The Freedom From Religion Foundation is applauding Major League Baseball for reportedly standing firm against politically motivated accusations of religious discrimination.
Several San Francisco Giants players were warned recently for writing spiteful bible verse citations on their caps during a Pride Night game. In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, FFRF has commended the league for standing by its neutral uniform policies and resisting efforts by politicians and government officials to portray routine workplace rules as anti-Christian discrimination.
“Religious liberty is a fundamental American value, but it does not entitle individuals to disregard neutral workplace rules or demand preferential treatment,” FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker write. “By maintaining that distinction, MLB has demonstrated that it is possible to respect religious freedom while also preserving an inclusive environment for all.”
The controversy stems from the San Francisco Giants’ annual Pride Night game on June 12. During the event, players wore caps featuring a rainbow-colored Giants logo. Several Giants pitchers reportedly wrote bible verse citations on those caps, including references to Genesis 9:12-16, a passage that discusses God’s covenant after the flood and describes the rainbow as a sign of that covenant.
Major League Baseball subsequently warned the players that adding unauthorized messages to league-issued uniforms violated league rules.
That decision drew criticism from several conservative elected officials and political appointees, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.,Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who have characterized MLB’s actions as religious discrimination. Dhillon has reportedly asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate the matter. FFRF says those claims fundamentally misunderstand both religious liberty and anti-discrimination law.
“The issue is not whether the players are Christian or whether they quoted scripture,” FFRF writes. “The question is whether individual players may alter league-issued uniforms to display personal messages in violation of league policy. The answer is plainly no.”
The state/church watchdog notes that employers routinely distinguish between official organizational messaging and unauthorized personal expression. A player would not be entitled to add political slogans, ideological messages or other personal statements to league-issued apparel — and religiously motivated messages are no different.
“Religious belief does not confer a right to disregard neutral workplace rules,” FFRF explains. “An employee does not gain a special exemption from generally applicable policies merely by invoking religion.”
FFRF also rejects the claim that enforcing a neutral uniform policy constitutes religious discrimination.
“Anti-discrimination laws protect employees from adverse treatment because of their religion,” the letter states. “They do not require employers to grant special privileges to religiously motivated expression or exempt religious employees from workplace rules that apply equally to everyone else.”
The organization expressed particular concern over reports that the Department of Justice has asked the EEOC to investigate MLB.
“The Civil Rights Division exists to combat genuine discrimination, not to transform religious liberty into a weapon against organizations that seek to create welcoming environments for historically marginalized communities,” FFRF writes.
FFRF notes that Pride Night events are intended to ensure that LGBTQ+ fans, players and families feel welcome in a sport that has not always been inclusive.
“Such initiatives are not anti-Christian, anti-religious or discriminatory,” the letter states. “They simply reflect the principle that every person deserves equal dignity, respect and inclusion.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
With less than two weeks to go before the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re in the home stretch of hearing “America was founded as a Christian nation and the Declaration proves it.” The Religious Liberty Commission report is due any day. So, one more time, I’m going to knock that statement down and then I’ll move on;
The Declaration of Independence was a break-up letter with England, not the establishment of a new country or government. It says the separate colonies are now independent, not that they are a new nation, Christian or otherwise.
The Declaration primarily includes 27 grievances with England. None of them mention religion or even the powerful Church of England.
The Declaration mentions “the Creator” and “Nature’s God” which many cite as proof of the Christian nation claim. But that evidence alone is just too flimsy when you read it.
One year later, in 1777, the states agreed to the Articles of Confederation which set up a government without mentioning Christianity, God, the Bible, and which mentions religion only once briefly in a section on trade. No Christian nation evidence there.
Twelve years later the Articles were replaced by the Constitution which again did not in any way set up a Christian government for a Christian country. The word ‘religion’ is only mentioned one time when it says there will be no religious test for any public office. The Constitution does not mention God or Christianity. It’s really the opposite of saying, “This will be a Christian nation.”
