A discredited propagandist is infiltrating America's public schools — with help from the GOP

Political operative David Barton held up a thick Bible with years of wear on its dark brown cover and proclaimed its pages put Protestant Christianity at the center of the country’s very foundation.

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

“This is actually printed by the official printer of Congress,” said Barton, a best-selling author and influential far-right Christian nationalist. Barton has spent the last 40 years arguing that the separation of church and state is a myth — and has built a multimillion-dollar media and lobbying operation to influence public opinion and shape laws around the belief that the United States was founded as a Judeo-Christian nation.

At this particular hearing in April, Barton appeared before the Texas House education committee and testified in favor of legislation, since signed into law, requiring that posters of the Ten Commandments be placed inside every classroom in the state’s nearly 9,100 public schools by September. With him, Barton brought a small collection of books he claims were foundational to the country’s public education system until the 20th Century.

Barton isn’t just a primary pitchman for the Ten Commandments law in Texas, his home state, an investigation by The 74 reveals. His fingerprints appear on 28 bills that have cropped up before the legislatures in 18 states this year. A data analysis of the bills exposes how their language, structure and requirements are inherently identical. In dozens of instances, they match model legislation pitched by Barton verbatim.

At the Texas hearing, Barton’s eyes fixated on the cover of the rare 1782 Aitken Bible.

“It also says it’s ‘a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools,’” he continued. “It has the Ten Commandments.”

In actuality, Barton lifted language from Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken calling on Congress to sanction a Bible that could also be for “the use of schools.” Christian nationalists have for years falsely claimed the Revolutionary-era printing includes a government promotion of Christianity. Barton has long been accused of taking historical quotes out of context, and in 2012, the Christian publisher of his bestselling book on Thomas Jefferson ceased its production because “basic truths just were not there.”

Texas is one of three states in the last two years to pass a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools. The mandates are part of a coordinated nationwide effort to overturn a 1980 Supreme Court ruling forbidding Kentucky from requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms.

As the influence of Barton and the burgeoning Christian nationalist movement find favor in state legislatures, the White House and with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson — who cites Barton as a “profound influence” — the lobbyists and lawmakers behind the state Ten Commandments bills told The 74 they’re confident the current Supreme Court’s conservative super-majority is on their side, too.

The analysis by The 74 reveals how language in virtually every state bill matches model legislation created by Project Blitz, a Barton-steered Christian “bill mill” that’s long flooded statehouses with legislative templates that promote Christianity in public schools, legalize discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and restrict abortion.

A dozen bills specify, for example, that the Ten Commandments displays must be hung in a “conspicuous” location. Another 11 specify they should be at least 11-by-14 inches in size. Nearly all of the bills — 25 — mandate a Christian version of the religious and ethical directives be displayed as a “poster or framed.” The 74 tallied 96 instances where bills introduced this year match Project Blitz’s model legislation, including template bills to require the Ten Commandments or the phrase “In God We Trust” in public schools.

Among the architects of Project Blitz is the Barton-founded influence machine, WallBuilders. The flurry of state bills were introduced after WallBuilders — the name is an Old Testament reference to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem — convened its annual national conference of state legislators in November where the model legislation was promoted.

After Louisiana passed its first-in-the-nation Ten Commandments law last year, new mandates approved in Arkansas and Texas this year follow the same Project Blitz template.

‘No such thing as separation of God and government’

Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton is the joint author of the state’s new Ten Commandments law and the author of another new law permitting a daily prayer period and Bible readings in public schools statewide. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed both in June.

Middleton, whose district southeast of Houston includes his hometown of Galveston, acknowledged Barton’s influence over not just his own legislative agenda, but Texas’ broader conservative movement. Barton previously served as vice chair of the state Republican Party.

“Of course, WallBuilders is very supportive of the bill,” Middleton told The 74, as were the conservative legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and the First Liberty Institute. “And, of course, all of their missions is to advance religious liberties, especially in the public realm where there is no such thing as separation of God and government.”

Founded by Barton in 1988, WallBuilders promotes theories — discredited by serious scholars — about Christianity’s central role in the formation of the United States through its podcasts, books and a museum with “one of the largest private collections of United States historical documents.”

