David Barton is far-right Christianity’s favorite pseudo historian. In his line of work, being a historian simply means inventing false narratives and feeding them to a devoted flock of listeners.
Examples of Barton’s fraudulent lectures are multiple. He appeared on Glenn Beck’s TV numerous times and was given free reign to wax poetic about his version of American history. He even sometimes ventures into the world of apocalyptic preaching. During one of his podcasts last year he posited that undesirable weather patterns are linked to abortion.
“…today 52 percent of Christians think that God does a really lousy job with the weather,” he said, citing a completely unverifiable (and likely completely made up) statistic. “Maybe it’s not his choice that is doing it. Maybe it’s our own sin or our own unrighteous policies. Maybe it’s because we love killing unborn kids, 60 million of them. Maybe God says, “I’m not going to bless your land when you’re doing it.”
For over a decade, Barton has been on a mission to uncover “America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built.” As Right Wing Watch points out, he styles himself as a historian and “expert” on the “original intent of our Founding Fathers in the areas of faith and family.” In a video posted the Grace Christian Center’s YouTube channel this Tuesday, Barton demonstrated some more of his Christian-themed version of history, this time saying that the 4th of July was originally meant to be celebrated as a religious holiday.
“If you’re gonna celebrate this day, we need to celebrate it with solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty,” he says at the 1:01:36 mark of the video.
“That’s the way we used to celebrate the 4th of July,” he continued. “Matter of fact, we have documents from 1837 [that say] the top two religious holidays in America were Christmas and the 4th of July.”
“For Christmas we celebrated the principles Jesus Christ brought into the world through his birth, on the 4th of July we celebrated bringing Christian principles into America and spreading that throughout the nation.”
Watch the video below:
Featured image via screen grab/YouTube
