiastically foist their erroneous political ideas on the rest of mankind; thereby zealously enslaving the world in the name of liberalism while claiming to set it free. Jesus died to make men free; no government can advance the cause of liberty without Him and especially without the Church that He commissioned for this purpose. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, there is no other name under heaven by which men are saved; yet the Constitution demands that He remain out of the state’s business. A secular government can achieve nothing good for man without God; yet they demand the constitutional right to do everything without Him. When Christians put the Framers on a Sacred Pedestal, equate the constitution with the bible, and then support foreign policy more than they do Christian missionaries, we have a problem.
“Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it” (Psalm 127:1).
The Lord either builds the house or He doesn’t; we either cooperate with Him or we build a city without Him, the “city of man” rather than the “City of God.” Are the words of Psalm 127 just empty words or are they words of wisdom; if they are wisdom than we have acted like fools—it is clear that the Lord did not build the American house, nor was he even consulted.
When Benjamin Franklin proposed that the delegates assembled to draft the Constitution pray before they continued to work, 51 of the 55 delegates voted against the proposal. On June 28, 1787, Franklin registered a plea to begin each day with prayer to the “Father of Lights”. A simple and sane request made to a group of supposedly Christian men ended up in an overwhelming rejection. According to Franklin himself, 51 of the supposed Christian delegates did not think prayer necessary. In his own words:
“With the exception of 3 or 4, most thought prayers unnecessary.” (Ferrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., Vol. 1, p. 452.)
This is a true and not a distorted fact. A historical fact that helps us to understand why anti-clerical and anti-Trinitarian, John Adams could boast of a country built by reason alone without faith, without the assistance of divine grace, and certainly without the help of the clergy:
“It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service (the writing of the constitution) had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven…it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived by the use of reason and the senses (not faith and the bible)…Thirteen governments founded on the natural (versus supernatural) authority of the people alone” (John Adams, “A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1788).
The fact is that the “God of nature”, the god known by “reason” was the god of the Founders. They preferred the god of nature to Jesus Christ and His Bride, the Church, whom He divinely established to “feed His sheep and to shepherd His lambs” and to “teach all nations” in the name of the Holy Trinity. No, they preferred reason and reason’s god, the “God of nature.” Adams and Jefferson both told us this plainly enough:
“The question before the human race is, Whether the God of nature (the Deist, Masonic, Epicurean and Gnostic god) Shall govern the World by his own laws, or Whether Priests and Kings Shall rule it by fictitious Miracles? Or, in other Words, whether Authority is originally in the People? or whether it has descended for 1800 Years in a Succession of Popes and Bishops, or brought down from Heaven by the holy Ghost in the form of a Dove, in a Phyal of holy Oil” (John Adams)?[i]
No, the Lord who gave the world His Divine Law (old and new) was not consulted when the “Founders” established their own laws without Him; He was purposefully ignored. Despite the fact that America was a nation of Christians, Jesus is not mentioned one time in our nation’s supreme document[ii]. Consistent with this American commitment to the “God of nature” is the equally irreverent privatization of the Church under the guise of doing her and all Americans a big favor. In other words, Christ was “kicked out” and the deed was conducted with cunning arrogance.
Pope Pius XI recognized the absurdity of this kind of social and political arrogance in his encyclical, Quas Primas (1925) in which he quoted the Prophet Daniel who foretold the universal kingdom founded by Christ. If His kingdom is universal and respected by Christian men, it is to be expected that such men would enshrine it as a beacon for the nation rather than relegate it to the private sphere unsupported by laws, taxes, public education, statue or ordinance. Christ established a kingdom to stand forever, and the Framers were intent on building their own without Him.
“The kingdom that the God of heaven shall found, ‘shall never be destroyed, and shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44).
Pope Pius reminds us that after the resurrection, Jesus solemnly affirmed his omnipotence and conveyed His power and authority to His Church[iii]. He did not confer divine power on any secular nation, nor did He direct any nation to be a “City on a Hilltop” or a “Light to the World”. Those are things He delegated exclusively to His Church (Matthew 5:14) to whom He also delegated His own authority and power, something the Founding Fathers had a real difficult time understanding and respecting.
“…when giving to his Apostles the mission of teaching and baptizing all nations he took the opportunity to call himself king, conforming the title publicly, and solemnly proclaiming that all power was given to him in heaven and on earth.”
