Month: September 2016

Post Ted Cruz, Is It Time for Glenn Beck to Reconsider David Barton?

On his show today, conservative pundit Glenn Beck became irate with Ted Cruz over Cruz’s endorsement of Donald Trump. Right Wing Watch gets the hat tip and has some clips. Watch:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNjgAUzUwCI[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BshqMopwv2E[/youtube]
It is must watch TV. Beck nailed Cruz on his endorsement and demanded to know what new information Cruz had which allowed him to endorse Trump. Cruz had none (in fact, Cruz allowed Trump to use his mailing list before the endorsement) In the second video, Beck rails against Cruz and the two parties.
If Beck is this angry over Cruz’s turn around, what must he think of his old buddy David Barton?
Barton believes Christians must put aside their complaints and vote for Trump (link, link, link). Barton believes Trump is God’s choice and that Christians have a biblical duty to vote for him. Barton has been pushing Trump for weeks.
How is it possible for Glenn Beck to excoriate Ted Cruz without comparable ire being directed toward David Barton?
Perhaps this will motivate Beck to really examine the claims Barton makes about historical matters (and even Barton’s own educational status). Beck has a mutual friend who reached out to him in 2012 about Barton’s history. Perhaps, Mr. Beck, you could reach out to that person and reexamine the evidence.
 
 

Eric Metaxas: Donald Trump Speaks Hyperbolically and Shouldn't Be Taken Literally

According to Eric Metaxas, people who oppose Trump have taken him at his word and that is a mistake.
Really.
Read what he told Justin Brierley with Premier Christianity (UK).

Brierley: I think they would also point to some of his polices, like banning Muslims from entering the US
Metaxas: What fascinates me is how everyone takes him literally, and they don’t seem to understand that he has always spoken hyperbolically and impressionistically. That’s what he does. The idea that he is a racist or a xenophobe, I think that’s simply not true, but if you say something enough people believe it.
What about Trump’s rhetoric on Muslims and Mexicans?
If people think that he could bring xenophobic legislation into the United States of America, I just don’t believe that we would stand for it. I think what he is really talking about, which ought to be common sense, is that we’ve got to protect our borders.

The contortions of Trump’s Christian supporters are painful to watch. How else are we supposed to take the policy pronouncements of the GOP candidate for president? If we can’t take him literally, then how can anyone take him at all? Once upon a time words mattered, but in the post-modern evangelical space, a leading evangelical figure is fascinated that his fellows take the words of a presidential candidate seriously.
We are to assume Trump speaks nonsense impressionistically, but we are cautioned with the straightest of faces to take each word from Hillary as a dark prescription for the end of everything good. Furthermore, Metaxas is convinced that the American people will reject Trump’s impressions should they turn out to be literal but will be powerless to withstand Hillary’s evil mind tricks.
Every time I read Mr. Metaxas, I think of the warnings from William Buckley about hyperbolic demagoguery. Buckley knew Trump and warned about him. He also had something more general to say about how America should respond to a demagogue:

In other ages, one paid court to the king. Now we pay court to the people. In the final analysis, just as the king might look down with terminal disdain upon a courtier whose hypocrisy repelled him, so we have no substitute for relying on the voter to exercise a quiet veto when it becomes more necessary to discourage cynical demagogy, than to advance free health for the kids. That can come later, in another venue; the resistance to a corrupting demagogy should take first priority.

Ironically, Buckley’s reference to “free health for the kids” is something Mrs. Clinton championed. In so many words, Metaxas admits that Trump is spoofing us, just talking smack with the details to be named later. What should we do with such a pretender to the throne? According to Buckley, the voter’s first priority should be to reject such “cynical demagogy.” I concur.
For those who believe both Trump and Clinton are corrupted demagogues, there is potential to move the election into the House if only a certain voting bloc would follow Mr. Buckley’s advice.

