David Barton is the scariest Religious Right leader you never heard of.
But that’s beginning to change. Today, The New York Times offered readers a front-page report on Barton, a “self-taught historian who is described by several conservative presidential aspirants as a valued adviser and a source of historical and biblical justification for their policies.”
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There’s just one problem with that: Barton’s history is bunk.
As church-state scholar Derek H. Davis told The Times, “The problem with David Barton is that there’s a lot of truth in what he says. But the end product is a lot of distortions, half-truths and twisted history.”
That’s putting it mildly. Barton’s goal is to turn America into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy where folks with his faith perspective rule the roost and everyone else is, at best, a second-class citizen. And he’s using a skewed sectarian version of history to move us toward that goal.
Barton’s degree is in Christian education from Oral Roberts University. He isn’t a historian; he’s a Religious Right propagandist.
http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2011/05/06/barton-baloney-new-york-times-shines-light-on-religious-right-%E2%80%98historian%E2%80%99/