As Right Wing Watch has noted multiple times in the past, one of the defining characteristics of Christian nationalist activists is a willingness to misrepresent history, as time after time they spread debunked myths and blatant falsehoods in defense of their right-wing ideology.
One of the most prominent purveyors of these myths is Indiana’s far-right Christian nationalist Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, who has relentlessly spread baseless claims about the nation's founding since taking office in 2024.
Beckwith was at it again during a recent appearance on the "Elevate Media Podcast," where he managed to promote multiple Christian nationalist myths in just a matter of minutes.
"You know where [the Founding Fathers] got the most amount of their wisdom from when they were building our system? The Bible," Beckwith said. "They went to the Bible more than any other document, any other written book in history, and it was the most quoted document. They said, 'Hey, the Bible says this,' and out of the Bible, they went to Deuteronomy; Deuteronomy was really the chapter of the Bible that they studied the most, which is all about civil law, it's all about civil governance and God's idea for governance."
"Even stories like in Exodus where you have Jethro," Beckwith continued, "the father-in-law of Moses telling Moses, 'Hey, you need to set up a republican form of government.' A republican form of government is just this representative government where you elect people to be those who govern. So Jethro tells Moses, 'Moses, you're trying to do everything as a king. Two million people wandering the wilderness, and they're coming to you with all their problems every day. You don't have enough hours in the day, buddy. You need to do something different.' And he says, 'Raise up for yourself competent men, godly men who hate dishonest gain and place them over the thousands, the hundreds, the fifties and the tens.'"
"That was what we call the First Hebrew Republic," Beckwith declared. "That was the first republic in world history and it was the Hebrew Republic. So the founders saw that and they were like, 'Well, that worked for Moses. God used Jethro Moses's father-in-law really to help him in the time of need to create good governance. Why don't we do that?' So what they did is they created the thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens; the thousands was the federal government, then you have the hundreds which is the state government, then the fifties which is the county government, and the tens which is the city government. And they just said it, 'It works.' When you apply God's principles it works."
"The inspiration for our three branches of government came from Isaiah 33:22," Beckwith continued. "The Lord is our judge, so the judicial branch; the Lord is our lawgiver, that's the legislative branch; and the Lord is our king, it is he who will save us. So the founders saw that, and they said, 'Well, God can do all three of those things perfectly. We can't. We should probably break them up and have three separate branches of power that are checks and balances.' And so again, they're going back to scripture and they're saying, 'OK, God already has provided the answers, we just gotta find them."
Not a single claim Beckwith made, all of which originated with right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton, is true and they have debunked by Right Wing Watch countless times.
The Founding Fathers did not quote Deuteronomy or rely on it in creating our system of government; that claim is based on a misrepresentation of a 1984 study conducted by a University of Houston historian.
Likewise, the Founding Fathers were not inspired by Moses to create a representative democracy; there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim, which is based on a misrepresentation of a passage from the book of Exodus.
Finally, there is not a shred of evidence to support to idea that the three branches of government came out of Isaiah 33:22; that is nonsense based entirely on the idea that the Founding Fathers read the works of French political philosopher Charles de Montesquieu, who was a Christian and advocated for the separation of powers in government.
If Beckwith read any actual history written by actual historians instead of relying on the works of a discredited Christian nationalist activist like Barton, he would know that everything he is saying is entirely false. But Beckwith won't do that, because his real purpose in spreading these sorts of myths is simply to bolster to his modern-day right-wing political agenda.
