George Pearsons is a right-wing pastor who, in addition to being the son-in-law of televangelist Kenneth Copeland, serves as senior pastor at Copeland's church, where he routinely uses his pulpit to spread Christian nationalist disinformation.
Pearsons, who has insisted for years that God is "not happy" about the 2020 election supposedly being stolen from Donald Trump, used his Sunday sermon to discuss the upcoming presidential election, insisting that the Founding Fathers used the Bible "as the foundation for all U.S. elected officials."
"I remember the day that I heard that from David Barton," Pearsons said. "I remember that day so clearly. It came to me as revelation that the Founding Fathers used Exodus 18:21 as the foundation for all U.S. elected officials. What does it say? It says, 'You shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth and hating covetousness'; hating greed, hating anything that would even reek of selfishness and wrong motivation for what they do, the job that they do."
Reading from another translation, Pearsons emphasized that "you shall choose" able men as leaders, quickly paraphrasing it to mean that Christians must elected "men and women who are competent, who fear God, who have integrity, and who are incorruptible."
"Integrity comes from God," he insisted. "Whether or not they're believers, integrity comes from God. So, we continue to stand in faith. We pray, we vote in this upcoming election to get our nation on a godly path."
Of course, Pearsons learned this bit of mythology from Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, who has been peddling this claim for years. In fact, Right Wing Watch first debunked it over a dozen years ago, noting that the instructions contained in Exodus 18 were given to Moses by his father-in-law Jethro and were designed to help him deal with the various disputes arising during the Israelites' years in the wilderness.
It is important to point out that it was Moses alone who selected these men to serve as judges over the Israelites, not the people via any sort of election.
Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence that the Founding Fathers cited or referenced this particular biblical passage in any way during the drafting, framing, or ratification of the Constitution.
Finally, even if we were to grant the idea that this passage is an instruction for Christians on how to vote, it is hard square the command that they are to choose "men of truth" with the religious-right's near unanimous support for a pathological liar like Trump.
