As we have pointed out before, the key to David Barton's success is the fact that his audiences blindly accept everything he says without question, never bothering to actually verify any claim that he makes. It has gotten so bad that Barton is now basically free to say things that, with even a moment's thought, any person ought to be able to realize cannot possibly be true.
But still, nobody ever challenges him and so we end up witnessing exchanges like this one from "WallBuilders Live" today where he boldly declares that more Christians were murdered for their faith last year alone than in the last two thousand years combined!
"There were more Christians martyred for Jesus Christ last year," Barton told his co-host Rick Green, "than in the previous two thousand years combined. Just last year."
"It's hard to imagine," responded Green:
A study by Open Doors released earlier this year reported that there were 2,123 such "martyr" killings of Christians globally in 2013:
Reported cases of Christians killed for their faith around the world doubled in 2013 from the year before, with Syria accounting for more than the whole global total in 2012, according to an annual survey.
Open Doors, a non-denominational group supporting persecuted Christians worldwide, said on Wednesday it had documented 2,123 "martyr" killings, compared with 1,201 in 2012. There were 1,213 such deaths in Syria alone last year, it said.
So if there were more killings last year than in the previous two thousand years combined, that means that either, up until 2013, there had basically been only one Christian killed per year or, more likely, Barton is just terrible at math.
