Fort Worth Star-Telegram - A man with a message; Self-taught historian's work on church-state issues rouses GOP

By Chris Vaughn
Copyright 2005 Fort Worth Star-Telegram

ALEDO - For 90 days and nights, as the 2004 presidential race intensified, David Barton crisscrossed the nation like a 21st-century apostle.

He moved from fellowship hall to hotel ballroom, from one swing state to another -- Florida, Ohio, Michigan -- rallying the faithful to the polls.

His talking points were few -- gay marriage, the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer in schools. But they resonated among the devout in ways that job creation and the troubles in Iraq never did.

On Election Day, the Republicans solidified their hold on Washington thanks in part to Christian conservatives, who overwhelmingly backed President Bush. And Barton, a 51-year-old former math teacher turned amateur historian, is one of the reasons.

In many ways, he was the perfect man for the job.

Handsome and articulate, he knows politics from the inside. He is second-in-command of the Texas Republican Party. He vacations with influential members of Congress. He's a friend of the president.

And his powerful message, delivered with an "aw shucks" touch, plays well in many of the nation's churches, whether Baptist, Catholic or Pentecostal: It's time to bring God back to government and America back to God.

"He could take a crowd that wasn't particularly political, that didn't understand how they could make a difference, that didn't understand how the issues that mattered to them played a part in politics, and motivate them to go out and work in their communities," said Blaise Hazelwood, who served as the Republican National Committee's political director during the campaign. "He's incredibly talented at doing that."

Through his Aledo-based organization, WallBuilders, Barton is working toward an America where students invoke the name of Jesus in morning prayers, where the Ten Commandments occupy a place on state Capitol grounds, where so-called activist judges are impeached for their decisions.

To do it, he has wrested the Founding Fathers from the exclusive domain of church-state separationists and turned them into champions of a Christian nation.

"If 80 to 88 percent of the country self-identifies as Christian, is saying 'We're a Christian nation' an inaccurate statement?" he said. "The Founders said we are a Christian nation. Those are their words. It doesn't mean that they or I support a theocracy."

In his second decade as a self-taught historian and political activist, Barton has become an industry unto himself. More than six months after the election, his influence remains far-reaching.

He is a principal authority for Christian conservatives in the debate over the federal judiciary, which is expected to come to a showdown this week when Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., calls for a vote on the president's controversial nominees.

He appears on Nightline to support embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, maps political strategy with top Republicans and helps develop history standards for textbooks in Texas and California.

Time magazine has named him one of the nation's 25 most influential evangelicals, a stunning accomplishment for a "ranch kid from Aledo."

"Why in the heck would I know the president of the United States?" Barton asked. "Why should I know the majority leader of the House and Senate? Why do I know governors all over the nation? It makes me scratch my head. I'm awed at everything that goes on around me."

He isn't the only one awed by his rise to power. Many historians and legal scholars consider him an ideologue, driven by a faith that clouds an honest assessment of American history. Leaders of other faiths shudder at his description of a Christian nation.

"He's risen pretty high for someone who doesn't have any legitimate credentials," said Robert Boston, who has followed Barton since 1991 for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

"Without giving the proper context, he builds this case of the myth of a Christian nation," Boston said. "An honest look at history does not support that view. But among the religious right there is a strong will to believe that we were once an officially Christian nation that has drifted from its roots. Barton's phony history plays into that. It has great emotional resonance."

To a great extent, though, the criticisms of Barton and his message don't matter to the social conservatives and evangelical Christians who have become a powerful voting bloc for Republicans.

Texas offers clear proof of what Barton has helped engineer over the past 15 years. Republicans dominate the state's congressional delegation and the Legislature at levels not seen since the early 1870s.

"I can't tell you how immense the impact of David has been," said Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the state Republican Party and a Houston lawyer. "He has touched people at every level in the state of Texas and has truly been a significant factor in that rise."

Country boy goes global

He has spent most of his life in Aledo, once a little country town where he helped lead the youth group at his father's church, played basketball and gave little thought to rebellion.

He has been married 27 years and has driven a Kelly green Datsun pickup longer than that. He and his wife, Cheryl, raised three children, all now in their 20s.

The couple live in a plain brick house that Barton built on 3.5 acres outside of Aledo. When he can, he escapes to a family ranch in Jack County or to a larger one near Georgetown, where he can ride his beloved horses.

He is a cowboy at heart, never far from the boy who showed steers and lambs in the Aledo chapter of the Future Farmers of America.

"After the '04 elections, David wanted me to come to the ranch and go shooting and ride horses," Benkiser said. "It's cold, and he says, 'Let's go hiking.' He's got a six-shooter strapped on and he's telling me, 'Be careful about where you step. There's snakes out here.'

