Last month I wrote about Religious Right pseudo-historian David Barton’s new book The Jefferson Lies, which attempts to prove that Thomas Jefferson was an orthodox Christian and not really a strong advocate of church-state separation. Read more
Today is Presidents’ Day. Celebrate by reading some great presidential classics of religious liberty!
Start with George Washington’s letter to Touro Synagogue, one of the most succinct statements ever issued about religious liberty.
Of course, Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, which contains the famous “wall of separation between church and state” metaphor, is always worth your time. Read more
The 60th annual National Prayer Breakfast will take place Feb. 2 here in Washington, D.C.
This event is privately sponsored by a shadowy fundamentalist Christian group called “The Family” (also known as the Fellowship Foundation). You might remember them from a few years ago, when a nasty sex scandal erupted over their infamous “C Street House” and the rowdy escapades of some of its residents. Read more
The governing board of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles has just approved a new license plate with three crosses and the words “One State Under God.”
This is the same governing board that had previously approved tags with “God Bless Texas,” “God Bless America” and “One Nation Under God.”
Supporters of the latest religion-themed plate celebrated the board’s decision as a victory for freedom of religion and speech. Read more
I spent two hours Saturday evening in front of my computer watching the Religious Right’s “Thanksgiving Family Forum.” The event, which took place at First Federated Church, a large fundamentalist congregation in Des Moines, featured six of the leading Republican presidential candidates – U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, former U.S senator Rick Santorum, Gov. Rick Perry, businessman Herman Cain and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Read more
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) last week promoted an “education reform” plan that includes taxpayer-funded school vouchers for tuition at religious and other private schools.
The proposal is supposedly targeted at low-income families with kids in “failing” public schools. The vouchers would permit these students to transfer to other private or public schools, including religious schools, provided the school chooses to accept the student.
The Religious Right likes to invoke American history to advance its agenda, but sometimes the truth of that history doesn’t fit with the fundamentalist narrative. When that happens, people like David Barton decide to write revisionist textbooks and peddle those books to public schools. Read more
As Joe Conn noted on Friday, yesterday was “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” the Alliance Defense Fund’s annual attempt to turn America’s houses of worship into cogs in a massive right-wing political machine. Read more
Last week, I gave a talk about church-state history at my wife’s church. I called my speech “The ‘Christian Nation’ Myth.”
Although I’m not an attorney, I laid out the case against the idea that the United States is some sort of officially Christian nation as one would in a courtroom, by marshaling the evidence. I put forth the following points: Read more
Today is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, and my modest gift to him is to debunk the latest David Barton nonsense about our third president.
Barton, a Religious Right historical revisionist who promotes discredited “Christian nation” propaganda, has lately taken aim at one of Jefferson’s most famous projects: The so-called “Jefferson Bible.” As usual, Barton’s version has only a passing relationship with the truth. Read more