The pro-Christian nation side points out correctly that the Constitution does not include the phrase “separation of church and state.” It also doesn’t mention AR-15s and a thousand other questions that have come up. So for 250 years people have been inferring what the Constitution and Bill of Rights mean based on the text and on outside information from the Founders. That’s where Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” statement comes in. We infer that 18-year-olds can own AR-15s. We infer that there should be a wall of separation between church and state. (Boosted by the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.
Finally, how important is this whole argument 250 years later? Yes the nation was founded by Christians who were almost entirely Protestants. There were hardly any Catholics then and even fewer Jews and members of other religions. Today we know that 63 percent of the current population is Christian, six percent other religions, and 28 percent people with no religion. The real question isn’t how we were founded, it’s how religious freedom should be applied to today’s population.
Should tax dollars go to support schools that are mostly Christian? Should churches that get a tax exemption be allowed to support political candidates? Should the Ten Commandments be required to be posted in every public school classroom? Can Christian organizations that receive a federal grant proselytize while helping people in need with that grant money? These are the real-life questions that determine whether America is a nation that respects the rights of people from all religions and no religion at all, or whether it gives preference to Christians based on who is in power now.
We know where Jefferson stood on these issues. Madison said religion and government exist in “greater purity, the less they are mixed together”. John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which explicitly declared that the United States is “not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” I think the Founders would be appalled at where we are on these issues now and they would be on social media explaining that this is far from what they envisioned 250 years ago.
At a June 18 event in Michigan, Kennedy announced a $96 million funding opportunity through the Trump administration’s Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Support (STREETS) program, along with an additional $612 million in behavioral health funding opportunities. Kennedy emphasized that one of the initiative’s goals is to restore federal funding opportunities for faith-based groups.
“One of the features of our STREETS is opening up funding once again for faith-based organizations,” Kennedy said. “The Biden administration actively discouraged funding to faith-based organizations for recovery. We think they’re critical.”
Kennedy also dismissed evidence-based harm reduction strategies, claiming that “harm reduction doesn’t work” and attributing the nation’s addiction crisis to policies such as needle exchange programs and safe consumption sites. However, decades of research have demonstrated that syringe service programs reduce the spread of infectious diseases and connect individuals with treatment services without increasing crime.
Kennedy’s repeated reliance on spiritual and religious narratives to justify federal addiction policy is particularly troubling. During his remarks, Kennedy cited Alcoholics Anonymous and recounted a story involving psychiatrist Carl Jung’s belief that recovery from alcoholism required a “profound spiritual realignment.”
“The federal government should not be steering addiction treatment toward religious approaches,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Substance use disorders are medical conditions that require evidence-based interventions, not government-sponsored spirituality.”
This announcement follows a broader effort by the Trump administration to increase the role of religious organizations in federally funded health programs. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally encouraged faith-based organizations to apply for federal addiction and behavioral health grants, citing President Trump’s executive order last year directing agencies to facilitate the participation of religious entities in government programs.
FFRF has previously warned that these initiatives risk undermining constitutional safeguards and public health objectives.
“Taxpayer-funded public health programs must be secular, science-based and free from religious coercion,” Gaylor says. “Addiction recovery is a medical and public health issue, not a vehicle for government-sponsored evangelism.”
FFRF notes that while religious organizations may compete for public grants on equal terms, the Constitution prohibits the government from favoring religious providers or funding religious activities. Federal dollars may not be used to support worship, religious instruction or proselytizing.
The concerns are heightened because the Trump administration has already rescinded prior protections that required faith-based providers receiving federal funds to inform clients of secular alternatives. The administration has also affirmed that religious organizations may use religious criteria in hiring, even while operating taxpayer-funded programs.
The new initiative will award eight communities up to $3 million annually for four years to develop treatment systems for individuals experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders, serious mental illness and co-occurring conditions. FFRF stresses that any federally funded services must remain accessible to all beneficiaries regardless of religion and must adhere to established constitutional limits.
“Federal health dollars should expand access to proven, inclusive treatment,” Gaylor adds. “They must not be diverted into programs that impose religious doctrine, exclude qualified staff based on faith, or substitute ideology for science.”
