( CNN ) -- Will Bunch 's CNN.com tirade earlier this week against television host Glenn Beck and David Barton -- the founder and president of WallBuilders , a national pro-family organization that emphasizes history 's `` moral , religious and constitutional heritage '' -- for allegedly creating `` pseudo history '' reveals more about Mr . Bunch than it does about what Mr. Beck and Mr. Barton are presenting . Mr . Bunch seems , above all , to be annoyed that many people are no longer staying on the liberal plantation of secularized American history . He offers little in the way of examples of error , just differences of opinion , such as his own assertion about `` the much-debunked idea that America 's creation was rooted in Christianity . '' Much debunked ? That would have been news to many of the Founding Fathers , whose biblical understanding of man as created in the image of God informed their insistence in the Declaration of Independence that people have `` unalienable rights '' to `` life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness . '' This was tempered by the biblically informed idea that man is prone to sin . In the Federalist Papers , No . 51 , for example , James Madison wrote , `` But what is government itself , but the greatest of all reflections on human nature ? If men were angels , no government would be necessary . '' Therefore , any government formed by men needs checks and balances to avoid tyranny . On a more elementary level , the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution were mostly Christian . You can look it up . Bunch complains that , `` In April , Barton told Beck 's 3 million TV viewers that 'we use the Ten Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world [ and it ] has been for 2,000 years . ' `` Glenn Beck rewrites civil rights history . Perhaps this is why the Ten Commandments numerals are represented at the bottom of a door to the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom and why Moses , revered as the lawgiver to Jews in the Hebrew bible , and Christians in the New Testament , appears holding two tablets elsewhere in the Supreme Court building . He appears between the Chinese philosopher Confucius and Solon , the Athenian statesman -- at the center of a frieze of historic lawgivers on the building 's East Pediment . Moses is also among an array of lawgiver figures depicted over the Court 's chamber . Tellingly , Mr . Bunch does not dispute the accuracy of the quotes that Mr. Barton cites that spell out a Christian understanding of law and man among some of the Founding Fathers . In a letter to Thomas Jefferson , written 37 years after the Declaration of Independence , John Adams wrote : `` The general principles , on which the Fathers achieved independence , were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young gentlemen could Unite . ... And what were these general Principles ? I answer , the general Principles of Christianity , in which all these Sects were United : ... Now I will avow , that I then believe , and now believe , that those general Principles of Christianity , are as eternal and immutable , as the Existence and Attributes of God ; and that those Principles of Liberty , are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial , mundane System . '' John Jay , the first chief justice of the Supreme Court , wrote in a letter to a friend , `` Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers , and it is the duty , as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers . '' Mr . Bunch further complains that Barton `` gives less than short shrift to the real achievement of the Founders in separating church and state . '' I would argue that their real achievement was elsewhere . Their real achievement was far larger : creation of a unique , limited government with protections for the freedoms of religion , speech , press and assembly and protection of property rights , without which no freedom exists . The result was the most prosperous and freest nation in history . And property rights are endorsed throughout the Bible . The `` wall of separation between church & state , '' by the way , is not in the Constitution . It 's from a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury , Connecticut , Baptists , who were concerned that the national government would favor one Christian denomination over others . But Mr. Jefferson 's phrase has become a sacred totem used by activist judges to drive Christian symbols from the public square . The real reason that Mr . Bunch is so exercised is that the truth about America 's Christian founding is getting out , despite media hostility , politically correct schoolbooks and rising intolerance toward any public expression of faith -- unless it advances leftist goals . America is a unique beacon of freedom precisely because of its founders ' Christian perspective , which has protected the right of conscience and thus freedom of religion for Jews , Muslims , Hindus , Buddhists and nonbelievers . Try to identify another nation on Earth that similarly advanced individual rights without being influenced by Christianity . Beck and Barton are striking what Abraham Lincoln described in a different context as the `` mystic chords of memory . '' It makes perfect sense that many Americans are tuning in . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Robert Knight .
Bunch disputes ideas in opinion piece by Will Bunch about Glenn Beck , Robert Knight . Knight rejected idea of U.S. ' Christian roots , but there 's evidence for it , Knight says . Moses shown on some Supreme Court friezes ; some founders wrote of Christian principles . Knight : U.S. unique in advancing individual rights because of its Christian ethic .