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| Revolutionary Period (1775-1800) |
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8 of 10 found the following review helpful:
Liars for Jesus Feb 18, 2008
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".
44 of 61 found the following review helpful:
Wonderful read for freedom lovers Oct 21, 2006
Ms. Rodda has presented an intelligent, well-written expose on the nonsense spewed by the religious right over the internet and in boooks.
82 of 90 found the following review helpful:
"Liars" Too Harsh? Sep 27, 2006
"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".
46 of 54 found the following review helpful:
The truth will set you free Sep 20, 2006
Lies for Jesus abound. This is not a new phenomenon, as Ms. Rodda points out in her book, but the lies have greatly proliferated in the age of the Internet. It is sometimes difficult for concerned citizens and concerned Christians to refute the lies which appear to come from authority. Ms. Rodda takes the words of those so-called authorities and shows them for what they are. Her sources are impeccable.
As an Episcopalian, I was quite shocked to learn that the Liars for Jesus have stolen words out of my own Book of Common Prayer to further their questionable agenda.
Those liars do great damage to our religious freedom, a freedom that generations upon generations have fought and died to protect.
97 of 107 found the following review helpful:
Speaking the historical record with truth Aug 18, 2006
I am the author of the foreword for Liars for Jesus (The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, vol.1)
For years segments of the religious right have been speaking out against what they have perceived as the historical revisionism of the Bible. This makes their attacks and distortions on the real history of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States very ironic and it would be funny if it wasn't doing so much damage to the religious freedom this country was built upon.
Chris Rodda works to set the record straight and she does it with extensive documentation showing how these distortions are intentional and aimed at leading many well intentioned Christians into false conclusions about the faith and the intentions of our Founders. Reading this book you will be amazed by how far these distortions go ranging from creating false rationizations to carefully cropped quotes ripped from their context to repeating known undocumented and questionable quotes as reliable truth. All these and more are used by the Liars for Jesus to create a psuedo-history of the birth of our nation. Alerted by the evidence of Rodda's detailing of the recorded history you may angered by the fact that this pseudo-history is being marketed to home-schoolers who will never learn the truth and by the fact these lies are making their ways into textbooks for public classrooms.
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