Maybe I had heard of him before, but my real introduction to
David Barton came at the annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention in
the fall of 2004. Barton (b. 1954), who is not a Baptist nor from Missouri, was
the keynote speaker at the final session of that convention. It didn’t take me
long, though, to disagree with what I heard Barton say.
It was mainly with regard to his views on the separation of Church and State that I thought that Barton was “barking up the wrong tree,” to use an old Midwest idiom. (You can find some of my criticism of his ideas in “Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s Attitude toward Religious Freedom,” the sixth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism.)
It was mainly with regard to his views on the separation of Church and State that I thought that Barton was “barking up the wrong tree,” to use an old Midwest idiom. (You can find some of my criticism of his ideas in “Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s Attitude toward Religious Freedom,” the sixth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism.)
Barton’s newest book is The
Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas
Jefferson (2012). Unfortunately for Barton, his book, which had become a
bestseller, contains so much questionable material (so many lies?) that the
publisher decided last month to cease publishing it.
According to Barton, “Lie #1” about Thomas Jefferson is that
he fathered Sally Hemings’ children. He concludes that there is “absolutely no historical, factual, or
scientific evidence to tarnish the sexual morality of Jefferson” (p. 193).
However, even though Barton twice cites the Thomas Jefferson
Foundation (TJF) Research Committee Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemings (2000), he fails to mention that according to their website the TJF and
“most historians believe that, years
after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ six
children.”
But I am not all that concerned about whether or not
Jefferson fathered Sally’s children. As always, it is a politician’s public
positions, not his/her private life, that is of greatest importance.
Of all the “lies” Barton discusses, I am most interested in
“Lie #5: Thomas Jefferson Advocated a Secular Public Square through the
Separation of Church and State.” There Barton claims, among other things, that
the whole “history of the separation
doctrine centered around preventing the State from taking control of the Church.
. . . Throughout history, it had not been the Church that had seized the State
but just the opposite” (p. 121).
But state churches and church-dominated states have
persecuted minorities through the years. Catholic states in Europe persecuted
Jews and “heretics” by the Inquisition, the Reformed Church influenced the
Zurich city council to persecute the Anabaptists, the Anglican Church as the
established church in England persecuted the Nonconformists (as well as
Catholics), the Anglican-dominated colony of Virginia persecuted Baptists
(among others), and so on.
Then there is the whole question of the freedom from
religion, which Barton and his supporters seem to be opposed to. His desire to
protect the privileged status of Christianity and to suppress the equality of
non-Christians in American society seems to be the main reason for his calling
the separation of church and state a myth (as he has done through the years; he
authored a book first published in 1989 under the title The Myth of Separation).
Religious freedom, though, must be for all people and must
also include freedom from religion. For that reason, I strongly favor the
proper separation of Church and State (as I believe Jefferson did). That
doesn’t necessitate the separation of faith and politics, but it certainly does
mean freedom of, or freedom from, religion for all citizens.
Note #1: Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter’s Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking
Claims about Our Third President has recently been published to rebut
Barton’s book.
Note #2: I have recently been involved in an ad-hoc group seeking
to revitalize the Kansas City chapter of Americans United for the Separation of
Church and State.
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Just last evening I was in a book group that discussed briefly what sort of psychology is at work in the minds of the Holocaust deniers. It occurred to me while reading this blog posting that something similar is going on in the minds of Mr. Barton and the readers of his book. "The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements." (quote from Wikipedia) It's obvious to me that Mr Barton's methodology of history is to start with a predetermined conclusion and ignore extensive historical evidence to the contrary. It follows that readers who share his view of the way history should be will enthusiastically buy and read his book. It is to the publisher's credit that they have taken an admirable and principled stand to stop publication of a book that obviously was selling well.
ReplyDeleteClif, thanks for your significant comments. Unfortunately, there seem to be many people who, like Barton, start with a predetermined conclusion and ignore evidence to the contrary.
DeleteI would add an "amen" to Cliff's comments, and appreciate his mentioning of cognitive dissonance. I'm so damn naive, I don't have a clue as to why an intelligent person would concoct a book as Barton has done. Thanks, Leroy, for exposing this, and I was pleased to hear about the publisher withdrawing it. I'm convinced, though I haven't done the empirical spade work to justify it, that America's founding parents disestablished religion because it had been divisive and had used the state to oppress minorities. We need to remember that, while most of them didn't want a monarchy because of the potential for abuse by an absolute power, they were also deeply suspicious of democracy because of the potential for abuse by a majority.
ReplyDeleteAnton, I appreciate your comments--and especially your final sentence. For all our the praise we tend to give to democracy in this country, there is not enough attention given, I'm afraid, to how it does have "the potential for abuse" of minority groups by the majority who enjoy power and/or privilege.
DeleteUnfortunately, Barton isn't the only one trying to rewrite history, and even more unfortunately, many are buying the rewrite because it fits their current political agendas. Incidentally, I was a respondent to a presentation made here at Samford University to the book by William Hyland entitled, " In Defense of Thomas Jefferson: The Sally Hemmings Sex Scandal." I know that wasn't the main thrust of your article. My topic was "What DNA Can Tell Us." (Here is a link to the powerpoint slides: http://faculty.samford.edu/~djohnso2/YDNA.ppt) Although I concluded that we cannot say unequivocally that TJ was the father of Hemings child, we can say very conclusively that it was a male Jefferson, and the only possible candidates are TJ, his brother, and his father, I believe. Hyland was arguing the case for reasonable doubt that Jefferson was the father, and I'm not sure he made it. The supporting circumstantial evidence definitely points to TJ, in my opinion. The DNA evidence showed it was either he, his father, or his brother.
