Karl Giberson: The Anointed Leaders of the Religious Right

Karl Giberson, Ph.D, is Vice-President of the BioLogos Foundation (www.biologos.org), founded by Francis Collins to promote harmony between science and faith.

The May 4, New York Times introduced readers to David Barton, an amateur historian whose ideas about America being a "Christian Nation" founded by evangelicals are quite foreign to the readers of that publication. Described in the article as a "quirky history buff" and "self-taught historian," Barton has long been a powerful and influential figure with America's vast evangelical subculture. For many years he was co-chair of the Texas Republican party and his multimillion dollar media empire -- Wallbuilders -- churns out a steady supply of materials supporting his key message that America was founded as a Christian nation and needs to return to its roots to recover the favor it once received from God. Barton, who Glenn Beck describes as "an expert in historical and constitutional issues," is also a "professor" on Beck's new online university. Barton's formal education consists of a degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University....

Barton has created a rose-colored "past" that appeals to conservative evangelicals fretting about the trajectory of a nation they believe once belonged to them. If only this Edenic past can be recovered, Barton assures them, we can reverse the nation's blind, secularized stagger toward Gomorrah. This message is welcomed in churches across America's heartland, where Barton frequently appears. The warm and welcome nature of the message, together with Barton's born-again credentials, are more than a match for the persistent challenges he faces from both the secular academy and from fellow evangelical historians like Mark Noll and George Marsden. By any imaginable academic yardstick, Noll, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at Notre Dame, former professor at the conservative evangelical Wheaton College, and author of the acclaimed America's God, towers over Barton. If Republican leaders were really serious about understanding the nation's religious history they would be talking to Noll, not Barton. Noll is as thoroughly evangelical as Barton, but understands history well enough to know that reading his own faith back into the founding fathers is irresponsible. Unfortunately, Noll is not a populist -- his work is not widely available on Youtube -- and thus one has to be a bit more serious to pursue his thinking. That the religious right prefers Barton to Noll is an alarming testimony to the power of wishful thinking and anti-intellectualism....