Eric Metaxas: Hillary Clinton is 1930s Fascism in Rainbow Colors

Eric Metaxas continues to double and triple down on his contention that opposition to Hillary Clinton (and support for Trump) is like Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Nazis. For good measure, he seems to liken Trump opponents to German Christians who failed to oppose Hitler.
Reading the comments, it appears that many of his Twitter followers aren’t buying it.
From Twitter today:


and


and


Bonhoeffer was an exception but many German church leaders agreed with the Nazis about the “Jewish problem.” They also had good things to say about the coming Nazi domination. Any analogy to now can only work if Trump is the fascist element. Trump’s conservative opponents are not rhapsodizing about Hillary the way German Christians did about the Nazis.
I agree with this Twitter user:


In a post back in June, I discussed a book Complicity with the Holocaust. Author Robert Ericksen describes how the church overlooked the warning signs about the Nazis. I wrote then:

Consider this quote from Erickson’s book (via Leithart) from a German Lutheran newspaper in April 1933:

We get no further if we get stuck on little things that might displease us, failing to value the great things God has done for our Volk through them [the Nazis]. Or was it perhaps not God but ‘the old, evil enemy?’ For humans alone have not done this, an entire Volk , or at least its largest part, raising itself up into a storm, breaking the spiritual chains of many years, wanting once again to be a free, honest, clean Volk . There are higher powers at work here. The ‘evil enemy’ does not want a clean Volk , he wants no religion, no church, no Christian schools; he wants to destroy all of that. But the National Socialist movement wants to build all this up, they have written it into their program. Is that not God at work?

Heightening concern is the observation that Trump has called for war crimes, singling out and banning Muslims, deporting 11 million illegal immigrants, stigma against children of immigrants, and limitations on the press. He also told religious leaders that he wanted to make Christianity more powerful and somehow coerce businesses to say Merry Christmas. Even the impulse to take power in this manner should be questioned by the church. Instead, religious leaders are telling us that Trump “gets it.”
By now, shouldn’t we question boldly the political declarations of religious leaders? History shows us multiple illustrations of religion being used and abused for political benefit. To be candid, I fear this in the present day. Religious leaders have had a full year to study Trump and become knowledgeable about him. However, after one meeting, many come out declaring him God’s man for the hour. I just can’t get there and in fact their reassurances worry me all the more.

As I have said before, I don’t think Trump is reincarnating Hitler. I do think he has described a program for the vanguard of an American fascism. It is not Trump alone that frightens me, it is his followers and those who want him to do more than he publicly described. What he has owned is bad enough.

David Barton Used a Secondary Source for His PhD Video (Video with Pop Ups)

On September 7, religious right history writer and Christian nation advocate David Barton posted a video on his You Tube and Facebook accounts claiming to have an “earned doctorate.” The very next day he removed the video, perhaps in light of the revelation that the degree may have come from unaccredited Life Christian University. LCU is on record as giving what it calls “earned doctorates” to famous people who never attended the school.
Since he removed the video, Barton has not commented or explained why he claimed to have an earned doctorate but failed to say from where he earned it.
In case you missed it, here is Barton’s video with some commentary provided by me in pop ups to keep things light (see the original here).

 
In an another amusing twist, it turns out that Barton took his information about honorary doctorates from a secondary source. Even though he cited West Virginia University in the video, the phrasing he used to describe why a school might award an honorary doctorate came directly from reference.com and not West Virginia University as Barton claimed. Barton said:
The website Reference.com cites WVU’s honorary degree web page and reads:
Reference com WVU doc
 
Although reference.com cites WVU, a search of West Virginia University’s honorary doctorate page doesn’t turn up that phrase. Apparently, the phrase Barton’s quoted and attributed to WVU was a paraphrase constructed by reference.com. He used that paraphrase and attributed it to WVU.
In any case, neither of Barton’s honorary degrees come from WVU so their procedures don’t apply. Barton’s honorary degrees come from two schools which are not regionally accredited. Barton is on the board of one of those schools (Ecclesia College).
The bottom line is this. Barton’s tenuous credibility is at stake. He directly and forcefully claimed to have an earned doctorate. However, he hid the diploma and then removed the video evidence. He has not explained why he won’t supply verification after saying for years that he did not a PhD. It is simply not credible to claim to have an earned doctorate and then refuse to disclose the details about it. To claim such a degree without having one is academic fraud and in the real world has significant consequences.