Is This a Petty Post? Maybe, but I’ve Gotta Vent About a Certain “Online Scholar” Who Annoys the Crap Out of Me: His Name Sounds Like “McFellen”

It’s late at night, but before I go to bed, I just felt compelled to fire off this post about online scholar Dan McClellan. I first came across him last year when he was complaining about David Falk’s comments about the work of Francesca Stavrakopolou. Long story short, Falk made an admittedly unprofessional and crass comment about how the BBC has Stavrakopolou on quite a bit because she is attractive; McClellan proceeded to call Falk a raving misogynist; it blew up that corner of Twitter for a few days; I finally jumped on and commented that, yes, Falk’s comments were unprofessional and bad, but I thought McClellan and his friends were making way too big a deal over it. McClellan immediately blocked, and a host of Twitter hyenas proceeded to verbally attack me for the next full week. Two of them ended up writing long blog posts personally attacking me, and you guessed it, calling me a misogynistic “apologist.” One of them even contacted a journal where I had written an article over ten years ago and accused me of plagiarism (I didn’t).

The whole thing was bizarre. I had numerous people messaging me and asking me how I was holding up. I laughed it off because I knew those Twitter hyenas were laughable self-righteous idiots. And McClellan blocking me after LITERALLY ONE COMMENT? Quite frankly, I thought he was quite the snowflake. Over the past year, though, I’m seeing more and more people post and share his little YouTube videos. I find them tedious and pretentious. But for the most part, I ignore them.

Tonight, though, after seeing yet another tedious and pretentious video, a thought came to me. That is what I’m going to share now.

The Video
In his most recent video, titled, “Was the Bible the #1 text used by the Founding Fathers?” he began by showing a short 20 second video clip of former congresswoman Michelle Bachmann speaking somewhere at some time. We don’t know the context, and we don’t know the overall topic of her speech—McClellan doesn’t provide that. But hey, it’s Michelle Bachmann, and she’s really conservative and really Evangelical! The only “context” we need is that. For the record, she’s too conservative for my taste, but I’d never do what McClellan does.

Here’s what Bachmann says in the clip: “…and so they had us read what is it that the founders read? Who were the philosophers they read? …Oh, by the way, the #1 document they referred to when trying to figure out what kind of country we should be, guess what? The Bible!” Then she says the crowd is smart because they said “The Bible” too.

But that is the entirety of what McClellan chose to rant on. Let’s be honest, that’s not much to go on. In order for me to make a more informed judgment about what Bachmann said, I need a bit more than just that clip. But McClellan doesn’t give it. Instead, he just says it is a falsehood, and it is based on a misunderstanding of a journal article written back in 1984. He then flashed a screenshot of a few pages of the article up on the screen and proceeded to say that the research looked at political writings of Americans published between 1760 and 1805. And that research showed that, yes, there was a significant percentage of published material related to politics that cited or referenced the Bible.

But that’s not the whole story, says McClellan. A lot of those don’t really count because they were just publications of sermons. On top of that, that didn’t mean the actual “Founding Fathers” referred to or cited the Bible when crafting the Constitution. McClellan then referred to another table in the article that showed in 1787-1788, when the Founding Fathers were hammering out the Constitution, that the Federalists never cited the Bible once, and the Anti-Federalists only nine times. He then said, “When it came time to actually create our government, the people who created our Constitution didn’t use the Bible at all.” After that, McClellen asserted that if the “people on the ‘Far Right’” today (ahem, Bachmann!) were alive in the late 18^th century, they would have hated the Constitution, even though today they view it as “quasi-inspired or totally inspired” Scripture. He ends his video by saying Michelle Bachmann probably has never read this research and doesn’t understand it, and if she had been alive in the late 18^th century (and if the Founding Fathers would have even cared what women had to say), she would have opposed the Constitution.