Through WallBuilders’ lobbying arm, the Pro-Family Legislative Network, Barton leads direct outreach to lawmakers and educators at its annual conferences at a four-star waterfront resort in suburban Dallas. It was at this gathering where Indiana Rep. J.D. Prescott, a Republican, got the idea for Ten Commandments legislation in his state, he told The 74.

Prescott proposed a bill requiring a “durable poster or framed picture” of the commandments in each library and classroom at all public schools statewide. The legislation ultimately failed to garner support. Bills in other states also failed to gain traction, including in South Dakota where the bill’s critics — including some Republicans — said a government mandate was the wrong way to spread Christianity and ran afoul of the Constitution.

“Our early common school system was really designed to teach biblical principles in the Bible, so it’s just getting back to that point,” said Prescott, who described himself as a “student of history.”

The Pro-Family Legislative conference offers lawmakers scholarships and discounted hotel rates to attend the event. In at least one instance, a New Hampshire state lawmaker filed a disclosure form reporting that he had received $859.47 from the Pro-Family Legislative Network, including $500 reimbursing him for air fare, to attend the November 2024 conference.

Prescott told The 74, “I learned a lot of it at a WallBuilders conference hosted by David Barton. They’ve got a great conference for legislators down in Texas every November. I did look at the WallBuilders model legislation and it’s a good place to start.”

Not everyone’s Ten Commandments

Experts said the bills seek to do more than require “durable” Ten Commandments posters in every public school classroom. The campaign is part of a broader, well-organized and deep-pocketed assault, they argue, on the separation of church and state.

Although WallBuilders isn’t required to disclose its donors, the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy analyzed federal tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service to bring its finances into focus. In 2021, WallBuilders reported $5.9 million in revenue and $6.3 million in total assets.

The group relies heavily on donor-advised giving, a tax loophole that allows anonymous supporters across the political spectrum to contribute to contentious causes without scrutiny. For example, donor-advised funds have been exploited by far-right activists to leverage global campaigns against the civil rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, according to a 2023 investigation by openDemocracy.

Mercury One, a nonprofit founded by high-profile conservative pundit and media personality Glenn Beck, is both a WallBuilders donor and primary sponsor of Barton’s annual Pro-Family Legislative Conference to brief elected officials “on pressing issues from a constitutional perspective.”

Barton, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, describes himself as a self-taught historian and the owner of the largest private collection of historical documents about the Founding Fathers. His critics pan the graduate of the Oral Roberts University as a discredited pseudohistorian and propagandist.

Barton is “the granddaddy of Christian nationalist disinformation,” constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The 74.

John Fea, an American history professor and history department chair at Messiah University, a private evangelical Christian institution in Pennsylvania, accused Barton of cherry-picking historical information to present a misleading portrayal of the past, one that bolsters his own present-day political agenda.

“This is clearly an attempt by Christian nationalists to try to advance their own version of what America should be,” Fea said, noting that even as historians challenge Barton, he’s amassed influence among Republican lawmakers interested in leveraging a distorted accounting of history for political gain.

“Barton provides that history for these lawmakers. It adds a certain depth, even though it’s hollow.”

Darcy Hirsh, the senior director of government relations and advocacy at the nonprofit National Council for Jewish Women, said the Ten Commandments laws present an attack on “the strict wall of separation” between church and state.

“Any efforts to perpetuate the falsehood that the United States is a Christian nation is something that we find deeply alarming,” Hirsh said. Requiring a protestant Christian version of the Ten Commandments in schools, she said, is “exclusionary and coercive” to children from diverse backgrounds.

“A Protestant interpretation of the Ten Commandments is different than the Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments, in fact, they are numbered differently,” she said. Constitutional protections separating church and state, she said, are critical to the country’s democratic society.

“It’s that protection that has really allowed the Jewish community and other minority faith communities to flourish in the U.S.”

The laws successfully passed in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas now face lawsuits from parents alleging they violate the separation of church and state. The issue could soon appear again before the nation’s highest court. In June, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, among the nation’s most conservative, struck down Louisiana’s Ten Commandments display mandate, finding it “plainly unconstitutional.”

