You obviously do not understand the history of the Declaration of Indepence and our Constitution, Luddly. The only people trying to change it are those who oppose God Almighty. See this video for the history on the Christian roots of our great nation. This is what the atheists do not want Americans do know about.
It seems many theists don't want you to listen to "historian" Dave Barton either:
Barton has been praised by
U.S. conservatives Mike Huckabee,
Newt Gingrich,
Michele Bachmann[4] and
Governor Sam Brownback of
Kansas.
[48]
He has received criticism from the following:
Jay W. Richards, senior fellow at the Christian conservative
Discovery Institute, stated in 2012 that Barton's books and videos are full of "embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes, and highly misleading claims."
[58] The
Southern Poverty Law Center describes Barton's work as "anti-gay" "historical revisionism", noting that Barton has no formal training in history.
[59]
The Jefferson Lies withdrawn from publication[edit]
In 2012, Barton's
New York Times best-seller
[60] The Jefferson Lies was voted "the least credible history book in print" by the users of the
History News Network website.
[11] A group of ten conservative Christian professors reviewed the work and formed a negative view of its claims, reporting that Barton has misstated facts about Jefferson.
[58][61] In August 2012, Christian publisher
Thomas Nelson withdrew the book from publication and stopped production, announcing that they had "lost confidence in the book's details" and "learned that there were some historical details included in the book that were not adequately supported."
[62][63] Glenn Beck announced that his Mercury Ink imprint would issue a new edition of the book,
[64] for issuing once the 17,000 remaining copies that Barton bought of the Thomas Nelson edition had been sold.
[65]
"Unconfirmed Quotations"[edit]
In an article titled "Unconfirmed Quotations", Barton conceded that he has not located
primary sources for eleven alleged quotes from
James Madison,
Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, and
U.S. Supreme Court decisions (hence, the title of the article), but maintained that the quotes were "completely consistent" with the views of the Founders.
[66] This drew criticism from Rob Boston of
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who in 1996 accused Barton of "shoddy workmanship", and said that despite these and other corrections, Barton's work "remains rife with distortions of history and court rulings".
[67] WallBuilders responded to its critics by saying that Barton followed "common practice in the academic community" in citing secondary sources, and that in publishing "Unconfirmed Quotations", Barton's intent was to raise the academic bar in historical debates pertinent to public policy.
[66]
The
Texas Monthly noted in 2006
[1] that Barton has denied saying that in his famous
letter to Danbury Baptists[68] "Jefferson referred to the wall of separation between church and state as 'one-directional'—that is, it was meant to restrain government from infringing on the church's domain but not the other way around. There is no such language in the letter." The article goes on to say that this denial is contradicted by a 1990 version of Barton's video
America's Godly Heritage in which Barton states:
On January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote to that group of Danbury Baptists, and in this letter, he assured them—he said the First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state, he said, but that wall is a one-directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church, but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.
Barton's legitimacy was reported to be growing in 2006, due largely to his first non-self-published work, a 2003 article in the
Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy, (Volume XVII Issue No. 2, 2003, p. 399), a "rather tame survey" on Jefferson's writings about the First Amendment.
[1]
