Year: 2013

In his speeches to churches, David Barton asserts that there are Bible verses throughout the Constitution. On past occasions, he has said that the Constitution quotes the Bible verbatim. In his recent appearance before Crossroads Church in Oklahoma City, OK, Barton said people today don’t recognize these verses in the Constitution because they are ignorant about the Bible. He begins his discussion of the Bible and the Constitution at about 12 minutes into the following sermon:

Barton said:

It’s significant that if you know the Bible and if you read the Constitution, you see Bible verses throughout the Constitution. You see Bible verse after Bible verse that is noted in the Constitution. Now today, we have a lot of people who say, no, no, the Constitution is a secular arena, the Constitution is a secular document. When somebody tells me the Constitution’s a godless document, that simply tells me, they wouldn’t know a Bible verse if they saw one; if it bit them on the ankle they wouldn’t know what a Bible verse was. See what happened is the Constitution is filled with Bible verses, Bible references, Bible phrases, and Bible terminology cause back then, they didn’t see any reason to tell you it came out of the Bible because back then everybody knew that. They didn’t put it, but we’re so biblically illiterate today, we don’t recognize that. 

Timothy Dwight must have been biblically illiterate. Dwight was a prominent Congregationalist minister and the president of Yale from 1795 to 1817. On July 23, 1812, Dwight preached a sermon before his students and faculty where he lamented the low spiritual status of the day. The occasion was a public fast called by the Connecticut governor in opposition to the War of 1812. Saying the nation had three reasons to fear the future, Dwight had strong words to say about the Constitution.

The second of these reasons is, the sinful character of our nation. Notwithstanding the prevalence of Religion, which I have described, the irreligion, and the wickedness, of our land are such, as to furnish a most painful and melancholy prospect to a serious mind. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgment of God ; without any recognition of his mercies to us, as a people, of his government, or even of his existence. The Convention, by which it was formed, never asked, even once, his direction, or his blessing upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God. I wish I could say, that a disposition to render him the reverence, due to his great Name, and the gratitude, demanded by his innumerable mercies, had been more public, visible, uniform, and fervent.

Dwight was adverse to heresy and was considered to be a champion of orthodoxy.  He defended the Apostolic writings as inspired when the Unitarians and others rejected them. Dwight did not see Bible verse after Bible verse in the Constitution. Should we say he was biblically illiterate?
See below for the verses Barton claims to quoted in the Constitution:

 
 
Related Post:
David Barton’s Biblical Constitution: What if the Constitution did quote the Bible? 

This is my favorite tune by the amazing Sam and Dave. These guys are bringing the funk, and the audience sits really still. If you look closely, you can see some feet tapping.

In a response to the Supreme Court cases on gay marriage yesterday, David Barton said ministers should be “bivocational” to prevent them relying on “church welfare,” otherwise known as a minister’s salary.
Barton was on Glenn Beck’s show yesterday opining about the importance of the two gay marriage cases on the military, the state department, and Christian conscience. In discussing the effect of the rulings on conscience, Barton said ministers who refuse to perform gay marriages may cause their churches to lose tax exempt status. Such a loss would be a problem because ministers derive their income from churches. Here is the segment:

Tax exemption could prove to be a huge bargaining chip for the government, if churches don’t begin to walk away from the loophole.
“What are we going to do to get churches to walk away from their income tax exemption,” Glenn asked.
“I mean, they need to at the state level. What they believe is that they can’t survive without it. Now, I’m a big believer in the way Paul did it. Paul was bivocational. He had his own income so that he wasn’t dependent on a church,” David explained. “Right now what happens is so many ministers depend on their church, and I’m sorry, I often call it church welfare. These are guys that get their check from the church and they don’t want to mess with their check, don’t want to jeopardize that. It’s time for more pastors to become bivocational so that nobody can tell them what to do with their money. They own their own money. If the church money dries up, great, they are still ministers and they can still preach because they’ve got an income. So I’m really into that mold. And until we get out of the church welfare mold, the church takes care of me and I can’t afford to lose my check from the church. It’s going to be really tough to get the guys in a different direction.”

