Jefferson's Biblical Take: Politics & Christianity

 Today, the facts about "The Jefferson Bible" might seem like an impossible obstacle to anyone who wants to fashion Jefferson as a hero for right-leaning Christians — and America as a "Christian nation." Instead, the book has been distorted to fit the religious right's agenda.

There's no better example of this than David Barton, an amateur historian who's become quite popular with Perry, Santorum and Michele Bachmann. Barton loves archival flourishes — his Texas offices include a concrete vault filled with 18th century arcana — but his true concerns lie in the present. Though Barton admits that "The Jefferson Bible" often comes up as proof that its namesake wasn't the evangelical Christian conservatives want him to be, he also says he can refute this. In a TV appearance in 2010, Barton fixated on Jefferson's "Indians" title page, mixed in some unrelated material about Jefferson's Indian policy, then pivoted to an outrageous fabrication: "He then gave it to a missionary," Barton said of Jefferson and his Bible, "and he said, 'Here, if you get this printed, and you use this as you evangelize the Indians.'"