Pencil? Check. Horn-rimmed glasses? Check. History textbook generously amended to give due credit to religious figures in American history?
Knew we forgot something…
As we’d reported, Glenn Beck kicked off his “Beck University” online lecture series last night, and the first topic was “Faith 101.” We signed up for the $9.95/month “university.” Last night’s class was subtitled “Black-Robed Regiment,” and “Professor” and right-wing historian David Barton talked for half an hour about happier times in American history, when clergy were a welcome and influential part of American politics.
The lecture, which was followed by an interactive Q&A session, had only a short intermission — cartoon Glenn Beck showed up to give viewers a pop quiz on Barton’s class. But don’t worry, cartoon Beck assured us. Pop quizzes were never his thing either.
So what did Barton talk about? As Beck said in his introduction, our nation’s idea of the separation of church and state is “not what you’ve been sold.”
Barton elaborated. He began by talking about Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept of “American Exceptionalism,” noting that “there’s gotta be a reason we’re different” from other democracies. That’s where the “Black-Robed Regiment” comes in. These, according to Barton, were the preachers who influenced the bulk of the Declaration of Independence:
The Declaration of Independence is nothing more than a listing of all of the sermons that folks had been hearing in church in the decades leading up to the American Revolution.
He described how state legislature sessions would be kicked off with a visit from a preacher, and how the scriptures were accepted as a means of “guidance” for legislators. In 1822 there was even a sermon given to Congress.
The founders didn’t want the church running the government, Barton said, and they didn’t want the government running the church, but they did “want the influence in there.”
During the Constitutional Convention, the drafters took a three day “church break” when things got too heated, Barton said, and one delegate described how “the whole tone had changed” when they returned.
He also said that when the delegates returned to their states to get the Constitution ratified, the ratifications “didn’t happen at government buildings, they happened at churches.”
Barton concluded: “Hey, guess what? You take the preachers out, you don’t have the same result” for our nation.
“Today we don’t hear this part of our history anymore,” he added.
And if last night’s Beta Theta Pi mixer precluded you from attending the class, Barton has previously filmed a video called “Is America A Christian Nation?”, which is basically the same lecture condensed to eleven minutes.
Ah, CliffsNotes!