My Reaction
Were you impressed with McClellan’s video? I wasn’t. And it’s not that I’m a fan of Michelle Bachmann, or that I’m some kind of “far right zealot.” It’s because I can think coherently, and I’m not impressed with muddled and purposely deceptive hackery. But this video is a good example of what McClellan often does: (1) pick a short clip from some conservative, or some Evangelical, or some “far right” person, or just some no name dude who has no biblical training whatsoever, (2) bloviate about how that idiot doesn’t know anything, (3) throw up a few screenshots of articles and books to show his audience how smart he is, and then (4) in the process, throw in a lot of baseless assertions and misleading statements. In the end, you learn nothing of value, and you go away (especially if you harbor deep-seated hatred of any and all Evangelicals) feeling quite good about how good and smart you are, because they are all idiots.

Again, I’m not a fan of Bachmann. Heck, I’m no longer an Evangelical (I’m Orthodox). But stuff like this grinds my gears because it is so thick, so petty, so condescending, and so deceptive. Here’s why:

1. Look at what Bachmann says in the 20-second clip. Does she mention the Founding Fathers? Does she make the claim that the Founding Fathers used the Bible when writing the Constitution? No, she does not. She makes an extremely generalized claim that “the founders” read the Bible when trying to figure out what kind of country we were to have. And, as the article that McClellen showed, the Bible was the most referenced book around the time of the founding of the United States. The fact that the video clip McClellan chose to show doesn’t have Bachmann making specific reference to the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention tells me that maybe she never mentioned that. If she did, I’m sure he would have shown that clip.
2. Besides, it is just 100% true that many of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, Christian, and many had degrees from seminaries. Obviously, that doesn’t mean they were “citing the Bible” in their attempt to craft the Constitution, but it does mean there really was a strong Christian ethos that was part of our nation’s founding. Besides, Bachmann doesn’t make that claim anyway in that video clip.
3. But notice what McClellan does: he takes what Bachmann actually said and then twists it to give the impression that she was, in fact, claiming the Founding Fathers were citing the Bible at the Constitutional Convention. Again, she didn’t make that claim…at least not in the video he provided.
4. Then he can’t help but add a few broad-brushed digs at “the far right”—but what does that even mean now? As a scholar, you’d think he’d be smart enough to carefully define his terms and be specific. But idealogues with an agenda don’t deal with preciseness. Broad generalities and attacks are good click-bait. Somehow, I get the feeling (through other videos of McClellan) that his idea of the “far right” is basically any conservative Evangelical or Trump voter. Really?
5. In any case, McClellan can’t help but smuggle in the whole “the Founding Fathers were misogynist” dig (ridiculous) and the ludicrous claim that people like Bachmann think that the Constitution “is inspired Scripture,” but really would have opposed the Constitution had they been alive at the time. Really? I’ll be honest. I grew up in Evangelicalism and have come across quite a few nutty Christians from time to time—I’ve never met anyone claim that the United States Constitution WAS SCRIPTURE. And what objective fact or “data” can McClellan point to that shows people like Bachmann would have opposed the Constitution? That is just a bizarre assertion made by a guy who likes to paint himself as some kind of “objective” scholar, one who insists on “data over dogma,” but who can’t see that his own particular “dogma” causes him to interpret his beloved “data” in the same, predictable way, time and time again.
6. And one final thing that struck me as odd. In the beginning of his comments about the Bachmann video, he says her comments are based on that article. But then at the end of his video, McClellan says Bachmann has probably never read that article. I’m sorry, but if that’s the case, then how can her comments be based on an article that she has never read?

Bottom line, what irritates me about guys like McClellan is what irritates me about a number of recent “online talking heads/scholars.” They claim to be objective and reasonable; they are always claiming that all “conservatives,” or “Evangelicals,” or just “Christians” are fool-hearty rubes who are frothing at the mouth insane. Then they pick the lowest of low-hanging fruit and try to convince their audience that that is representative of Christianity, but they can’t see how their own biases and agendas completely twist and distort their own take on “the data” and the facts.  

I don’t care if you are conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, right-leaning or left-leaning, Christian, agnostic, atheist or other. But if you let yourself be suckered by drivel like this, I don’t know what to say. It strikes me as so shallow, so pathetically bad, and so juvenile, it finally got me to stay up late to write this silly little blog post. (P.S., for the love of Zeus, Dan, back away from the camera just a smidge! Good Lord.)