"He just kept saying, 'Isn't this fun?' "

Barton rode a horse to his office at WallBuilders until a few years ago, when the streets of Aledo grew too unwelcoming for a man and his horse.

The two-story WallBuilders headquarters sits on a rise in the prairie, surrounded by wildflowers and tucked behind a residential neighborhood, a peaceful setting for an organization that has mushroomed into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

WallBuilders' mission, according to its Web site, is to educate "the nation concerning the godly foundation of our country" and to provide information to elected officials "as they develop public policies which reflect biblical values."

The name sprang from a story in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, in which the citizens of Jerusalem rebuild the walls of the city to strengthen it.

Barton and his father believed that the same idea could take hold symbolically in America.

Behind the glass doors, a young receptionist with a soothing voice politely asks for the credit card numbers of callers ordering some of the 80 or so books, DVDs and audio and video cassettes in the WallBuilders' 2005 catalog.

America's Godly Heritage, on DVD, is available for $19.95. The Foundations of American Government, also on DVD, sells for $9.95. A slim paperback, Restraining Judicial Activism, costs $6.95.

About 25 people work in the building; another five are spread around the country. Barton pops in for a day or two, then he's gone again.

"I belong to way too many million-mile clubs," he said.

An average of 400 times a year, Barton speaks to military chaplains, home-school advocates, pastoral conferences and Christian revivals.

"I had one day where I spoke at a breakfast in Boston, a lunch in Indianapolis and a dinner in Santa Fe," he said.

WallBuilders' extraordinary growth came not because of Barton's fiery charisma or soaring eloquence. His speeches and writings hardly qualify as either.

Instead, Barton's account of Colonial history taps into a longing for a more noble and moral nation, and his view of modern history rallies Christians who believe they're under attack from nonbelievers.

"There is a real concern that we have neglected the historical Christian foundation of this nation," said Evelyn Davison, who hosts a Christian radio talk show in Austin. "The fact that David has committed so much of his time to make these discoveries and develop the evidence has made him very popular."

Barton is in such high demand that, before every trip, his staff prepares an hour-by-hour itinerary in a three-ring binder, complete with car and hotel arrangements, appointment times, room numbers and directions.

Seventeen years ago, his life didn't require such detailed organization.

Back then, before WallBuilders, he loaded his wife and three children and his parents into two minivans and they drove from church to church, from senior citizen breakfast to Rotary Club luncheon, so Barton could speak about the importance of school prayer.

They asked for an offering to get them to the next town.

In the summer of 1988, Barton spoke 90 times, driving from coast to coast.

"I felt like if I could make a difference in the culture of the country that it was certainly my duty to try," he said.

After every speech, Barton's father offered a critique -- this point didn't connect to that point, you're using too many uhs and ums, you're losing people in this stuff or that.

"At first, I really resented it," Barton said. "But there's no question that it had a substantial impact on my development as a speaker."

Barton also learned to commit his presentations to memory. His recall is uncommon.

He easily remembers the names of state representatives in Minnesota, country preachers in Georgia, even obscure details of the Constitutional Convention.

"When he was a kid, we didn't have to use a phone directory," his father, Grady, said. "We'd just ask David."

Barton traveled mostly by van for the first nine or so years so he could take his wife and children with him. By the mid-1990s, he had graduated to airplanes, making more frequent trips on short notice for meetings at the U.S. Capitol.

It had been just a few years before, in 1988, that Barton met his first congressman. It was during a trip to Washington for a religious conference.

The man was Charles Stenholm, a conservative Democrat from West Texas who represented Parker County. Stenholm liked what he heard from this constituent, for the most part.

Stenholm supported prayer in schools and believed that the Supreme Court had made decisions that hurt the country. But he didn't think Barton had everything right.

"I respected his sincerity, and it was certainly interesting, but I had some skepticisms about his basic theories," Stenholm said.

Many years later, in the fall of 2004, Stenholm would see Barton differently.

By then, it was obvious to both men who had the upper hand.

What would the Founders do?

Barton, a prodigious collector of items related to early American history, bought the volumes for $5 apiece and had them shipped to Aledo, to add to the bookshelves of the WallBuilders library.

The library contains 8,000 books, organized by subject -- James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, the Continental Congress, bad history.

Thousands of pages of early American newspapers are on microfilm, and his valuable collection of letters, books and Revolutionary War memorabilia are displayed in glass cases for the occasional school tour.

It is from this room that Barton takes his inspiration.

He has read most of the books, pored over the constitutional drafts and Colonial state constitutions and studied early Supreme Court decisions.

