Liars for Jesus debunks many of the historical lies invented and used by the Christian nationalist history revisionists in their efforts to further their far right political agenda and destroy the wall of separation between church and state in America. Liars for Jesus is not a book about religion. It is a history book, presenting and fully documenting the true stories and historical facts that are distorted in the "Christian nation" pseudo-history promoted by the religious right.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
489 of 549 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Liars" seems a harsh term to apply to professed Christians and until lately I had--admittedly without paying too much attention--assumed that Christian fundamentalists were engaged in wishful thinking and selective quotations when they complained about activist judges subverting both the Constitution and the clear intent of the Founding Fathers to establish a Christian government. But after reading Ms. Rodda's book I realize that there is something going on far beyond taking words out of context. When she digs out the words and records that clearly demolish the assertion that no "wall of separation" between church and state was ever intended, "liars" does seem the appropriate word. Those of us who fear that the intrusion of "faith based" activities into our government and the flow of subsidies, in the guise of "contracts", to favored churches, is a step toward a theocracy, will find much useful and carefully documented information in "Liars for Jesus".
207 of 240 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Liars for Jesus by Chris Rodda is one of the best written and most important books about contemporary American politics that I have read in years. The only problem with this book is that it was apparently published with the author's own money, making its availability somewhat limited. This book should be widely read and discussed, because it helps explain why the Christian Right seems so incomprehensibly loony to most of us who are not part of that movement, and, conversely, why they attack the rest of us with such unfettered zeal.
There has been a series of revisionist "history" books published since the end of WWII which give a "Christian" version of American history that attempts to paint the Founding Fathers and subsequent American culture in a way that is in agreement with contemporary Fundamentalism. We have now had a couple of generations of conservative Christians who have been buying into this version of history and reacting angrily to an America that assumes fundamental principals like the separation of church and state to be at the core of what America stands for.
Author Rodda systematically lists and then busts a series of myths that these spurious history books have generated. She leaves no stone unturned in doing so.
Things get really scary when she starts quoting Supreme Court opinions written by Rennquist, Thomas and Burger, and it becomes apparent that members of our highest court do not know the difference between real history and Fundamentalist wishful thinking.
The book is a fascinating study in how the desire for a different set of facts can, over time, morph into an alternative if deluded "reality".
There has been a series of revisionist "history" books published since the end of WWII which give a "Christian" version of American history that attempts to paint the Founding Fathers and subsequent American culture in a way that is in agreement with contemporary Fundamentalism. We have now had a couple of generations of conservative Christians who have been buying into this version of history and reacting angrily to an America that assumes fundamental principals like the separation of church and state to be at the core of what America stands for.
Author Rodda systematically lists and then busts a series of myths that these spurious history books have generated. She leaves no stone unturned in doing so.
Things get really scary when she starts quoting Supreme Court opinions written by Rennquist, Thomas and Burger, and it becomes apparent that members of our highest court do not know the difference between real history and Fundamentalist wishful thinking.
The book is a fascinating study in how the desire for a different set of facts can, over time, morph into an alternative if deluded "reality".
79 of 92 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fisking liars is hard, but essential. A heroic, interesting, prodigious effort.
June 14, 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
As a blogger at Talk to Action (a pro-faith, pro-religious freedom site) and key employee at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which defends the religious freedom rights of our soldiers, author Chris Rodda frequently comes into contact with Christianists. These people by definition, with the exception of some Reconstructionists, attempt to unconstitutionally leverage the power of government in spite of the Constitution's establishment clause. They desire and work vigorously to promote their faith and their understanding of "God's laws" through government means while simultaneously and unconstitutionally compromising the religious freedom and other liberty rights of people. People that do not share their religious and political beliefs and objectives, including millions of devout American Christians.
Anyone who has even casually studied Christianists can easily come up with a list of defining attributes, one being they all in some combination develop, promote, or believe in a false history of our nation's founding and the character of our founding framers, again with the exception of a few Christian reconstructionists, who advocate we peacefully overturn our Constitution and install a fascist, theocratic state. This revisionist effort is so pervasive within this movement many even home-school their children to deprive them of an accurate rendering of American history; along with the promotion of religious notions as superior explanations describing nature at the expense of scientific understandings.
