More recently though when I was on the Beck show last year (could have been 18 months---I don't remember the exact date)I flew down to tape a show about the political climate. Barton, not Beck, was doing the show. They always give you a summary of what will be discussed. I was fine with that. But when I got there, they told me where Barton was going and asked all the questions in a way to support his wrong interpretations. I gave what I thought was the correct history as supported by the evidence. The whole interview was an attempt to get me to fabricate or "massage" the evidence. Since Beck wasn't even there at the time, it was Barton. When the piece finally ran, they had edited and cut the interview so that it appeared I supported his wrong postitions.
The whole gust of the piece was that we needed to "reach across the aisle" to the Dems, not stand up for anything in DC, and to avoid conflict, otherwise if we tried to stop the Dems we would end up like Nazi Germany (?!) I absolutely don't trust his scholarship nor his intentions.
Do you remember,by any chance, when you appeared? 18 months ago-ish, as you said? Would you happen to remember the month, at least? I have a subscription, and might be able to look it up. If not, that's OK. I'll probably lose interest in a day or two anyway.
I had friends who worked in the Christian apologetics field some twenty five years ago and through them I became acquainted with David Barton’s writing.
I’ve read a few books on the founding era- books by Forrest McDonald, Bernard Bailyn’s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Mel Bradford’s A Worthy Company, that sort of thing. Books by conservative friendly scholars that provide a look at the ideas that the founders held.
If someone wants to learn about the founding era and how the Christian religion fits in with it they would be much better off sticking with McDonald and Bailyn and Bradford and giving the dubious claims of David Barton a very wide berth.
Also don’t trust Barton’s “scholarship”. But I do trust the experts on Jefferson (not the agenda driven ones who definitely got into it with the Thomas J. descendants). Patrick Henry would never have said the US is a Christian nation— from both practical and personal reasons he would not say this. His devoted caring for his insane wife Sarah Shelton, as a devoted loving husband, for better or worse- speaks to his personal belief. But as regards Revolution against Tyranny— it was a close run thing and did not need to winnow out willing participants.
Would be interested, if not on this forum- to learn your thoughts on Andrew Breitbart- who had a permanent falling out with Beck over Shirley Sherrod episode where Beck was caught live on the air having stolen and re-edited the tapes of Sherrod’s presentation to black farmers (when Breitbart was making the point that the TEA Party was not racist, but that the NAACP actually was/is), and caught in the lie about Sherrod’s epiphany, which Breitbart’s piece made quite clear. From that point Breitbart had nothing good to say about Beck, calling him an auto-didact and a user and liar, and that he had “tripped into the conservative movement” as an opportunity in his headlong pursuit of media stardom. It is pretty revealing, and I’m very sorry still for the loss of Breitbart, because he had NAILED hollywood’s cultural marxism (needing to separate the US from our religious and culturally conservative beliefs and to do it in the universities- to destroy us), and with them, obamaumao. Breitbart had a real handle on the central good that is the United States, and the threat to that good.