Email to J. Matt Barber

Barber is a culture warrior and evangelical associated with among other places Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. He wrote an article for WorldNetDaily entitled Time To Reunite Church And State.

I wrote:

Matt:

I didn't get thru your whole article (yet). [I since have.] I stopped reading after the Patrick Henry quote which is phony.

Likewise, when you write [America's Founding Fathers] were "overwhelmingly Christian," I have to wonder what you mean by Christian. Understanding themselves as "Christians"? Well yes, and that's how President Obama and the Democrats in Congress today understand their religious identity. But meeting your strict test for what it means to be "Christian"? It's simply not provable that the overwhelming majority were Christians in this sense. I doubt they were.

Regards,

Jon Rowe

This is the offending passage from Barber's article:

John Adams, our second U.S. president, famously observed: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

The U.S. Constitution, indeed our entire republican form of government, was crafted by deeply pious men who were overwhelmingly Christian. It was fashioned within the context and framework of the Judeo-Christian zeitgeist of the time and was further intended to function in harmony with a Judeo-Christian worldview – period. Though leftists may deny this reality, it remains indisputable fact. The historical record is unequivocal.

Patrick Henry said this: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!"

Barber then goes on to note how Obama and the Democrats are godless, irreligious, secularists. To the contrary, as I have noted before there is more evidence that Obama is a "Christian" in some kind of minimal traditional sense than there is for George Washington or James Madison. The minimum that Obama would meet is believing Jesus a divine, resurrected Savior. On other issues like the nature of the afterlife and the infallibility of the Bible's text, Obama is obviously not that traditional (and again, little to no evidence shows GW or JM were either). Presidents Madison, Washington and Obama all considered, or likely considered themselves "Christians."

But I know, folks like Barber will say Obama is lying.

On the Henry quotation, it's not just proven "unconfirmed" (as David Barton has admitted) but also extremely out of character for not only Henry, but also most other Founders. The idea that the United States is a "great nation" smacks of the post-Lincoln era. Even most (all?) Federalists of the Founding era referred to the United States in a plural sense -- the United States "are" not "is."

Henry opposed the US Constitution because it began, "we the people" as opposed to "we, the states."

I know Henry wasn't always so militantly anti-Federalist. But he never got close to terming the US One__Great__Nation, something that would make him want to puke. And as noted, neither did the Federalists.