If, as Daniel foresaw, Christ established a kingdom that will never be destroyed and that will stand forever, why did we exclude Him, why did Jefferson and Adams believe that the Church established by Christ was suffering from a “mortal wound” and would soon die? Obviously, they were out of the spiritual loop. They excluded Christ because they envisioned America as His new church, his new kingdom and empire and themselves as a new priesthood. The new nation was to be governed exclusively by them and not by Catholic priests and Protestant clergy, against whom they had vowed “eternal” warfare.
John Adams referred to the Protestant ministers as “yahoos” the great enemies of “free inquiry” who should be endured no longer.
“And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY (Adams’ own emphasis)? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded.”[iv]
Jefferson concurred, the Christian clergy are:
“… the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.”[v]
Catholic priests and Protestant clergy were the great deceivers, the tyrants over the minds of men whom Jefferson had sworn upon the altar of God to eradicate:
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”[vi]
The Framers must have thought very highly of themselves. Likewise, Americans who believe the “Christian” myths about them probably believe themselves to be very special people, although more and more people around the world are having difficulty seeing it.
Christ’s kingdom is not of this world – that is, it is not founded on anyone’s political power; it is conveyed fully to His Church; the Church that our “Founders” excluded from public life and left to fend for itself without a dime for His cause and without any public show of support either from the schools from which He we also excluded or from the public dais from which He was forbidden. This was, and is, certainly a funny way to treat your King, an odd way to reverence the one whom you claim to serve.
If the Framers in the name of reason and reason’s god (the “God of nature”, on whom they built the new nation) removed Christ from the public arena and were at war with the Christian clergy (the so-called “Antichrist”)”, we can be quite sure who the “God of nature” is and who the men that profess loyalty to him are. Their words are untrustworthy. How can any authentic Christian clergyman claim that America is a holy nation founded by men who loved Jesus and therefore established a Christian foundation? The fact is (beside those who are just ignorant “blind guides”), men who stridently profess such things in the name of Christ are themselves enemies of Christ, dispensational bigots who have no problem forging documents and distorting facts to push their agenda and catch people unawares in the idolatrous trap of “Americanism”.
One of America’s unsung founders was Elias Boudinot. Boudinot was a president of the Continental Congress, a United States Congressman and from 1795 to 1805 he was the director of the U.S. Mint.
Boudinot was alarmed by the disregard for Christian principles by many leaders of the new American government;
“But has not America greatly departed from her original principles, and left her first love? Has she not also many amongst her chief citizens, of every party, who have forsaken the God of their fathers, and to whom the spirit may justly be supposed to say, “ye hold doctrines which I hate, repent, or else I will come unto you quickly, and will fight against you with the sword of my mouth.”[vii]
The fact is, the foremost founders were not Christians. The leading lights among them hated both the Trinity and the Church established by Jesus Christ. The current successors of these men who claim to be Christian ministers, ministers who tell us that the Founders were Christian, and that the Constitution is a Christian document, are wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15). Many are deceiving ministers who dress in sheep’s clothing; that is, in lay rather than clerical garb (because they have like Jefferson and Adams rejected the clergy and set themselves up as guides). Priests do not wear sheep’s clothing, i.e, the clothing of the flock they shepherd. They wear clerical garb. Wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing are lay ministers who wear business attire rather than ecclesial or liturgical attire. The truth is that these so-called Christian-American zealots do not have Jesus Christ for their God or the Church for their Mother; they have no king but Caesar; that is, their allegiance is to the Republic before it is to the Church, even though they claim to be minsters of Christ.
Not all who claim allegiance to Christ have allegiance to Christ, but only those who do the will of his Father.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you.* Depart from me, you evildoers (Matt 7: 21-23).
Pope Saint Pius X saw threw the charade,
“We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker – the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization….It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.” (St. Pope Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, April 15, 1910).
Because many of these self-styled “pastors” are miscreants, rebels and dreamers, it should come as no surprise that many so-called ministers, men who are supposed to be lovers of the truth and “ambassadors” of Jesus Christ, the way and the truth and the life”, seem to have no problem telling a lie to gain fame or to make a buck, or worse, in order to advance an agenda that makes them guilty of that which they accuse others: being unchristian.
