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Dear Ms. Miller and Ms. Weinstein,

I wonder if Mr. Weinstein, the head of your organization, has ever read the First Amendment to our Constitution with its guarantees of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. If he had, he would be embarrassed to suggest that Christian members of the military who wish to share their faith are guilty of sedition and treason. His comments are outrageous and it is hard to believe that our nation has degenerated to such a point that comments like his given credence instead of being laughed to scorn.

It would probably come as a shock to Mr. Weinstein that the First U.S. Congress actually spent money to purchase 10,000 Bibles for use in schools in the United States. I wonder if Mr. Weinstein would also accuse the Founders of sedition and treason. It might also interest him to know that Christian church services were held in the U.S. Capitol and other government buildings during the presidencies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, among others. Why should he and some others determine standards of free speech in my country? Please convey to Mr. Weinstein that as a Christian I find his comments, his bigotry and his attacks on people of faith to be highly offensive. I am not alone! And since his stand against Christianity speaks out that his religious thinking differs, I wonder that he doesn’t guard the very freedom in this country that allows him to express his own personal beliefs.

Sincerely yours,

(name withheld)

Hi (name withheld) …

The history in your email regarding Congress and Bibles is extremely inaccurate. Congress absolutely did NOT purchase any Bibles for the use of schools. This is just a lie used by history revisionists like David Barton.

Actually, you appear to be confusing two different lies used by Barton. The one about purchasing 10,000 Bibles is something that the revisionists claim happened in 1777, and the one about Bibles for schools is from a different lie about something that happened in 1782.

Here’s what REALLY happened:

In 1777, a group of ministers petitioned the Continental Congress to import the type and paper they needed to print a Bible in Philadelphia, since books couldn’t be imported from England because of the war. The reason the ministers asked Congress to get involved was because of the problem of price gouging during the war. They were afraid that if they printed the Bibles, unscrupulous people would buy them up and sell them at prices that average people wouldn’t be able to afford. The ministers thought that if Congress put out the money to print the Bibles — as a loan to be paid back from the sale of the Bibles — then Congress could regulate the price of the Bibles. The committee that the ministers’ petition was referred to did not make a decision on the Bibles. They only wrote a report saying that it would be too risky to import the materials for them into Philadelphia, which was likely to be invaded at any time, and said that it would be less risky to import already printed Bibles from Holland or another country into a safer port, and then get the money back from the sales of the Bibles. But this never happened. When the Congress took a vote just on whether or not to consider the committee’s alternate idea of importing Bibles, the vote was split, seven states for and six against. The Congress then scheduled a vote on the actual importing of the Bibles, but then dropped it, so NO Bibles were imported.

You’re getting the Bibles for schools thing from the story of the Aitken Bible. This was a Bible being printed in 1782 by a private printer in Philadelphia named Robert Aitken with his own money. Robert Aitken asked Congress for a lot of things, including having Congress make him the official Bible printer for America, and for Congress to buy his Bibles to distribute to the states. Congress said no to all of this. The only one of Aitken’s requests that Congress granted was to let their chaplains examine his work for accuracy. Hardly any printers in America were printing books yet, and the few books that were printed in America were known to be full of errors. Congress then passed a resolution that said the chaplains had reported that Aitken’s Bible was accurate, and allowed Aitken to print the resolution in the front of his Bibles. But Congress also did this for another reason. They wanted to promote the American printing industry. The war had given American printers an opportunity to prove that they could accurately print books that were as big a job as a Bible, and Aitken had proved himself. The story that Congress printed these Bible for schools is completely untrue. First of all, Congress had nothing to do with the printing of these Bibles, and second, the thing about the Bibles being for the use of schools comes from a petition that Robert Aitken wrote TO Congress. It was not Congress that said this. David Barton and other history revisionists claim that it was Congress that said it, but that’s a lie.

Hopefully, you’ll do a little more research next time into claims like these ones about Congress and Bibles before repeating them. That’s how lies spread.

Chris Rodda
Senior Research Director
Military Religious Freedom Foundation