You knew eventually that David Barton was going to use Wallbuilders Live to wring his hands on the air after his publisher, Thomas Nelson, turfed him due to numerous inaccuracies in his latest book, The Jefferson Lies. Well, it finally happened today. On a show entitled "The Jefferson Lies and Thomas Nelson's Fiasco," Barton and sidekick David Green trained their venom not just on Thomas Nelson, but on Warren Throckmorton, one of the evangelical professors whose criticism ultimately led to the hot lights finally being turned on Barton.
As you might expect, Barton played the persecution card. He claimed that all those calling him out are part of an effort to silence Bible-believing Christians.
Barton: So this really is an attack, not at us per se; this is an attack on religious involvement in general from religious conservatives who have gotten into the process in the last twenty-five years.
Green: They recognize that you are kind of the voice of that for so long. I mean, you've been tireless over the last twenty-five years speaking across the nation and educating us on these things and putting those original documents on-line, putting out there in front of us. So, like you said, they know if they can go after you and somehow taint your image and create this image of you that isn't true that it helps to bring down the whole movement, it helps to kind of disenfranchise Christians, really, from being involved.
Listen to the whole thing--if you can stand it--on
Windows Media or
as an MP3.
Barton and Green are being more than a little disingenuous, considering that Green issued a challenge to anyone who wanted to point out a false statement by Barton, then refused to publish a post by Chris Rodda which did exactly that.
This is an old, old tactic used by the religious right to muzzle critics--when they get called out, they claim their critics are only doing so because they hate Christianity. For instance, Peter Popoff is STILL in business more than a quarter-century after being exposed as a fake by James Randi. Why? Popoff and his supporters claimed that because Randi is a fire-eating atheist, he had no credibility. I've seen this first-hand. Many of you know that I am a former member of Every Nation, one of the more notorious outfits in the New Apostolic Reformation. This group is, at the very least, a linear descendant of Maranatha Campus Ministries, one of the more insidious campus cults from the 70s and 80s. Whenever I've spoken out about how these jerks deceived me and tried to brainwash me, they reply by warning me that I'm asking for the proverbial lightning bolt to come down.
There's only one problem with Barton's attempt to play the persecution card--it isn't working. John Fea, another one of Barton's critics on the born-again side, reports that a good number of pastors have spoken out against Barton, and also points out that Barton's evangelical critics all have solid evangelical street cred.