The truth is, many of the so-called conservative fundamentalists and dispensationalists ministers who claim that “liberals” are distorting the facts about the Christian roots of American government are the real ones that are doing the distorting; their scholarship is often so offensive that it maked an honest man blush. Their output has become legion. Perhaps you have seen their websites, or read their books and media tracts claiming that the Unites States Constitution was written by stalwart Christian men totally committed to Christ and the building of a Christian nation.
What many of their readers are unaware of is that many of the quotes they use to defend their claims are fabricated, misunderstood, or misrepresented.
David Barton “Christian” Spokesman for America’s Christian Founding: Guru of Americanism
Among the most popular spokesmen is a Pentecostal minister by the name of David Barton, a Christian fundamentalist and founding president of a popular website called “Wall Builders”, a site devoted to defending America’s Christian foundations. Barton has been interviewed several times by Glenn Beck and is noted for tours of the capitol pointing out Christian heritage of the country to new congressmen and senators.
Barton wrote a book, “The Myth of Separation”, that was so full of errors and misquotes that it caused scholars across the country to leap into action; it was too outrageous to ignore, too opposed to expected standards of research and norms of scholarly writing, which are the hallmark of men and women who love truth, en and women who consider honest scholarship a mark of honor and dishonest a mark of reprobation. Consequently, numerous savants quickly engaged in research to verify the validity of Barton’s quotes. Unfortunately for Barton, many true scholars such as, Professor Robert S. Alley (University of Richmond) the man who authored “James Madison on Religious Liberty”, got involved. Prof. Alley received assistance from the editors of “The Papers of James Madison” at the University of Virginia who helped verify all of Barton’s quotes and misquotes.
Moreover,
“Firms devoted to Madison and Jefferson became involved, universities got involved and ultimately the Library of Congress was the final resting place for these quotes[viii].
Barton’s book does not contain an occasional error, the kind that are easily forgiven and which cause honest writer’s to etch deeply in their memory so as to avoid repeating them. Barton is either a dishonest minister playing scholar or an uneducated one making so many mistakes that no one should consider him a learned man and therefore avoid him as a leader and spokesman. True scholarship is time consuming and very difficult, every piece of evidence is verified, every source double checked and cross referenced. No one becomes learned or wise by simply reading; every time an in earnest student comes across information that he cannot verify or that he does not understand, he stops and does not continue again until he has mastered the content or idea. Every specious or questionable piece of information is cross referenced and double-triple checked for accuracy and veracity. Apparently, Barton did not know that such men and women exist; not everyone is unschooled as he apparently seems to think. Like most charlatans, Barton was eventually caught. When presented with the evidence, he
“…admitted to fabricating the quotes. He was (then) ordered to create a pamphlet that listed all his bogus quotes. Unfortunately that pamphlet has had almost zero impact on those who use the quotes daily in newspapers around the United States.”[ix]
Below are some of his more egregious misquotes. Fortunately, many people have become involved and this kind of scam scholarship is being exposed.
- “Whosoever shall introduce into the public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!” – Patrick Henry
- “The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In this sense and to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” – Holy Trinity v. U. S.
(Barton claimed this was a United States Supreme Court landmark case—in fact, the actual author is not the United States Supreme Court, but the Illinois Supreme Court (Richmond v. Moore, 1883). We are not concerned about state constitutions, which in many cases were influenced by Christianity, but with the secular federal Constituion. Not only is the quote misrepresented, Barton distorts the meaning of the Illinois court by leaving out other text from the same decision, text such as, “…a total severance of church and State is one of the great controlling foundation principles of our system of government.” - “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or eternal invader.” – Samuel Adams
- “I have always said and always will say that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make us better citizens.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “There are two powers only which are sufficient to control men, and secure the rights of individuals and a peaceable administration; these are the combined force of religion and law, and the force or fear of the bayonet.” – Noah Webster
- “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” – George Washington
- “The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be assessory [sic] to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.” – Noah Webster
- “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves … according to the Ten Commandments of God.”– James Madison[x]
The only problem with these quotes is that none of them have ever been found among any of Founder’s authentic writings. Barton tried to excuse himself by blaming it on “secondary sources”. Perhaps this is a good excuse; however, any cross referencing or simple attempt to confirm the quotes should have raised a flag in Barton’s mind; perhaps he was cherry picking quotes as Pentecostals cherry pick scriptures to fabricate tales about the Catholic Church.