Why? With the exception of a tiny percentage of far-left fringe groups, most Americans look to our founding as a great moment in history where principles and ideals worthy of defense were ratified in our beloved U.S. Constitution. We also recognize our founding was only the beginning of our perfecting the union given the existence of slavery and government's unequal protection of our rights during that time and even still today. This legacy of shared greatness with ample room for improvement fuels the motivation by nearly all political advocates to claim their political objectives are superior to their opponents' since it's supposedly more consistent with our founding ideals.
The problem for Christianists when looking to our founding was that our framers, framers being the key subset of the founders who designed and implemented our form of gov't, created and successfuled championed the ratification of a radical Constitution given its power was delegated from "we the People" [sic] rather than some sect's understanding of God delegating laws and authority to the government. This resulted in a secular government where most of these framers, especially Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and possibly Washington and Madison also held religious views that even today would most likely practically prohibit them from being able to get elected president by the general populace given their rejection of orthodox, Trinitarian Christianity for what historian Dr. Gregg Frazer aptly describes as theistic rationalism (Frazer also happens to be an evangelical). These framers were also perfectly comfortable creating a society where everyone enjoyed "freedom of conscience" and where the government neither encouraged nor prohibited any one sect's interests. And in spite of their views, all of these men along with other key framers were strongly on the side of keeping religion and the state separated, partially in hopes of seeing religious sects evolve to more rational beliefs (the latter strongly argued for by both Jefferson, Madison, and Adams along with founder Tom Paine).
Therefore a market opportunity to achieve money, fame, and political power is exploited by some on the Right to create propaganda to be used by the Right to achieve power, legislate laws, and publically finance endeavors directly in conflict with our Constitution and its ideals while falsely promoting they are actually in adherence.
Sadly, our current set of historians have turned mostly a blind eye to such shenanigans given the propagandists, such as David Barton, Tim LaHaye, and D. James Kennedy are not historians; I therefore presume our historians believe these propagandists are not worthy of their attention. A perfectly frustrating example is highly respected historian Gordon Wood's excellent critique of this generation's approach to writing history about our founding The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. While Wood takes on some of the controversies known only within a relatively small circle of academics and quite frankly - relatively inconsequential, he completely avoids covering how more than 30% of our population have a false understanding of American history given the pervasiveness of Barton and his ilk's propaganda that is distributed by way of books, churches, blogs, and viral emails.
Therefore, Ms. Rodda's book is a welcome entry. While there are other books that address the problem of historical revisionism by Christianists, Rodda takes on their lies headfirst. Rather than building a thematic analysis of our founding in light of modern day propaganda, Rodda instead directly fisks their lies. Rodda takes 10 chapters, each to fisk one particularly big lie by the propagandists, and then goes on to provide three additional chapters to refute some of the lies about Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Blackstone. While this covers only a minority of the lies these propagandists spread, Rodda's efforts comes in at a hefty 496 pages and is noted as "Volume I".
If you are looking for a thematic analysis, I've read several good treatises, though none are perfect:
The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness
The Myth of Christian America : What You Need to Know About the Separation of Church and State
The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
Rodda also distinguishes herself from these other efforts in two ways. Besides meticulously footnoting her book; she provides a website that provides anyone the ability to actually view the scanned primary and secondary source material used by her to fisk the liars' lies, including exposing how they mistranslated their sources to provide mutated meanings. In addition, Rodda provides ample evidence to the extent frauds like Barton will go by scrutinizing his claims through researching his footnotes to prove he misquotes his sources, takes our founders statements completely out of context, uses discredited sources, and sometimes just makes stuff up. Given the popularity of the propagandists' work within social conservative circles, Rodda's fisking piles on to the already overwhelming evidence of the intellectual dishonesty of social conservatives and their leaders. Propagandists like Barton count on their audience - not known for their intellectual curiosity, lack of skepticism towards their authority figures, and honesty - to trust him. This has become so bad we still have home-schooled children being taught a false history using discredited history printed in their textbooks, even those published in 2009 that even Barton has conceded was wrong several years ago - including fake quotations Barton spread that were never said by the founders and which are directly contradicted by the framers actual speeches and writings.
