Public Broadcasting Showcases Christian Right's Fake American History

Posted by Bruce Wilson at 5:40 PM on June 12, 2007.

If key Democratic Party political advisers buy into junk science based public health policies, and Democratic politicians support such policies, why shouldn't the Public Broadcasting System air a documentary, on church-state separation with junk, falsified American history ?

How does the Christian right advance its ideology and agenda, through electoral cycles and even when the movement's political influence, in Washington, appears (on the surface at least) to be on the wane ?

Well, covertly of course.

Or in some cases, when few are paying much attention, quite overtly.

But, we're not living in the old Soviet Union. It's not OK to use American taxpayer dollars to promote ideologically tendentious junk science, nor is it OK for taxpayer money to promote falsified versions of American history. But as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts". Falsified history, or falsified science, are just that: fake, and conservative evangelical Christians cannot in good faith support fake history or fake science, nor can PBS officials get away, in the end, with underwriting fake history.

Democrats join with GOP, fund junk-science based public health initiative

To oppose such government-funded fraud we have to pay attention, closely. We have to notice such fraud to stop it :

The "Faith Based Initiative", and along with it funding for the dedicated partisans of the Christian right to teach their junk-science based approach to sex. education ( "abstinence-only-until-marriage", that is ) on a national scale, was initiated in 1996 and the original "Faith Based Initiative" bill was signed by President William Jefferson Clinton. That Democratic Party collusion, to inflict the Christian right's junk science on American teens, is not a thing of the past though ; House Democrats recently voted to increase funding to the "abstinence-only" CBAE program and one of the co-founders of the hot new political consulting firm "Common Good Strategies", Eric Sapp, has recently stated that "abstinence-only" is the most effective way of reducing teen pregnancy. Righto, Mr. Sapp. Perhaps you're partial to Geocentrism too ? 'Flat-Earthism', the rejection of science in favor of ideologically driven fake science, is a temptation to Republicans and Democratic Party consultants alike, it would seem.

If junk science is OK, why not junk history ?

So, along with junk science based social policies, we've now got falsified history, courtesy of the Public Broadcasting System:

Barry Lynn, and the Americans United For the Separation Of Church and State, has just publicized a rather overt instance, in which PBS is planning to air a documentary, on church state separation, which advances a view, on the meaning of the Establishment Clause, which is based in a falsified version American history, courtesy of the American Christian right, that seems to have been engineered specifically to advance Christian nationalism and theocracy by asserting that the founders only intended the Separation Clause as a "one way wall" to keep government out of religion but not vice versa.

Now, about six weeks ago I discovered falsified American history, in the form of a paraphrased passage on church-state separation derived from the writing of arch US history falsificationist David Barton, embedded within a Department of Defense produced US Army JROTC curriculum that gets taught to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of American public high school students every year.

Martial arts maven Chuck Norris is even a promoting fake-history larded Bible class curriculum now taught in hundreds of US high schools (which is at the center of a current nationa-scale lawsuit, in Texas), and it's easy to mock Norris' efforts (I've done it myself) except for the fact that a substantial fraction of an entire generation of young Americans is currently being taught that church-state separation is a myth, and many of those will also hear "by Godless secularists" appended to the lesson as well. Those young Americans will, in turn, be fed into the educational mills of the Christian right, into Regent and Liberty University, and into Patrick Henry College, to emerge as the highly trained political operatives who will make up the new generation of Christian right leaders. In other words, fake history matters.

The retailing of American history that has been falsified to advance the agenda and ideology of the American Christian can be found in the Army's JROTC curriculum, the new National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools, and in Christian homeschooling curricula. And, Liars For Jesus author Chris Rodda and I are likely to uncover more instances in which such falsified history is getting taught, sometimes even at taxpayer expense.

Arguably millions of American kids each year are exposed to falsified history, and although we've had dubious and slanted American history in the past it's important to know that the bunk US history I'm referring to has been falsified recently ; this isn't an historic problem, it's contemporary. People are trying to overwrite the American historical record now, and now the reverend Barry Lynn, head of Americans United For the Separation of Church and State, describes the marketing of falsified history in a Public Broadcasting Service documentary, soon to be aired, on church-state that has been produced by a company associated with the Christian right.

Here's the description, from PBS's own website, of the coming documentary, paid for with American tax dollars, that a fraudulent view of American history by way of a claim on church-state separation which appears to derive from perhaps the most notorious instance of historical falsification by the leading historical falsificationist on the Christian right, David Barton:

WALL OF SEPARATION

The Wall of Separation is a metaphor deeply embedded in the American consciousness. Most of us take for granted the idea that politics and religion should not be intermixed because of the heritage of The First Amendment in our understanding of freedom of religion. The No Establishment Clause has protected us from the entanglement of religion with government, and the Free Exercise Clause has secured the right for all faiths to engage in their religious practices without interference from the state. America is a religiously pluralistic culture guided by a secular government.

But what would surprise most Americans is the discovery that this is not what the Founding Fathers of our country intended when they established our nation and wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They in fact had a radically different definition of establishment and the role of religion in state and federal governments than we do today. So radical, in fact, that some say the modern understanding of the role of religion in the public square is exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended.

Now, let's turn the the passage, paraphrased from the writing of the American history falsificationist David Barton, that I discovered in the US Army JROTC curriculum:

the "separation" phrase so frequently invoked today was rarely mentioned by any of the Founders; and even Jefferson's explanation of his phrase is diametrically opposed to the manner in which courts apply it today. "Separation of church and state" currently means almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant.

Notice the clear similarity to the claim found on PBS's website. In fact, the two passages make almost identical claims, that the framers of the United States Constitution intended the Separation Clause to mean that government shouldn't get into religion but not vice versa, and that claim may be the most centrally important claim of Christian historical revisionism.

Does that mean, then, that PBS and the folks responsible for the passage in the Army JROTC curriculum are in cahoots ? No, not at all. It's far more likely that PBS is airing the claim for the central role it plays, in effect, in attacking church-state separation.

Historian Chris Rodda has devoted herself to demolishing such historical falsification, what she characterizes, quite plainly, as lies, promulgated by David Barton, William Federer, D James Kennedy, and others, about American history. What can you do ? Well, you can buy her book and, more to the point, read it but you can also call your political representatives in Washington to demand hearings on the fake-history issue, and you can call PBS to demand that PBS not air the falsified history based documentary. But the point isn't to bash PBS, the point is that there has been, until recently, too little opposition to the march of this fake history to stop it.

Well, that's going to change.

Stay tuned.

Tagged as: barton, pbs

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.