Barton, has earned rebuke from “Church and State Magazine”, which ran an article by Robert Boston who insisted that Barton’s fabrications were so egregious that they warranted a “Consumer Alert”.[xi] Barton has also received criticism from the “right” for “shoddy workmanship”. The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs (BJCPA) issued a critique of a Barton movie that highlighted most of the quotes. The BJCPA took Barton to task and hammered his video.[xii] They stated that his work is:
“… laced with exaggerations, half-truths and misstatements of fact.”[xiii] The Texas Freedom Network calls him “a pseudo-intellectual fraud whose twisted interpretations of history are little more than propaganda.”[xiv]
According to “people for the American Way”[xv]
“Such dim views of Barton’s work are based on repeated instances in which Barton cites quotes attributed to Founding Fathers that appear to support the right-wing view that the current model of separation of church and state was not at all what the Framers intended, only to have those quotes turn out to be unverifiable, if not utterly false.”
..
“Barton claimed that the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” originated in a speech made by Thomas Jefferson in 1801. Barton also claimed that Jefferson went on to say that “That wall is a one directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.” [xvi]
,o,
“Such a claim would be powerful, provided it was true. The only problem was that Barton was wrong on all accounts: the phrase regarding church and state came out of an 1802 letter Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association and the letter says absolutely nothing about keeping “Christian principles” in the government.”
The Jefferson Lies
Barton’s book, “The Jefferson Lies” was as objectionable as his book, “The Myth of Separation”. The former was hammered so hard that it had to be withdrawn from publication. Hard as this might be to swallow, apparently, it is Barton and not the “liberals” who has been telling the lies about Jefferson:
“In 2012, Barton’s New York Times bestseller, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, was voted “the least credible history book in print” by the users of the History News Network website.[xvii] A group of 10 conservative Christian professors reviewed the work and reported negatively on its claims, saying that Barton has misstated facts about Jefferson.”[xviii]
“In August 2012 Christian publisher Thomas Nelson withdrew the book from publication and stopped production, announcing that he had “lost confidence in the book’s details” and “learned that there were some historical details included in the book that were not adequately supported.”[xix]
According to Wikipedia
“In 1995, in response to criticism by historian Robert Alley, Barton conceded, in an online article titled “Unconfirmed Quotations“,[xx] that he had not located primary sources for 11 alleged quotes from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions (hence, the title of the article), but maintained that the quotes were “completely consistent” with the views of the Founders. (By 2007, the article listed 14 unconfirmed quotations.)[xxi]
According to Texas Monthly,
“Honesty has been a problem for Barton over the years and still is. After he issued his “unconfirmed quotes” retraction in 1995, for instance, a group of independent researchers went over The “Myth of Separation” with a fine-tooth comb and found more than one quote that Barton apparently fabricated through the flagrant misuse of ellipses.[xxii]
You can find Barton’s bio online at (http://www.wallbuilders.com/aboutus/bio/), where it says he’s an “author and historian.” The bio says he has a degree in Arts from Oral Roberts University and an honorary doctorate from the Pensacola Christian College. In his official bio at Ecclesia University, he refers to himself as Dr. Barton (https://ecollege.edu/davidbarton/). A bachelor’s degree does not qualify a person as a historian nor does an honorary degree make one a doctor. There is a reason why we have peer-reviewed journals, and why some men and women are authorized to place Dr. in front of their names. The degree signifies the highest attainable level of scholarship and academic respectability, which Mr. Barton and those who support his ideological travesty have not earned.
