During a recent lecture, evangelical “historian” David Barton said that people who are familiar with both the Bible and the U.S. Constitution should know that one borrows heavily from the other.
“If you know the Bible and if you read the Constitution, you find Bible quotes verbatim throughout the Constitution,” Barton declared. “But you have to know the Bible to see that.”
According to Barton, people who don’t know the Bible “arrive at the same conclusion that scholars do” and assume it’s a secular document.
“When somebody tells me the Constitution is a secular document, they have just told me that they are biblically illiterate,” he continued. “I can take and open the Bible, have you read a bible verse and I’ll take you over to Article 1, Section 8 [of the Constitution] and I’ll have you read that — ‘Oh, that’s a verbatim quote of the Bible’ — exactly.”
“It’s not a secular document, but we’ve become so unaccustomed to recognizing the Bible when it’s there that we don’t even recognize that when we read the Constitution.”
As Right Wing Watch point out, none of the quotes Barton cited are “verbatim.”
None of these biblical passages are "verbatim" sources for the separation of powers, three branches of government, tax-exemption for churches, or republicanism. pic.twitter.com/uwWdOlN00U
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 25, 2022
Watch the video below:
Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton keeps falsely claiming that the Constitution is full of "verbatim quotes" from the Bible. We are starting to think that he doesn't know what the word "verbatim" means. pic.twitter.com/GZu84BETqe
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 25, 2022
