Missourians who believe in live and let live when it comes to religion ought to know that Todd Akin, the GOP candidate for the Senate, is, theologically speaking,  best buds with one David Barton. Barton is the founder of Wallbuilders, an organization that, as Wikipedia puts it, “advocates the view that U.S. constitutional separation of church and state is a myth.”  Here’s a video of Akin and Barton discussing the obligation of religious leaders to speak out from the pulpit and lead their flocks on political matters:

This type of effort to shape political policy through the medium of fundamentalist Christian religion is typical of a strain of evangelical fundamentalism called “dominionism,” or Christian reconstructionism, which advocates for the establishment of a Christian theocratic government in the United States that would give religious institutions control over political, social and cultural life. (Sound like any other countries we know about? Perhaps Iran under the Imams or Afghanistan under the Taliban?) According to journalist Frederick Clarkson, under the dominionist/reconstructionist regime:

… society would feature a minimal national government, whose main function would be defense by the armed forces. No social services would be provided outside the church, which would be responsible for ‘health, education, and welfare.’ A radically unfettered capitalism (except in so far as it clashed with Biblical Law) would prevail. Society would return to the gold or silver standard or abolish paper money altogether. The public schools would be abolished. Government functions, including taxes, would be primarily at the county level.

Women would be relegated primarily to the home and home schools, and would be banned from government. Those qualified to vote or hold office would be limited to males from Biblically correct churches.

Take a look at the statements of a certain Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri and tell me Todd Akin (oops!) isn’t toeing the reconstructionist line right down the road – at least to the extent that he can and still manage to get elected.

Barton’s  styles himself an historian although he lacks the requisite academic credentials – he has a Bachelor’s degree in Christian Education. His contribution to the  reconstructionist movement has been to lend it legitimacy by purporting to show that the Founders intended the United States to be a “Christian Nation” in the reconstructionist sense. His scholarship has been repeatedly debunked in academic venues which, of course, has had little effect on the true believers – such as Todd Akin – who continue to rely on his scholarly veneer to justify their authoritarian goals, as well the more run-of-the-mill, right-wing politicians who find his willingness to give a biblical luster to their corporatist goals exceedingly covenient.

Yesterday, however, NPR’s All Things Considered aired a segment on Barton (worth listening to or reading in its entirety) that might help to shine a light on the pernicious nature of his undertaking and, at the same time, help to expose the squishy intellectual underpinnings of theocrats like Todd Akin. The program “fact-checked” Barton’s most quoted claims and found that they were almost all entirely unfounded. Further, they pointed out that his recent book, The Jefferson Lies, which was on the New York Times Best-Seller list, was withdrawn by its publisher because of the number of factual errors it contained.

All well  and good, shining a light on charlatans is always helpful, but considerations of truth and real scholarship aside, it’s unlikely that Barton will see his influence diminished any time soon – he’s too useful to the right-wing. And that’s a bad thing since  as John Fea, chairman of the History Department at evangelical Messiah College, and a fellow evangelical, pointed out during the NPR piece, Barton is a “danger because he’s using a skewed version of the past to shape the future.” Fea declared that Barton is:

… in this for activism, […].  He’s in this for policy. He’s in this to make changes to our culture.

And one of the tools reconstructionist activists like Barton will use to change our culture are simple souls like Rep. Akin – if they can keep him in Washington, that is.

Don’t get me wrong – politicians have a right to their religious beliefs, but not at the expense of our religious freedom – real religious freedom, not that self-indulgent, authoritarian crap coming from the Catholic Bishops and the “war on Christmas” fanatics these days, but the type of freedom that does not subject our children to Christian triumphalism in their schools, or the pretense that religious freedom amounts to trampling the rights of liberal Christians and non-Christians. David Barton’s lies aside, real historians agree that the Founders wanted us to have just that type of freedom.  

Thanks to St. Louis Activitist Hub, I got my first real introduction to the strange mixture of hysteria and ignorance that is Dr. Gina Loudon, local Tea Party luminary. Adam at the Hub was having a little fun with her over the top spiel about the Burlington Coat Factory Muslim community center (known on Fox News as the Ground-Zero mosque), which she compared to a Nazi war memorial in the center of London. Enough said. What struck me, though, was Loudon’s evocation of a tenet of “Sharia law”* to justify her bigotry.

Sharia law seems to have become one of the concepts that gets wingers salivating right now. Oklahomans will vote this November, for instance, on whether or not to ban Sharia law – in spite of the fact that there is not even the slightest indication that anyone would ever try to impose Sharia in Oklahoma.

Closer to home, winger William Teach wonders why those who have a problem with the religous overtones of Missouri’s most recent anti-abortion legislation aren’t fighting Sharia law instead. The fact that right-wing Christians rather than Muslims have a stranglehold on the Missouri legislature doesn’t seem to strike him as germane to the topic.  

Nevertheless, Teach’s emphasis on religious law is suggestive. If you go to Loudon’s Webpage, you will find, immediately following the mosque harangue, a post titled “A Call to Christians,” the burden of which is the need to get Christians energized to take back the country.

Now, I’m not too keen on Sharia law, but neither am I keen on Christian theocracy. While I have no evidence that Muslims in the U.S. want to impose Sharia, there’s lots of evidence that many in the Christian-leaning right-wing here in Missouri would just love, as Loudon suggests, to take back the country and stick me with their version of biblical law.

Consider Cynthia Davis, dogged purveyor of Christian Nation legislation.  Davis takes her cues from people like David Barton, revisionist pseudo-historian and founder of the Wallbuilders, a group dedicated to establishing a Christian nation – or as Barton would prefer, returning the nation to its Christian roots.

*Photo of Cynthia Davis and David Barton

And who could forget Todd Akin – who carried the Barton banner into battle to retain “under God” in the pledge of allegiance? If you doubt his Christian Nation credentials, just listen to his discussion of the topic at last year’s prayercast against Health Care Reform (beginning at 49:45):

http://www.frcaction.org/player.swf

To summarize the highlights, Akin is unequivocal that the Bible provides:

“… a blueprint for all of mankind … a blueprint to tell us abut the economy, to tell us about education, to tell us about government … an entire blueprint for how civilization can be structured.”

Akin, is of course, limited in his role in the U.S. House – he seems to spend lots of time on mostly symbolic gestures. Davis and her ilk, however, are apparently able to lead the Missouri legislature around by a ring in the nose – even our Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, doesn’t dare veto her Christian-inspired abortion legislation. So while, I don’t see Sharia law hiding over the horizon, the proponents of a particular, narrow brand of Christian law seem to stand a much better chance of success.

* Loudon is quoted on the St. Louis Activist Hub as saying: “They are using the Sharia law concept of lying in the best interest of Allah … .” Her Webpage now reads: “They are using the concept of taqiyya (lying) in the best interest of Islam … .” Unfortunately, that is not exactly what taqiyya means. It is a Sharia tenet that allows Muslims to conceal their faith when under threat and its use is carefully circumscribed.