The fact is, dispensationalists and Pentecostals are losing the battle; they so dread falling behind that they are forced to misquote and offer shoddy scholarship to hold on to their false dreams of ruling the world, which is turning against them. These were the type of men Pope Francis was speaking about when he recently (November 30, 2015) stated:
“Fundamentalism is a sickness that is in all religions (even Catholic fundamentalism). Such people “believe they possess the absolute truth and go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil.” “We have to combat it,” he said. “Religious fundamentalism is not religious, because it lacks God. It is idolatry, like the idolatry of money.”[xxiii]
The following links are provided for more information about this topic:
David Barton Falsely Claims He’s Been Labeled A Hate Group By The FBI
Does David Barton Have A Ph.D.? Even He Doesn’t Seem To Know
David Barton: The Declaration Of Independence And Bill Of Rights Came Directly Out Of The Bible
David Barton Falsely Claims He’s Been Labeled A Hate Group By The FBI
Videos a Common Sense Rebuttal
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END NOTES
[i] John Adams, Letter to John Taylor
[ii] The specious AD argument does not work. Some Christian ideologues who prefer ignorance to truth have scoured the document looking for just one reference to God. Finding none, they resort to the signature date which contains the words “In the year of Our Lord”. And then mockingly proclaim that the “secularists” are obviously wrong, as if this one miniscule thread redeems the entre document from being secular. This is a ridiculous argument, one worthy of only a footnote. By this logic, Hilary Clinton is a card carrying Christian because she heads or closes her correspondence with the Christian date. Or, conversely, the Portuguese who live before 1700 are not Christians because they did not begin using the AD style until the 18th century. Using the in conventional date is nothing but standard practice; it is not evidence from which to draw conclusions about such deep seated beliefs as faith in Jesus Christ, and all that He taught. New Agers even claim that Jesus is Lord along with a host of other gods and lords. Thomas Jefferson called himself a “Christian” because he believed in the morals taught by Jesus. But he denied His divinity, incarnation, and resurrection; most especially, he denied the Trinity, which disqualifies him from being a Christian no matter how much he might protest: “Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father, and the Son.” (1 John 2:22). AD, moreover, is one of several dating mechanisms used throughout Masonry and Masons are not Christians because they deny the divinity of Christ as Jefferson did. (http://grandlodgeofiowa.org/docs/Masonic_History/AnnoLucis.pdf)
[iii] All legitimate nations do derive authority and power from God through the natural law. The Church, is the only society conferred power and authority be means of the divine law and also by means of the natural law.
[iv] John Adams, Letter to John Taylor
[v] Thomas Jefferson (1810) Letter to Samuel Kercheval
[vi] Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800
[vii] The Evangelical Founding Father: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2015/11/the-most-evangelical-founding-father/?ref_widget=related&ref_blog=anxiousbench&ref_post=what-can-we-learn-from-the-david-barton-controversy
[viii] The Barton Chronicles http://candst.tripod.com/bartchron.htm
[ix] Blair Scott Michigan Atheist http://michiganatheists.org/2015/04/27/david-barton-and-fake-quotes/
[x] ibid
[xi] http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/founding.htm
[xii] Scott
[xiii] J. Brent Walker, “A Critique of David Barton’s Views on Church and State,” Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, April 2005
[xiv] Texas Freedom Network Education Foundation, “The Anatomy of Power: Texas and the Religious Right in 2006,” p.19
[xv] http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/david-barton-propaganda-masquerading-history#_edn21
[xvi] Rob Boston, “Sects, Lies and Videotape,” Church & State, Volume 46, No. 4, April 1993, pp 8-1
[xvii] Wikipedia, Schuessler, Jennifer (2012-07-16). “And the Worst Book of History Is “. New York Times. 2012-07-19.
[xviii] Wikipedia, Kidd, Thomas (August 7, 2012). “The David Barton controversy”. World (God’s World Publications, World News Group). Retrieved April 9, 2013.
[xix] Wikipedia, Kidd, Thomas (August 7, 2012).“The David Barton controversy”. World (God’s World Publications, World News Group). Retrieved April 9, 2013.
[xx] Blakeslee, Nate (September 2006). “King Of the Christocrats”. Texas Monthly 34 (9): 1. ISSN 0148-7736. Retrieved 2008-11-10.
[xxi] Barton, David. “Unconfirmed Quotations”. WallBuilders website. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007.
[xxii] (On page 248, for example, Barton pulled this quote from a Supreme Court of New York case called People v. Ruggles: “This [First Amendment] declaration … never meant to withdraw religion … and with it the best sanctions of moral and social obligation from all consideration and notice of the law.” In the unedited version, however, it is abundantly clear that the “declaration” referred to is not the First Amendment, as Barton indicated in brackets, but an article of the New York state constitution.) In the vault, I finally got to take a closer look at a piece of plastic-sheathed parchment Barton had been waving around on the pastors’ tour in D.C., which he claimed was an example of Jefferson signing a document “In the Year of Our Lord Christ.” It was already pretty flimsy evidence that Jefferson was a Christian, but on closer inspection it appeared that Jefferson himself had not even written the words; the document was the nineteenth-century equivalent of a form letter. (Texas Monthly: http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/king-of-the-christocrats/).[xxiii] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/11/30/pope-francis-says-he-is-not-losing-any-sleep-over-vatican-leaks-trial/