FFRF will continue to monitor HHS implementation of these funding programs and urges Congress and federal agencies to ensure that behavioral health funding remains evidence-based, nondiscriminatory and firmly grounded in the separation of state and church.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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Two months ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sued one of its most prominent critics, podcast host John Dehlin, on grounds of trademark and copyright infringement… as if listeners to his show might be confused between the podcast and the Mormon Church itself.
Dehlin is now fighting back in court.
John Dehlin in a thumbnail from his podcast
A quick recap: Dehlin began the Mormon Stories Podcast in 2005 when he was questioning whether or not to leave the LDS Church. It soon became a haven for other critics and former Mormons—and a landing space for listeners who harbored the same doubts but knew the Mormon Church wasn’t a safe place to get their questions answered in a meaningful way.
In 2015, Dehlin was officially kicked out of the Church for the “crime” of apostasy—he was accused of leading people away from the Church—though Dehlin argued the real reason was because he openly and proudly supported same-sex marriage and the ordination of female priests.
The podcast has become popular enough that it spurred the creation of a non-profit group—the Open Stories Foundation—in 2010 to oversee the show and go beyond it. In 2024, the group generated over $1.12 million in revenue.
That’s nothing, of course, compared to the tens of billions of dollars hoarded by the LDS Church. You would think, given all the very legitimate criticism of Mormons from all over the place, the smart move would be to simply ignore what one podcaster is doing, even if he’s popular, in order to avoid the Streisand effect.
But the Mormon Church took the opposite approach. In April, after months of conversations between the two sides, the Mormon Church sued Dehlin, arguing he had no right to use the word “Mormon” or any of their materials.
As Defendants are well aware, the public associates the term MORMON with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has used the mark MORMON and other names and marks incorporating the term MORMON since its founding nearly 200 years ago. Defendants’ use of Church trademarks and copyrighted materials has caused and will continue to cause individuals to be confused and access Defendants’ content mistakenly believing it comes from or is affiliated with or endorsed by the Church. This is not by accident. Defendants adopted a blue MORMON STORIES logo with a light-rays design prominently used by the Church, showing Defendants’ intent to capitalize on and increase confusion. Defendants’ logo was calculated to imitate the Church’s logos by using confusingly similar color, font, and other design elements, as shown below.
As I said at the time, in absolutely no world was anyone listening to Dehlin’s podcast and confusing it with Official Church Propaganda. Perhaps there was a case where someone searching for information about Mormonism stumbled across the podcast, but even if that happened, that person would quickly realize it’s not advertising for the LDS Church. After all, why would the banner for the show include Dehlin’s picture—an apostate!—instead of Mormon leaders?
Nevertheless, the Mormon Church insisted there was confusion. To make that argument, the lawsuit included examples, cherry-picked from the podcast’s social media pages, of people who came across it because they believed it was pro-Mormon… only to realize that wasn’t the case. Here’s just a sampling:
There were more comments where those came from, but to me, they all seemed to prove the opposite point. People found Mormon Stories because they had questions about Mormonism… and then realized it wasn’t promoting the LDS Church.
At no point in any of the comments included in the lawsuit did those people say they genuinely confused Dehlin’s words (or his guest’s words) for Church policy. The fact that some of those commenters said they stopped listening immediately after their realization were points in Dehlin’s favor!
(Also, for a podcast this popular, it was deeply unfair for the Church to go searching for comments suggesting confusion was afoot because you’re bound to find anything you want. That’s the nature of popular comment threads. Anyone who spends any time on social knows you can’t always blame the owner of an account for what people say under that account, especially when the owner isn’t baiting it.)
To avoid confusion, the LDS Church demanded that Dehlin include a disclaimer everywhere saying that his podcast wasn’t an official product of the religious sect. But that, too, was beyond parody. No one should have to open their show by explaining which groups they’re not affiliated with.
Making matters worse for the Church, there are pro-Mormon podcasts that use the “M” word in their titles, too, yet there was no indication the LDS Church ever went after any of them for trademark violations even though those podcasts were not official products of the Church either.
This past February, the two sides met in person to discuss their positions.
Dehlin agreed to remove any copyrighted images from his website and social media pages. (The LDS Church says he broke that agreement by later using an image of a temple to advertise an episode.) He changed the logo’s color from Mormon blue to non-Mormon orange. He even added the disclaimer to podcast descriptions on every platform.
