An Interview with David Barton
What is the focus of your advocacy nowadays?
Similarly, following a series of challenges by the ACLU against public displays of the Ten Commandments, we were asked by attorneys to determine whether the Ten Commandments had exerted any significant historical influence on American law. We didn’t know, but we researched. We were startled to find that the earliest legal codes in America – beginning in 1610-1611 – not only cited the Ten Commandments but often took each individual command as a basis for a separate civil law. We further found that the Ten Commandments had been invoked as the final authoritative word in over 500 rulings by both state and federal Supreme Courts. We even found that each of the three most famous textbooks used in the history of American education had segments teaching the Ten Commandments to public school students. That research was taken and used in a number of subsequent court cases, some successful in preserving Ten Commandments displays and others not. However, we would not have thought of looking at the issue had it not become a current event and had we not been asked by attorneys.
There are dozen of other examples.
Some of the issues we are currently researching (and most of the issues we investigate have not only a historical basis but also a clear scriptural position, thus integrating public policy with Biblical values) include the inviolability of private property (e.g., this results from the Supreme Court’s recent Kelo decision and the flurry of state legislatures now working to preserve the sanctity of private property), the right of military chaplains to pray according to the dictates of their conscience and faith tradition rather than by the wording given them by military attorneys, the right of public boards of adults – such as school boards – to open their meetings with prayer, the use of sermons to address issues of the day from a Biblical perspective (we own hundreds of published American sermons preached over the past three centuries, including from major American revivals; and those sermons regularly addressed whatever was mentioned in the headlines of the day, thus making faith and its application very relevant and applicable to listeners), etc.