Parents with diverse religious identities are being backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State in challenging the laws. In a complaint filed in Arkansas, parents allege students will be “unconstitutionally coerced into religious observance” and “pressured to suppress their personal religious beliefs.”

Fea, the evangelical historian, told The 74 the far-right campaign isn’t about the Ten Commandments’ place in the nation’s founding but about advancing the influence of Christianity in society.

“They’re using this historical argument to disguise the fact that they believe that somehow — and I don’t know how this happens, by osmosis or whatever — a student sitting in a classroom where the Ten Commandments is displayed will somehow buy into those ideals and values and become more Christian,” he said.

‘The hostility is gone’

At the Texas House education committee hearing in April, Barton held up a second book. This one was much smaller than the first, but just as old and, Barton testified, just as significant.

Barton lectured the Republican-controlled state legislature on The New England Primer, a widely used Colonial-era reading text. The book, he said, drilled first graders with 43 questions about the Ten Commandments.

Then he introduced a third book, and a fourth.

“The courts have pointed to the Ten Commandments as the reason we have all types of laws,” Barton testified. “So there’s a lot of history and tradition for that document that’s not there for other documents.”

Barton’s prop-focused presentation isn’t just scripted — it’s well rehearsed. This year, the 71-year-old has traveled across the country with his books and a small team of collaborators to spread the gospel of Christian nationalism. Like the bills before the state legislatures, Barton’s speech was replicated again and again.

As Barton testified on the Ten Commandment bills nationally, legislative sponsors routinely parroted his talking points, not just about Christianity’s role in the country’s origin, but the Supreme Court’s support for their movement.

During his recent appearances in Nebraska and other states, Barton’s testimonies invoked the court’s 2022 opinion upholding the rights of a Washington state high school football coach to lead prayers with his team on the 50-yard line after games.

Prescott, the Indiana lawmaker, said he became interested in introducing his bill after learning of the implications of the coach’s Supreme Court victory.

To Barton and other members of his coalition, the court’s opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District creates a clear path to require Ten Commandments in schools — and inject Christianity into other facets of public life — by proving they’re part of a longstanding traditional practice.

In finding for Coach Kennedy, the Supreme Court abandoned its 1971 opinion ruling that religious displays don’t violate the Constitution if they have significant secular or nonreligious purposes. The court’s new standard revolves around whether the religious displays are part of historical practices. In other words, the heart of Barton’s pitch.

“That is the new standard, so the hostility is gone,” he testified. “Showing that this is something that is longstanding practice, you go back to The New England Primer.”

Bought and paid for — according to specs

Even as bill proponents championed states’ rights as one legal justification for their Ten Commandments display mandates, Middleton, the Texas legislative leader, said there is a key benefit to the near-identical requirements in the bills across the 18 states.

“We just wanted uniformity in these displays. We thought that was important,” the oil company president and cattle rancher told The 74. “Obviously, these are primarily going to be donated as well, so it’s probably going to be primarily private funds funding these.”

Project Blitz model legislation devises a funding scheme that revolves around donated displays without the reliance on public funds — a provision that appears in 16 states’ bills. Others invoke the model legislation by encouraging donated displays, but broaden the mandate so schools are also free to spend taxpayer dollars to comply.

Mirroring the Project Blitz model legislation, the new Arkansas law requires the Ten Commandments display be composed of a “durable poster or framed copy” of the document and that it be “prominently” positioned in each public classroom and library across the state. The law also stipulates that the posters should be donated by outside groups, meaning the same private entities who had a hand in crafting the specifications, supporting the bills and getting them on legislators’ radars, will also be the ones buying the versions of the Ten Commandments that wind up in schools.

Even as the Louisiana law is caught up in federal court, religious groups who lobbied for the law’s passage and have close ties to the WallBuilders have plans to donate the displays set to appear in classrooms across the state.

In April, First Liberty Institute and The Louisiana Family Forum announced that Patriot Mobile, which describes itself as “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider,” had donated 3,000 Ten Commandments displays “as part of a project to provide, at no cost to the Louisiana taxpayer, displays in schools throughout Louisiana.”