Beck 'historian' David Barton: Bible will 'get rid of' PTSD if soldiers are God's warriors

A spokesperson from the Southern Baptist Convention lashed out at a so-called “historian” who radio host Glenn Beck hired to teach at his online university after he interpreted a Bible passage to mean that members of the armed forces who were fighting on the side of God could not suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

In a Veteran's Day appearance on Believer’s Voice of Victory, televangelist Kenneth Copeland told "historian" David Barton that Numbers 32 said that soldiers "shall return and be guiltless before the Lord" and that meant that they wouldn't have PTSD.

"You don't take drugs to get rid of it, it doesn't take psychology; that promise right there will get rid of it," he said, pointing at the Bible.

"What we're talking about, getting rid of the PTSD, guys who have been through battle, they need to understand that soldier's promise, you come back guiltless before God and the nation," Barton agreed.

"You're on an elevated platform up here, you're a hero, you're put in the faith hall of fame if you take this [Bible]," he added. "We used to in the pulpit understand the difference between a just war and an unjust war. And there's a biblical difference, and when you do it God's way, not only are you guiltless for having done that, you're esteemed."

Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission spokesperson Joe Carter told Religion News Service this week that Barton and Copeland had a track record of being "profoundly ignorant about theology and history."

"But for them to denigrate the suffering of men and women traumatized by war — and to claim biblical support for their callow and doltish views — is both shocking and unconscionable," Carter insisted. “Rather than downplaying the pain of PTSD, they should be asking God to heal our brothers and sisters.”

Watch this video, uploaded on Nov. 12, 2013.

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)