An Interview with David Barton
When and why did you start WallBuilders?
This emphasis on presenting original history and documents is now the aspect of WallBuilders for which we are probably best known. I often feel like what King Josiah must have felt when they brought him the old scroll that they had discovered during the rebuilding of the Temple. He looked at it, read it, and essentially said, “We used to be like this???” It was a shocking revelation to that generation to see what the original practices of previous generations had been. So, to me, has been the rediscovery of important moral, religious, and constitutional aspects of our American history.
While in 1988 I initially saw the removal of school prayer as the cause for the decline in the nation, I now know that there was much more involved. As the courts have explained in no less than ten different cases: “Prayer is the quintessential religious practice.” Prayer, an acknowledgment of God, is the simplest identification of a philosophy which recognizes not only the God of heaven but also His laws and standards of conduct. Prayer is the “heart” of religion and was by necessity the first target of a more general and much broader attack upon religious principles and expressions.
Therefore, it is not surprising that after the removal of prayer, there quickly followed cases rejecting not only the Bible but any values derived from them (the Ten Commandments, the teaching of pre-marital sexual abstinence to students, the singing of religious songs among other songs in school concerts, the displaying of student artwork with religious themes, graduation acknowledgments that include God, individual students reading the Bible during free time, etc.).
The removal of prayer was the first step on the infamous “slippery slope.” While the removal of school prayer cannot be blamed for all the declines, the presence or absence, legality or illegality, of prayer and the acknowledgment of God in public arenas is the primary indicator of the philosophy under which official public policy is being conducted. When there is an official recognition of prayer – “the quintessential religious practice” – there is also an embracing of the values and teachings of which prayer is a primary indicator.
Consequently, the return of school prayer will be a significant indicator of forthcoming change. That is, it will be a signal that the first step has been taken not only toward recognizing God, but toward reinstating His values upon which our traditional moral, ethical, and disciplinary standards long depended.