They have led him to the belief that federal judges have twisted the intentions of the Founding Fathers. The Founders, Barton argues, wanted the Constitution to prohibit the establishment of a national religion, not scrub religious expression from the public arena.

Most of the Constitution's signers were religious men who conducted Bible study sessions as inaugural events, held church services in the Capitol and printed Bibles with taxpayer money, Barton said. Thomas Jefferson even spent federal money to build a Catholic church for an Indian tribe.

But in 1962, the Supreme Court disregarded that history, Barton said, when it struck down organized prayer in schools. He considers the ruling the opening shot in a war against religion, specifically Christianity, in America.

The Founders, he said, "didn't want the power of the federal government used to coerce people. That's why they gave us the free exercise clause," in the First Amendment. "In my view, free exercise of religion does not constitute establishment of religion. But that's where the courts have gone today."

America has paid a price, he believes. After 1962, teen-age pregnancies, the divorce rate and school violence rose as SAT scores fell.

It all happened, Barton said, because God no longer started the class day.

Barton's views on school prayer illustrate one of the tenets of his belief system: an abiding faith in majority rule.

Students of all religions should be able to pray in the classroom, during graduation or at football games if the majority of a community wants it, Barton argues.

"I fully understand if New York City doesn't want prayer in schools, but Pampa, Texas, may," he said.

Barton says other faiths should be able to pray, too, but only according to their representation in a given community. Christian prayers, then, would dominate in most places.

Smaller faiths are owed no more by the majority, he believes. Above all else, Barton believes that America was founded on Christianity.

He has written and spoken approvingly of early state constitutions that required officeholders to profess "faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son."

As democratic as Barton's ideas on school prayer may sound to a member of the majority, members of other faiths see them as wholly un-American, a back-door approach to establishment of religion.

"The founders of this country fled religious persecution. That is our history," said Mark Finkelstein, a Houston lawyer who heads the National Church-State Task Force for the Anti-Defamation League. "People who want the majority to dictate religious observances in the public square are creating religious persecution."

Barton calls it undemocratic for "dissidents" to sue school districts and state governments and for "activist" judges to force the majority of a community to give up something it wants.

That, more than any other issue, is why religious people turned out in the 2004 elections, he said.

"The Constitution should evolve," he said. "The Congress believed that. That's why they gave us an Article 5, placing it in the hands of the people. But it's not the people making the changes. It's unelected officials making changes the people don't want.

"We're creating a lot of disrespect for government. Eighty-two percent want that? Screw you. Ninety-one percent want that? Forget you. That's where people drop out of the system. They get cynical."

Twisting the truth?

He described Barton, seated to his right, as "truly a national treasure" who "understands that America was founded on our Christian faith."

Barton was in Austin as the headliner for a National Day of Prayer fund-raiser that attracted dozens of state officials.

"We're so supportive here, but outside of this room, there's a lot of people who think this is inappropriate to have a day of prayer," Barton told the group.

Meanwhile, across town at the Capitol, the Texas Legislature began its morning, as always, with heads bowed in prayer.

To many legal and historical experts, Barton's version of Christianity under assault in America is sometimes overly simplistic, sometimes just plain wrong.

Prayer is allowed in schools, they point out.

What is unconstitutional, according to two prominent constitutional law experts -- Rodney Smolla, dean of the law school at the University of Richmond, and Douglas Laycock, an associate dean at the University of Texas Law School -- are school-sanctioned, compulsory religious activities.

Religious expression is allowed as long as participation is voluntary and the events are held before or after school. See You at the Pole prayer rallies held on school grounds, as well as religious-based clubs, are constitutionally protected.

"If you inject prayer into a graduation ceremony or a classroom, that's imposing a prayer on everybody," Laycock said. "The kids assigned to a first-period class are there whether they want to be or not. What's constitutionally protected is kids with their own voluntary audience."

Many scholars believe that Barton is selective in telling, or perhaps understanding, issues such as school prayer because of his lack of education in the field and his adherence to religious ideology.

Barton's background certainly isn't in history. He is a former math and science teacher and basketball coach who founded a Christian school in Aledo.

His college degree in religious education is from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., a "charismatic university, founded in the fires of evangelism and upon the unchanging precepts of the Bible," according to its mission statement.

"The whole story is difficult, even for the most seasoned scholars," said Derek Davis, a legal and church scholar at Baylor University, the world's largest Baptist university. "He's not a trained historian. He can be very convincing to an uninitiated audience. He's intelligent. He's well-spoken. But a lot of what he presents is a distortion of the truth."