What Dehlin refused to do was issue a disclaimer at the beginning of every show “acknowledging that Mormon Stories is not affiliated with the Church.”
That’s why the Church decided to go to court. I felt their case was weak.
Just consider the copyright issues. The lawsuit included examples of official photos released by the Church that were later used in the thumbnails for Dehlin’s podcast videos:
Those seemed like perfectly normal cases of “fair use.”
The Church was also mad that Dehlin used the word “Mormon” at all… which was wildly ironic given that the LDS Church itself urged people to stop using the word because they didn’t want to be known that way to the point that even the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir had been renamed the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.) And yet here they were telling the court that it was their word and not anyone else’s… and they had the paperwork from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to back it up.
This is all, they said, deeply damaging to the billion-dollar religious organization:
Unless these acts of Mormon Stories are restrained by this Court, they will continue, and they will continue to cause irreparable injury to Plaintiffs and to the public, for which there is no adequate remedy at law.
May we all strive to have that kind of influence. The Mormon Church was seriously arguing that Dehlin’s perfectly defensible use of their language and imagery might topple the entire damn religion. As if one man could destroy all of Salt Lake City through the power of… a podcast.
The lawsuit asked the court to stop Dehlin from using any logos or imagery that was “confusingly similar” to the LDS Church’s, and they wanted a jury trial.
Dehlin issued some informal responses to all this at the time, saying that he’s “been using the Mormon Stories name for my podcast for more than 20 years without any objection from the Church” and that he made plenty of changes at the request of LDS Church lawyers. But he added that it was “unreasonable” to demand anything beyond that:
… We didn’t feel any disclaimer was required, but in the spirit of cooperation we adopted one in our podcast description. The Church wanted us to make the disclaimer more prominent so it was essentially the primary thing anyone sees in our branding which we believe is unreasonable. We don’t want our primary message to be about what we are NOT. We have operated for a long time promoting who and what we are…
He said he was surprised by the lawsuit “given how cooperative we have been.” (There is a fund for supporters who want to contribute to the podcast’s legal defense.)
The LDS Church insisted it wasn’t going after Dehlin for what he says, only for the way he’s marketing his show, but there’s just no jury on Earth who would buy that excuse. They argued:
People are free to express support for or criticism of the Church and its teachings. This case does not concern the content of the podcast.
Uh-huh. Sure it doesn’t….
There’s a far stronger case that the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” might confuse outsiders who don’t know any better, but the Church didn’t fight that battle in court. If anything, they used it to their advantage. Did the Church sue Hulu over “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”? Not a chance. Even though that suggested a window into, well, the secret lives of Mormon wives.
In my mind, it was truly amazing this is how the LDS Church was wasting its time and money. Pope Leo is fighting fascism while the Mormon Church is fighting a podcaster.
And now, Dehlin’s team has filed its official response in court, calling on the judge to dismiss the entire case. While many of the arguments are ones I’ve written about above, it’s worth noting how Dehlin defends himself.
When it comes to the use of the word “Mormon” and whether it constitutes trademark infringement, the LDS Church has to show there’s no artistic/editorial relevance and that Dehlin is trying to mislead people.
It’s not hard to rebut any of that:
… the word “Mormon” has a strong cultural significance far beyond any alleged source-identifying function claimed by the Church; it is used as a ubiquitous and descriptive reference to Mormonism writ large, including the history, traditions, culture, and people within Mormonism beyond just the Church itself… Indeed, the Church itself has publicly declared that “Mormon” is only a “nickname” for members of the Church and is “correctly used in proper names” or “when used as an adjective.”
…
Defendants’ MORMON STORIES podcast series uses the term “Mormon” in the title to signal the subject matter of the series—stories about Mormonism, Mormon culture, Mormon history, and Mormon experiences. There is nothing in the title of the podcast that is overtly misleading or deceptive—indeed, it accurately and creatively describes the content that the listener can anticipate engaging with.