The one problem with this book is Rodda's lack of access to a good editor. While Rodda meticulously and effectively tears these propagandists apart, I fear its overkill in terms of the number of words it takes if one wanted to read the book from start to finish. This is primarily not because of Rodda's writing skills, it takes many more words to correct a lie than it takes to tell one. Rodda is a fine writer and thinker and provides compelling, obviously honest yeoman work. Therefore, I recommend reading the book in-between other books by breaking up your reading by chapter. And given the fact that these propagandists and their followers continue to perpetuate these lies even after being caught and even after conceding they lied, Rodda's efforts serves the reader well as a great reference book when these false claims are re-presented in the public square, as they most assuredly will for decades to come.
Anyone who has even casually studied Christianists can easily come up with a list of defining attributes, one being they all in some combination develop, promote, or believe in a false history of our nation's founding and the character of our founding framers, again with the exception of a few Christian reconstructionists, who advocate we peacefully overturn our Constitution and install a fascist, theocratic state. This revisionist effort is so pervasive within this movement many even home-school their children to deprive them of an accurate rendering of American history; along with the promotion of religious notions as superior explanations describing nature at the expense of scientific understandings.
Why? With the exception of a tiny percentage of far-left fringe groups, most Americans look to our founding as a great moment in history where principles and ideals worthy of defense were ratified in our beloved U.S. Constitution. We also recognize our founding was only the beginning of our perfecting the union given the existence of slavery and government's unequal protection of our rights during that time and even still today. This legacy of shared greatness with ample room for improvement fuels the motivation by nearly all political advocates to claim their political objectives are superior to their opponents' since it's supposedly more consistent with our founding ideals.
The problem for Christianists when looking to our founding was that our framers, framers being the key subset of the founders who designed and implemented our form of gov't, created and successfuled championed the ratification of a radical Constitution given its power was delegated from "we the People" [sic] rather than some sect's understanding of God delegating laws and authority to the government. This resulted in a secular government where most of these framers, especially Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and possibly Washington and Madison also held religious views that even today would most likely practically prohibit them from being able to get elected president by the general populace given their rejection of orthodox, Trinitarian Christianity for what historian Dr. Gregg Frazer aptly describes as theistic rationalism (Frazer also happens to be an evangelical). These framers were also perfectly comfortable creating a society where everyone enjoyed "freedom of conscience" and where the government neither encouraged nor prohibited any one sect's interests. And in spite of their views, all of these men along with other key framers were strongly on the side of keeping religion and the state separated, partially in hopes of seeing religious sects evolve to more rational beliefs (the latter strongly argued for by both Jefferson, Madison, and Adams along with founder Tom Paine).
Therefore a market opportunity to achieve money, fame, and political power is exploited by some on the Right to create propaganda to be used by the Right to achieve power, legislate laws, and publically finance endeavors directly in conflict with our Constitution and its ideals while falsely promoting they are actually in adherence.
Sadly, our current set of historians have turned mostly a blind eye to such shenanigans given the propagandists, such as David Barton, Tim LaHaye, and D. James Kennedy are not historians; I therefore presume our historians believe these propagandists are not worthy of their attention. A perfectly frustrating example is highly respected historian Gordon Wood's excellent critique of this generation's approach to writing history about our founding The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. While Wood takes on some of the controversies known only within a relatively small circle of academics and quite frankly - relatively inconsequential, he completely avoids covering how more than 30% of our population have a false understanding of American history given the pervasiveness of Barton and his ilk's propaganda that is distributed by way of books, churches, blogs, and viral emails.
Therefore, Ms. Rodda's book is a welcome entry. While there are other books that address the problem of historical revisionism by Christianists, Rodda takes on their lies headfirst. Rather than building a thematic analysis of our founding in light of modern day propaganda, Rodda instead directly fisks their lies. Rodda takes 10 chapters, each to fisk one particularly big lie by the propagandists, and then goes on to provide three additional chapters to refute some of the lies about Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Blackstone. While this covers only a minority of the lies these propagandists spread, Rodda's efforts comes in at a hefty 496 pages and is noted as "Volume I".
