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The Founding Evangelicals?
David Barton wants to put God back into American history. But whose God—history's or his?

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson may have been dyed-in-the-wool deists, but did you know that “compared to today’s secularists these two guys look like a couple of Bible-thumping evangelicals”?

So says David Barton, a leading conservative Christian advocate for putting God—that is, the God of conservative Christianity—in public school history classes....

...As part of his mission to “educate the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country,” Barton personally leads “spiritual heritage” tours of the United States Capitol Building, and David Kirkpatrick took one. Kirkpatrick writes that Barton stood barefoot on a bench in the rotunda and told the group that Thomas Jefferson signed letters “in the year of Our Lord Christ.” “What would happen if George Bush did that?” Barton asked. “They’d rip his head off!” (And you thought liberal secular humanists were wusses!)

Frankly, I wish George Bush would embrace religion more the way Thomas Jefferson did. Wouldn’t it be great for this God-fearin’ nation if Bush, like Jefferson, sat in the White House study one night with a Bible and a razor and cut out all the stuff in the Gospels that don’t make sense, including the virgin birth, the miracle stories, and all claims to Jesus' divinity and the resurrection. Then, like Jefferson, he could publish the result. Maybe call it “The Freedom Bible,” for helping to liberate us from "the most perverted system that ever shone on man," as Jefferson called Christianity.

Of course, if Bush did such a blasphemous thing, then evangelicals would rip his head off....