WallBuilders, the organization founded by influential pseudo-historian David Barton and run by his son Tim, is suggesting that its Founders’ Bible would make a great Mother’s Day gift.
The Founders’ Bible is a New American Standard translation supplemented with a bunch of essays by Barton and others. Wrapping often-debunked Christian nationalist history within the pages of the Bible is an audacious way to try to give Barton’s claims the sheen of divinely inspired truth. When the Founders’ Bible was published in 2012, Right Wing Watch reported that it was “full of the sorts of absurd claims we have come to expect from Barton.”
And it’s not just about history. Ten years ago, when an Iowa religious-right group sent copies to every member of the state legislature, I noted that Barton’s essays “go beyond his claims about the biblical origins of the U.S. Constitution; The Founders’ Bible, a New American Standard Bible translation, is also filled with Barton’s arguments that right-wing economic policies are divinely mandated.”
For example, Barton interprets Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, generally understood to be about the gift of God’s grace, as a literal handbook for employer-employee relations. Government, according to Barton’s Bible, “certainly has no right to tell an employer what to play an employee, including with a so-called minimum wage.”
This is, as I wrote in The Public Eye magazine, “a Bible the Koch brothers can love.”
But wait, there’s more! The WaillBuilders email sent Friday offered $25 off the $139.99 “heirloom edition” if you order before midnight Saturday. Here’s part of their pitch:
Its Family Tree of Life section invites you to record your family’s history, reviving a tradition where women like Jane Lampton, mother of Mark Twain, chronicled their lineage in family Bibles. From Revolutionary War widows to Southern families documenting enslaved kin, these matriarchs safeguarded history. This Bible connects you to that legacy of faith and heritage and can be a family treasure for generations!
Barton’s questionable track record—his publisher pulled his book about Thomas Jefferson off the shelves after historians pointed out its errors—has not stopped Barton from playing a major role in spreading Christian nationalist ideology throughout the religious right, Republican Party, and MAGA movement.
Barton bragged on social media in March about having been part of a delegation of religious-right leaders who met with President Trump at the White House. Earlier this month, WallBuilders told supporters that “David and Tim were invited to the White House as part of a team planning special faith focused events for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.” The Bartons’ involvement in a MAGAfied celebration of that anniversary next year suggests that actual historians will have their hands full dealing with propaganda from the White House and its allies.