If you are looking for a thematic analysis, I've read several good treatises, though none are perfect:
The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness
The Myth of Christian America : What You Need to Know About the Separation of Church and State
The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
Rodda also distinguishes herself from these other efforts in two ways. Besides meticulously footnoting her book; she provides a website that provides anyone the ability to actually view the scanned primary and secondary source material used by her to fisk the liars' lies, including exposing how they mistranslated their sources to provide mutated meanings. In addition, Rodda provides ample evidence to the extent frauds like Barton will go by scrutinizing his claims through researching his footnotes to prove he misquotes his sources, takes our founders statements completely out of context, uses discredited sources, and sometimes just makes stuff up. Given the popularity of the propagandists' work within social conservative circles, Rodda's fisking piles on to the already overwhelming evidence of the intellectual dishonesty of social conservatives and their leaders. Propagandists like Barton count on their audience - not known for their intellectual curiosity, lack of skepticism towards their authority figures, and honesty - to trust him. This has become so bad we still have home-schooled children being taught a false history using discredited history printed in their textbooks, even those published in 2009 that even Barton has conceded was wrong several years ago - including fake quotations Barton spread that were never said by the founders and which are directly contradicted by the framers actual speeches and writings.
The one problem with this book is Rodda's lack of access to a good editor. While Rodda meticulously and effectively tears these propagandists apart, I fear its overkill in terms of the number of words it takes if one wanted to read the book from start to finish. This is primarily not because of Rodda's writing skills, it takes many more words to correct a lie than it takes to tell one. Rodda is a fine writer and thinker and provides compelling, obviously honest yeoman work. Therefore, I recommend reading the book in-between other books by breaking up your reading by chapter. And given the fact that these propagandists and their followers continue to perpetuate these lies even after being caught and even after conceding they lied, Rodda's efforts serves the reader well as a great reference book when these false claims are re-presented in the public square, as they most assuredly will for decades to come.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly written
Arguments take gigantic leaps of faith. The book was suggested to me as being a lot more that what I read, Don't waste your time or your money on this.
Published 2 days ago by walter hammock
5.0 out of 5 stars
Statue dust
Chris tears down the idols of the religious right, even the seemingly unassailably researched "intellectual" bulwarks of proof, then she proceeds to grind those stone arms, legs,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Richard A. Gray
5.0 out of 5 stars
truth
If you want to know the REAL truth of Christians and the reasons behind their beliefs, than you will find this book interesting.
Published 2 months ago by Patricia Colville
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Right exposed!
Its amazing to me how people accept 'junk' in the form of quoting history. Some people never question the source of what they read! Read more
Published 3 months ago by E. Strawn
4.0 out of 5 stars
But... I am still wrong acording to the religious right but they are...
This is a scary book for those of us who would prefer to retain our own religious liberty.
May God show them the error of their ways.
May God show them the error of their ways.
Published 3 months ago by James R Glass
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thank goodness someone is telling the truth
Excellent book. Everyone in America needs to read this. There are people in the U.S. today who are actively trying to subvert the U.S. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Scott Hargis
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book, poorly executed on Kindle.
Chris Rodda does a wonderful job of debunking dozens of religious historical revisionist lies and (to be charitable) "urban legends" with excellent scholarship and... Read more
Published 4 months ago by David D.G.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing point by point first source knowledge
What is more important to historians than first source documents and deeds? It is great to talk to somebody who knew of somebody but it gives greater insight to read, annotate and... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lynn E. Cruze
4.0 out of 5 stars
Read this if you care about the truth
I'd love to say this is a fascinating, riveting book, but history has never been fascinating or riveting for me. This is not the fault of the author! Read more
Published 5 months ago by twincats
4.0 out of 5 stars
Liars for Jesus
"Liars for Jesus" is a studious inspection of the "Christian nation" claims by Barton and others. Read more
Published 6 months ago by John Carver
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