Dehlin also points out the LDS Church waited 20 years before filing this lawsuit—suggesting they waited until the podcast became incredibly popular to try to silence it rather than go after it the moment they found out about its name. It’s not like they only learned about the podcast this year! In fact, he says, it’s “impossible for the Church to claim it was not aware of Defendants’ use of MORMON STORIES for more than a decade before filing the present action.”
In a separate filing, responding to the LDS Church’s lawsuit line by line, Dehlin goes into more depth about the podcast and his own history with the Mormon Church. My favorite bit there may be the inclusion of a chart from December of 2015 in which the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles—a second-tier group of leaders—held a meeting to discuss why people were leaving the LDS Church… and included Dehlin as a reason for that.
Dehlin says that chart alone is “effectively an admission that his MORMON STORIES podcast did not create confusion about the podcast being affiliated with or sponsored by the Church.”
Not only that, but in 2010, the LDS Church trademarked its own “Book of Mormon Stories” podcast and told the United States Patent & Trademark Office that no other podcasts with similar names “would create a likelihood of confusion with the Church’s podcast name.”
Elsewhere in the response, he argues the LDS Church has no ownership of the blue color or a generic “light rays” design.
Dehlin adds in a press release that he made changes to appease the LDS Church, but they made no compromises for him, and the lawsuit came as a shock:
According to today’s filing, Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories Foundation have included disclaimers indicating its clear independence from The LDS Church since its founding. Mormon Stories’ use of the color blue and “rays” in its branding began well over a decade ago, and did not begin around 2022 as suggested by the Church’s claims. But, to avoid expensive litigation, Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation engaged in months of mediation after first being contacted by The Church in late 2025, and agreed to numerous changes requested by Church representatives, including modifications to branding, disclaimers, logos, and imagery.
“We made substantial changes in good faith because we believed reasonable compromise could resolve this matter,” Dehlin said. “We were surprised to learn that despite accepting most of The Church’s requested changes, litigation would proceed. It feels like we were the only ones making compromises, and The Church took an all-or-nothing, one-sided approach to mediation, which included unreasonable demands. It is also very disappointing that The Church chose to publicly mischaracterize what happened in mediation.”
While the court will eventually have to weigh in, none of this is a good look for the Mormon Church. They’re not really trying to protect their “brand” at all. They’re just trying to put obstacles in the path of someone who has helped countless people leave the Church. Rather than addressing the criticisms people on Dehlin’s show make, they’d rather turn off the microphone by forcing Dehlin to fight an expensive legal battle.
Dehlin is fighting back by making several points:
The Church’s own documents—noting they’ve known about him for a long time—undermine their argument that their only concern is trademark violations.
The 20-year delay suggests there was never really any confusion about what Dehlin was up to.
The idea that the Church needs to protect the word “Mormon” is ridiculous given that Church leaders have openly distanced themselves from the word.
The word “Mormon” is a generic word that’s bigger than just the religious institution. You can’t copyright it any more than a church can copyright “Christian.”
He has a First Amendment right to criticize the Church.
Overall, though, this is how you know his show makes a positive difference in people’s lives. It shows them their lives can be fulfilling and wonderful and guilt-free outside the bubble of Mormonism.
If this is how the LDS Church treats a former insider who asks questions and builds community, imagine what it signals to current members who are quietly doubting. If you become too effective at articulating those doubts, the institution won’t just argue with you; it’ll try to silence you.
By picking this fight, the Mormon Church is only confirming the criticisms they’re so desperate to suppress.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
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The latest lie coming from Christian pseudo-historian David Barton and his equally ignorant son Tim Barton is one that’s easy to fact-check, yet a very gullible religious audience ate it up without question.
A quick refresher: Barton has made a career out of twisting and distorting the words of the Founding Fathers and the Bible in defense of Christian Nationalism, homophobia, and bigotry. He’s such an egregious Christian liar that he claimed to have an earned Ph.D. that was later revealed to be a hoax. And he once wrote a book about Thomas Jefferson that was so full of misinformation that his Christian publisherspulled the book from the shelves, saying, “There were historical details—matters of fact, not matters of opinion, that were not supported at all.” (The book was ironically titled The Jefferson Lies.)