As evidence of Barton's amateur status, Boston points to errors in the Myth of Separation, published in 1989. Barton attributed quotes advocating Christian principles in government to John Quincy Adams, John Madison and Patrick Henry, among others. But the statements could not be authenticated by scholars.

"I learned," Barton said of the need to do better research. "I was a neophyte. I made a mistake."

Davis, who is director of Baylor's J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, calls Barton a "nice guy" who does some credible work on the Founders. It is Barton's conclusions that are wanting, Davis said.

Many historians agree that Colonial America and its leaders were religious and peppered their speeches and writings with references to God and morality.

But their religion was generally of a different stripe, they say. Most of the influential founders and most of its early presidents were deists, not Christians, experts said.

It is almost impossible to compare the religion spoken of and practiced by the Framers with the religion of today, the historians said.

"Religion was important to the American founding and to the prospects of having a successful nation," Davis said. "But he assumes that because they were religious, our government should be, too."

The political stage

Stenholm blames Barton, in part, for the loss, which came after a combative redistricting effort led by DeLay, who represents suburban Houston.

"His material, his preachings, his teachings were used against me," Stenholm said of Barton. "I don't know if he campaigned directly against me, but those who he associates with did.

"There's way too much hypocrisy from the Christian right -- if you're a Republican, you can do no wrong. If you're a Democrat, they can't believe you call yourself a Christian."

Barton understands why Stenholm blames him, although he says he never got involved in his race. Stenholm lost, Barton said, because of "self-inflicted" wounds.

"His voting record shifted, and it shifted dramatically in the last six years," he said. "His conservative scorecard kept going down. That's what made him vulnerable."

Stenholm did, indeed, anger conservative groups with votes against Bush's tax cuts and deficit spending. The fact that Barton knows the ins and outs of special-interest scorecards illustrates the significant turnaround in his political activism.

At one time, Barton was a "November-only voter" who stayed out of politics because he didn't think they mattered.

"You get to the point, if you want to change politics, you've got to get people in [office] who believe in what you believe," he said.

By the time Barton was elected vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 1997, he was already well-known in Washington. Members of Congress had been calling him for help with speeches and document research since the early 1990s.

He worked on a religious-freedom amendment with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and took calls from governors and state legislators asking for advice. All of them passed his name along to other politicians.

After he published Restraining Judicial Activism in 1996, predating the current uproar over judges by nine years, Barton became an even more frequent visitor to lawmakers' Capitol Hill offices.

Barton may have sealed his reputation with top Republicans in 1998 by traveling to Washington to speak with members of Congress about impeachment.

This time, though, the impeachment concerned President Clinton, not judges.

Today, he spends so much time in Washington or communicating with members that he has developed friendships with many, including Sens. Frist, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Reps. DeLay, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, Todd Akin of Missouri and Sam Johnson of Texas. All are staunch conservatives.

"He's rediscovering the spiritual roots of this nation," Brownback said. "His research provides the philosophical underpinning for a lot of the Republican effort in the country today -- bringing God back into the public square."

Despite Barton's significant role in GOP politics, he resists being categorized by party.

"I'm with the Republican Party now because of certain sets of values," he said. "Does that mean I'm going to be a Republican all my life? It depends on what Republicans do. If they go off in another direction, I may be for a third party."

Increasingly, though, that seems like a stretch. Barton is a leader of the party, not a follower.

Many see his work with the Republican Party as an ideal companion to his work with WallBuilders. The Texas party chairwoman describes the two as "hand-in-glove."

If so, it's been a good fit.

Frist recently sent Barton a thank you note for bringing biblical principles to government.

Handwritten at the bottom, "You are an inspiration."

IN THE KNOW

Lessons in history

• WallBuilders' mission is to provide information to counteract what the Web site describes as attacks on "the moral, religious and constitutional foundation on which America was built."

• The organization has two arms: a for-profit publishing business and a nonprofit speaking organization, established in 1989.

• Through the nonprofit arm, known as WallBuilder Presentations, David Barton and three others accept speaking engagements nationwide. In addition, the nonprofit ProFamily Legislative Network, an arm of WallBuilders based in Idaho, screens thousands of state bills, catalogs them, and makes the files available to like-minded legislators.

• WallBuilder Presentations took in $4.96 million in public support from 1999 to 2003, according to Internal Revenue Service filings.

• The nonprofit arm maintained $1.145 million in assets, most of it in securities and bonds, at the end of 2003, the latest year for which figures are available.

• Barton's salary in 2003 was $70,428; he received $18,279 for expenses and allowances.

• Through a catalog, the publishing business sells books, DVDs, cassettes, posters and CD-ROMs that explain Barton's take on American history and the relationship between church and state.

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