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.
This tendency was put on display by right-wing anti-LGBTQ Christian apologist Alex McFarland during a recent episode of "The Truth & Liberty Show," when he baselessly claimed that our nation's form of government was "modeled after the ecclesiology of the Presbyterian Church."
"Truth is on our side," McFarland declared. "We're a Judeo-Christian representative constitutional republic. We're a republic."
"I don't know if you know this, America has a Presbyterian form of government," he continued. "Just like there's pastors, teachers, and elders; well, there is an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a judicial branch. Our three-tiered form of government with checks and balances and accountability, we were really modeled after the ecclesiology of the Presbyterian Church."
"You know who said that?" McFarland added. "Our first president, George Washington."
Washington, of course, never said anything of the sort.
In fact, this claim is rooted in something that was simply made up by Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, who has repeatedly asserted that the inspiration for the federal government's three branches of power were taken directly from Isaiah 33:22: "For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; it is he who will save us."
Barton has never provided a shred of evidence in support of this claim, but that hasn't stopped it from being endlessly repeated by McFarland and other Christian nationalist activists and politicians.