And yet conservative Christians and Republican politicians still cite him as an authoritative source of information to the point that Barton is literally a consultant for the Texas Board of Education. Conservatives all know the sort of people who take them seriously aren’t really interested in honesty. They just want someone to say, with total confidence, whatever they all wish was true. Barton has capitalized on that by tying together his religious fantasies and his ignorance of U.S. history.
That’s what he and his son were doing this past April at World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Tim Barton opening a book he never read (screenshot via YouTube)
Midway through their interview with the church’s pastor, Tim Barton claimed that Americans owed a debt of gratitude to preacher John Wise, who allegedly inspired the Declaration of Independence. To make his point, Tim held up a book containing two of Wise’s sermons and explained the connection to the Founders:
This is a book with two sermons from John Wise. These sermons were actually preached back in the early 1700s, but this was reprinted in 1772…
… In one of these two sermons, John Wise, and I quote, says, “All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” [Lengthy pause]
That’s in the Declaration!
This is also where they got the idea he taught that God’s preferred form of government was the consent of the governed. He taught—and this is in these sermons, these two sermons—he taught that taxation without representation is tyranny.
Those are all things that show up in the Declaration.
This was reprinted by the Founding Fathers…
There’s just one problem with that link: The material Tim Barton was quoting never appears in those sermons. He flat-out lied about that.
You can read the “sermons” here. The part he literally quoted? It’s not in there. There are references to basic concepts of democracy but it’s not like those were original thoughts either. They were ideas that had been floating around at the time.
Warren Throckmorton, who brought this to my attention and who’s written extensively about the Bartons and their lies, pointed out that it’s far more likely both Wise and Jefferson were influenced by someone else: Enlightenment writer Samuel Pufendorf.
The more general claim that ministers and sermons directly contributed to what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence is not supported by an appeal to John Wise. Whereas Wise’s books may have encouraged some readers to integrate Enlightenment views of natural rights with Christian theology, there is no evidence that Jefferson owned or read Wise’s books. It seems more plausible that Jefferson was influenced by Pufendorf independent of Wise. Furthermore, Jefferson’s own testimony points to other influences.
There’s a simple way to counter this, of course. The Bartons could just show us where in Wise’s sermons he ever said—and I quote—”All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” They won’t do that because they have a longstanding habit of never opening the books they cite.
Why would they lie about this? Because they know their audience won’t challenge them. They know the pastor isn’t going to follow up and ask, “Wait, what page is that quote on?” They also have a larger purpose in mind. Throckmorton writes:
Christian nationalists want their audiences to believe the US is a nation inspired and created by Christian influences alone. They seem to feel this gives them an advantage in political battles now. If the nation was inspired by Christian principles at the founding, the reasoning goes, then surely it ought to be ruled by Christian principles (as they define them) now.
He’s absolutely right about that. It’s obvious why Tim Barton was saying this: He wanted to make the point that the Founding Fathers took their best ideas from Christianity, furthering the idea that we live in a “Christian nation.”
That’s why these aren’t honest mistakes. It’s not like two researchers overlooked a footnote or misremembered a quotation. The younger Barton held up this book in front of a church audience and attributed to it a specific sentence that does not exist. It’s the same move pastors make whenever they insist God’s commands are perfectly in line with Republican cruelty. They know damn well that the members of their congregation are never going to dig into their lies.
But it’s not like this is the first time the Bartons have done this. That’s why no actual historians take them seriously. They’re con artists. Their goal isn’t to understand the Founding Fathers; it’s to rewrite history in a way that elevates conservative Christian goals. Every lie they tell serves the same purpose: convincing Republicans that their political agenda is the natural continuation of America’s original mission. They have their conclusion figured out before they ever dig into the evidence.
The Bartons know what every professional liar has already figured out: Confident lies are way more persuasive than verifiable truths. It’s what they’ve built their careers on.
And the problem with that is that these lies are used to justify real policy changes. If you can convince Christians that America was founded exclusively on Christian principles, you can argue that Christianity deserves special authority today. Hell, you can argue that children need to be taught Christianity in school for historical reasons, not religious ones. That’s what this is all about. If you can rewrite the past convincingly enough, you can reshape the future. And far too many white evangelicals love being lied to.
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