Iowa Rep Brett Barker Didn’t Read the Bible Rag Before He Handed It Around

Bleeding Heartland reports this week on the bumbling of Brett Barker, a new member of the Iowa State Legislature. Barker hand delivered a copy of an extremist Christian Nationalist publication called the Political Leaders Weekly Bible Study to each and every member of the state legislature, despite the fact that none of them had asked for one. Representative Barker seemed to believe that that the job of the Iowa state government is to ensure uniform obedience to Christian orthodoxy, rather than taking care of the practical needs of Iowa residents.

To make matters worse, when Brett Barker was confronted about his use of the pamphlets, from Capitol Ministries, to push religious ideology into state government, he found that he wasn’t able to respond to his colleagues’ complaints. That’s because Brett Barker didn’t bother to read the religious publication himself before he tried to shove it down everybody else’s throats.

It’s an all-too-common characteristic of toxic Christianity that those Christian believers who most fervently insist upon the need of all people to obey the Bible are the least likely to have actually read the Bible themselves.

Breaking through this bizarre dynamic is one of the goals of a new book from author F.G. Fitzer with the provocative title The Demonic Bible. Fitzer wrote The Demonic Bible because he wants more people to actually read the Christian Bible, rather than assuming that they know what’s in the ancient book.

“Writing The Demonic Bible was a great way for me to read the Christian Bible in a focused way, paying close attention to what it says, and what it doesn’t say,” Fitzer explains.

One of the misconceptions that The Demonic Bible exposes is the idea that the Christian Bible establishes a model of marriage that can only be between one man and one woman. In fact, throughout the Book of Genesis, followers of God routinely are married to more than one person. Abraham had an open marriage, for example, having two wives himself and repeatedly encouraging his first wife, Sarah to get married to local rulers whenever the couple traveled through foreign lands.

“There’s a lot of sex in the Christian Bible,” commented Fitzer. “It’s kind of weird to see so many Christian Nationalists pushing to have copies of the Bible in public elementary school classrooms, because the text is practically pornographic. Christian activists say that they are worried about grooming, but the Christian Bible itself is a groomers’ handbook.”

Would Representative Brett Barker agree with this assessment? He might, if he actually read the Bible, instead of just trying to use the Bible as a political weapon.

Would Barker consider handing out copies of The Demonic Bible to his colleagues in the Iowa State Legislature? It’s hard to say, but it’s clear that the publishers of the Political Leaders Weekly Bible Study newsletter wouldn’t be on board with such a plan.

The issue that Barker handed out warned that, “The schemes of the devil, we will see, are spiritual in nature but are manifest on earth through his pawns – non-believers.”

How soon will Brett Barker introduce anti-demon legislation to protect the vulnerable people of Iowa… perhaps a bill to censor The Demonic Bible?