ReplyDeleteDave, thanks for posting your comments; it was good to hear from you again. Thanks, too, for posting the link to the PowerPoint presentation; I enjoyed looking at it just now.
DeleteIn light of the evidence, such as you present, it is remarkable that the first "lie" that Barton sought to expose in his book was that of TJ being the father of Sally's children.
A Thinking Friend, who has been a first-class scholar for many decades, wrote,
ReplyDelete"Amen! Why Barton has any credibility is beyond my ability to comprehend!"
Truett Baker, a Thinking Friend in Arizona, wrote,
ReplyDelete"You are right on target with Barton and Thomas Jefferson! As I have pointed out in my book, 'Church-State Cooperation Without Domination, though Jefferson was a deist, he was friendly toward religion. He attended church that was held in government buildings in Washington, and at one time invited John Leland to preach in a worship service held in Congress. When he was president, he allowed continued support, initially started by the French, for the Ursuline Sisters home for children following the Louisiana Purchase. His support of religion disallowed domination or coercion of any kind. European and American histories are full of examples of church and state cooperating without either dominating the other."
Truett, thanks for allowing me to share your comments.
DeleteThe examples of church dominating the state or the state dominating the church are often called to our attention, but it is important to realize that there are also many examples of cooperation without one dominating the other.
A free church in a free state is the goal, and perhaps that that expression is better than "separation of church and state."
A Thinking Friend shared “an unfortunate experience” that centered on David Barton. My TF heard Barton speak at the college where he (my TF) was teaching at the time—but he walked out, disgusted, before Barton finished his chapel talk.
ReplyDeleteWhen asked by some students about some of Barton’s statements, my TF told them that “a great many of his statements were either distortions, very incomplete, or—most often—outright lies.” The dean of the college got word of what my TF had said, so he ended up being called by the dean and asked to explain to the students that he “had been misunderstood” and to apologize for the “attack on Mr. Barton’s integrity.”
My TF wrote, “I declined to apologize and offered to attend a forum for all students in which the validity of Mr. Barton’s statements could be discussed.” Such a forum did not materialize, however.
This same TF also wrote, “By the way, DNA evidence has made it clear beyond any reasonable doubt that Jefferson did in fact father most and probably all of Sally Hemings’ children. Even the most die-hard Jefferson apologists who have the slightest shred of academic respectability have conceded the point and moved on. Barton is an embarrassment to the historical profession in which he still apparently claims membership.”
Let me start with a link to "A Conservative History of the United States" on The New Yorker website from September 19:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2012/09/a-conservative-history-of-the-united-states.html
After you get your chuckles, note that comments after the article include a few counter-gottchas. Apparently everyone has blind spots.
I graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Annandale, Virginia, so I have a special interest in President Jefferson. He was a man of his time and place, and I would be very surprised if it were ever shown he was not the father of Sally Hemings' children. Jefferson's own beloved wife died at an early age, leaving him a young widower who had one amazing reminder of his deceased wife, her half-sister Sally, a slave who came into his estate with his wife. Check it out in Wikipedia!
Needless to say, this is mind-blowing information for many people. For the rest of us, it is a great place to sit down and do some serious thinking. Perhaps a place to start is this, of the four children of Sally who reached adulthood, Jefferson set every one of them free. Sally remained with jefferson until he died. She was finally freed by her niece, and Jefferson's daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."
Craig, thanks for your comments -- and for the link to the "New Yorker" article that I just now read. It would be pretty funny if it were not for the fact that so many people in this country believe the outlandish things that were included in that "History."
DeleteDr. Will Adams, retired professor of political science at William Jewell College asked me to post the following comments for him.
ReplyDelete"Of course you are right. After the Protestant Reformation split Christendom, European wars were often justified (though NOT caused) by a desire to prove a particular faith is the true one.
"After the hundred years war, a sort of settlement was reached by agreement on the principle, 'Cujus regio, ejus religio' (whose territory, his religion). This meant that the people should adopt the faith of the monarch or prince. This caused unrest when a Protestant prince succeeded a Catholic one, or vice versa.
"Against this idea, most American colonies established a church, and often a religious test for holding public office. The sole exception was Rhode Island, where Roger Williams, who fled the Massachusettes Bay Colony (John Cotton, Cotton Mather, John Winrhrop) to avoid religious suppression, allowed no established church and guaranteed freedom of religion for all.
"In Virginia, Jefferson got support from Baptists and others to adopt the Rhode Island model. When the Constitution was ratified 1787-89 by several states on condition that a Bill of Rights be added, the First Amendment included as its first provision the dual guarantee of no establishment and freedom of religion.
"Most of the founding fathers were deists, not Christians. This school of thought was friendly towards religion generally, and sought no governmentally guaranteed advantage for any faith.
"We are all entitled to our own opinion; none of us is entitled to our own facts!"
Dr. Adams, thanks much for your substantial comments!
DeleteHello there! I noticed that your Rss of this site is working in a right way, did you somehow complete all the properties by yourself or you just turned to the original settings of the widget?
ReplyDeleteI didn't do anything at all for making RSS feeds. But I had a huge number of "pageviews" yesterday, and wondered why. It must have been related to RSS feeds (that I didn't have anything to do with.)
ReplyDelete