Quit Being So Gullible!

Mind you that I grew up believing that listening to rock music with backwards messages in it would make me want to do drugs and practice witchcraft.

It's time that Christians learn a lesson that many others in the world learned a long time ago: You can't believe everything you hear, and it's a good idea to do your own research before you go flapping your gums to the rest of creation.

If you want anything spread quickly over the internet, send an email and associate it with a Christian cause. It'll spread like wildfire. Case in point: I get so much junk email from well-intentioned people wanting to make sure that those rotten athiests don't pass a law making it illegal to say God's name on television. 1) This is legally laughable. 2) Believe me, any thinking atheist wouldn't want to touch religious programming. Most of it proves everything that they're saying about us.

Another example: David Barton heads an organization called Wallbuilders and goes around the country making a living off of lecturing churches about history, specifically history from the Revolutionary Generation. Being a history teacher, and having remembered Barton coming to my church in my childhood, he piqued my interest.

Barton's main objective is to get people to think that our founders were, by and large, "evangelicals" who saw the church and the American government as partners. His favorite thing to tell people is that the Constitutional separation between church and state is a myth... that it's a "one way wall" designed only to make sure the state doesn't meddle in the institution of the church.

And, like most things stamped "Christian", evangelicals have bought it, hook, line and sinker.

Unfortunately, it's bad history, and it's making us look very foolish. Barton's "history lessons" are being repeated all over the country, even by Congressmen and in courts. What many of these people haven't realized is that much of the foundation that Barton laid his early work on is questionable, and Barton has acknowledged as such. Many of the quotes used to link the founders to evangelicalism, as well as to Barton's understanding of the relationship between the Constitution and Christianity, are completely unsubstantiated. Not only does Barton study history badly, refusing to look into the prevalent thought in society at the time and viewing details through a proper historical lense, but his facts are just plain false. He takes the conclusion he is looking for as his point of departure, then looks for the "facts" that back it up, regardless of whether or not they are being removed from that ever important factor known as "context."

Barton has a BS from ORU and an "honorary doctorate" from Pensacola Christian, so I'm not sure exactly what qualifies him to be treated as an expert in the field except his research, which is, plainly, not very good. Yet people in the church are more likely to accept what he has to say than a real historian, who knows about historical investigation, but who might come to different, less acceptable conclusions. Do we really think that people who are "conservative Christians" are actually more reliable simply because of their social/political/religious views? Have we not seen often enough that people are willing to distort facts or (less cynically) at least allow their agenda to excessively color the truth? How many times do we have to learn this lesson?
posted by Stephen at 8:34 PM | |