I Timothy 5:17 is often referred to in defense of paying ministers a salary and certainly indicates that they are deserving of their compensation. Calling it welfare insinuates that paid ministers aren’t doing much for their compensation and as such suggests a pretty low view of the minister’s vocation.
The broader topic of loss of tax exemption is an unfounded fear often raised, but never supported. Ministers were able to refuse to marry same-sex couples yesterday without jeopardizing their tax exempt status. Nothing has changed today (or is ever likely to change) due to the Supreme Court cases.
Video of Beck interviewing Barton (church welfare comments begin at 2:40 into the clip.

UPDATE: Scroll down to the update for links to the decisions and excerpts from the cases. In short, DOMA has been overturned and Prop 8 was dismissed based on lack of standing of those bringing the case.
……….
Today, the Supreme Court hands down decisions in two cases which address gay marriage.  One, Hollingsworth v. Perry (No. 12-144) decides whether California’s Proposition 8 violates the Constitution. The second case is United States v. Windsor (No. 12-307) in which the court will decide whether a part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 violates the Constitution. DOMA defines marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” for the purpose of determining federal benefits.
Yesterday, the court announced that the rest of the court’s decisions would be announced today. Court watchers think the decision will be out sometime around 10am. All eyes will be on the decision, and, like a lot of blogs and news sources, I will post links to the decisions and commentary about them.
UPDATE: The DOMA decision is out. DOMA has been overturned on a 5-4 vote. From SCOTUS Blog: “5-4:DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”
DOMA opinion is here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_g2bh.pdf
From the opinion (25-26)

DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others,the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.

The Prop 8 case may be dismissed based on standing.  From Justice Robert’s dissent:

we hold today that we lack jurisdiction to consider it in the particular context of Hollingsworth v. Perry, ante, p. ___. I write only to highlight the limits of the majority’s holding andreasoning today, lest its opinion be taken to resolve notonly a question that I believe is not properly before us—DOMA’s constitutionality—but also a question that all agree, and the Court explicitly acknowledges, is not at issue.

According to Amy Howe at the SCOTUS Blog,

What this means, in plain terms, is that same-sex couples who are legally married will be entitled to equal treatment under federal law– with regard to, for example, income taxes and Social Security benefits.

We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here.

No matter how deeply committed petitioners may be to upholding Proposition 8, that is not a particularized interest sufficient to create a case or controversy under Article III.

Same-sex marriage will be available in CA, at least where court clerks take the position that Prop 8 is unconstitutional.

In two recent sermons (Whitesburg Baptist Church – AL; Crossroads Church – OK), David Barton told his audience that violent crime has increased 694% since the 1963 Supreme Court decision on Bible reading in schools. Barton cited Benjamin Rush as a founding father who believe the Bible should be in schools. According to Barton, Rush warned that crime would increase if the Bible was ever removed from education.

To his audience at Crossroads (36 minutes into the video), Barton showed this chart as proof of his contention.

This is difficult to see but I have added some notations in yellow. The chart shows number of violent offenses from 1951 through 1993. Crime gradually increased from the 1950s and spiked upward from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. However, does anyone know what happened after that?

If you said violent crime rates began a pattern of decline, you would be correct. Barton doesn’t show what happened after 1993. Click the link to use the FBI data tool to get the numbers. Click here to see a chart of the crime rates from 1960 to 2010.  According to the FBI stats, the violent crime rate in 2010 was the lowest since 1972 and has been falling steadily since 1991. The murder rate is the same as it was in 1961. This chart provides the rest of the history about overall violent crime rates that Barton didn’t tell.

There are many theories about this pattern but suffice it to say that these data do not support Barton’s contention. During the rest of his sermon, Barton decries the Biblical illiteracy of today’s church and cites questionable statistics about divorce rates and other indicators of general decline. If anything, according to Barton, things are worse now than ever. If Barton’s theory was correct, then why would crime rates be falling?
As noted, many theories exist but the pattern of increase and decline probably do not reflect the presence or absence of the Bible in schools.
UPDATE (6/26/13): Also relevant to Barton’s theory is a comparison of the United States with other nations. Good numbers are hard to come by but let’s start with the UN data on homicide (excel file). Historically Shinto and Buddhist but practically non-religious Japan boasts a very low rate (.4) versus the United States (4.8).  Norway (.6) and Sweden (1.0) record low rates despite being quite secular.

Another factor that should be added to any discussion is the fact the Bible had been long gone from many public schools before the 1963 decision. For example, the Cincinnati Bible wars were waged between 1869 and 1871, with the result being the removal of Bible from Cincinnati schools. The same thing happened in Philadelphia and New York City.