FALSE PROPHET
David Barton
Activist and
Founder of WallBuilders
David Barton, a self-taught pseudo-historian and activist, is one of the intellectual architects of modern Christian nationalism and a lead organizer of efforts to pass Christian-nationalist state legislation. He has his hand in so many parts of the religious right that investigative journalist and author Katherine Stewart refers to him as the “Where’s Waldo of the Christian nationalist movement.”
Most recently, Barton has echoed the holy war-esque rhetoric of many within the MAGA movement. In a July 2024 Washington Times op-ed written alongside conservative radio commentator Steve Deace and fellow False Prophet Ryan Walters, he argues that evangelicals must vote to re-elect ex-President Trump because “it’s a fundamental struggle for the soul of America, deeply rooted in spiritual warfare.”
His 2012 book "The Jefferson Lies" was riddled with so many lies of its own that Christian publisher Thomas Nelson withdrew the book after pastors protested it and History News Network called it the "least credible history book in print.”
Barton is the founder of WallBuilders, an organization dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built.” Among other harmful distortions of history, Barton and WallBuilders teach that the separation of church and state is a “modern fabrication,” a view that has influenced and swayed multiple fellow False Prophets, including Doug Mastriano and Lauren Boebert.
Barton’s Christian Nationalist Rhetoric
In his book The Myth of Separation: What is the Correct Relationship Between Church and State, Barton asserts: “Our [Founding] Fathers intended that this nation should be a Christian nation, not because all who lived in it were Christians, but because it was founded on and would be governed and guided by Christian principles.”
The Wallbuilders website states: “‘Separation of church and state’ currently means almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant.”
One of the architects of Project Blitz, a religious-right initiative to draft and pass model state-legislature bills that undermine the separation of church and state and create a “Christian nation.”
Barton’s Christian Nationalist Policy Positions
Said on his podcast that children should be taken out of public schools because they’re being “indoctrinated” or “sexualized” there
Has suggested that climate change is God’s punishment for legalized abortion
Said in a WallBuilders broadcast that AIDS is God saying, “Hey, you’re going to bear in your body the consequences of this homosexual behavior”
Opposes LGBTQ equality, claiming “messing around with marriage will affect the economic prosperity of a nation because you’re violating the commands of God.”