Author: Warren Throckmorton

David Barton Says 4 Professors Criticized The Jefferson Lies; He Forgot Some

Facts are pesky.
On July 19, Steve Deace interviewed David Barton (at 24:12 in hour 3) in Iowa after the big political confab there with Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Deace asked Barton to describe the controversy over The Jefferson Lies (now approaching a year ago). He also asked if there was any substance to the criticism.
Barton said a bunch of stuff he usually says about it (e.g., publisher Thomas Nelson got scared of the scary professors, etc.). Then he said:

You’ve got about 6,000 universities in America and they found four professors who criticized what I did. Well, 6,000 universities, you probably have 60,000 professors and they found four who didn’t like it.

Well, we all know who two of them are. But just four? I think he forgot some. Last August, World Magazine reported that Jay Richards assembled 10 Christian professors who expressed a negative response to the book.  Then there was Clay Jenkinson, and Martin Marty, and John Fea, and Paul Harvey, and Regent University’s Chuck Dunn, and Greg Forster, and Gregg Frazer and Steven Green. And then there were the 650 voters in the History News Network poll who helped Barton squeak out the Least Credible History Book in Print designation, just beating out Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” Then more recently, 34 Christian history and social science professors approached Family Research Council about the Capitol Tour video (which FRC removed from view due to the errors).
Please note that most of the people referred to in this post are evangelical Christians.
Christian publisher Thomas Nelson’s reasons for pulling the book were expressed in World’s report:

The publisher “was contacted by a number of people expressing concerns about [The Jefferson Lies].” The company began to evaluate the criticisms, Harrell said, and “in the course of our review learned that there were some historical details included in the book that were not adequately supported. Because of these deficiencies we decided that it was in the best interest of our readers to stop the publication and distribution.”

Need to refresh your memory? See the World coverage here and here
UPDATE: Readers have reminded me of some additional historian/professors who have had negative things to say about The Jefferson Lies. Let’s add Daniel Dreisbach, Kevin Gutzman, and James Stoner, and Miles Mullin and John David Wilsey and Randall J. Stephens and Karl W. Giberson. 

P.S. He still is completely botching the Jefferson Bible…
P.P.S. Are you a professor? Email or tweet to add your name, or leave your name in the comments.
English prof Jeff Sharlet and Religious Studies prof Julie Ingersoll have added their names to the “four.”
Add History professors Jared Burkholder, Jay Case, Brenda Schoolfield, Keith Beutler, Joseph Moore, Scott Culpepper, Bobby Griffith, Paul Fessler, Jason Dikes, Chris Gehrz, Chris Cantwell, Jonathan Wilson, Alan Snyder, Glenn Sunshine, Philip Perdue, and Rachel Larson, and also Religious Studies profs Michael J. Altman and P.C. Kemeny to the list of profs. Independent historian Michael Miles concurs.
Glad to add Yoni Appelbaum, GCC colleague Dan Brown (the entire GCC history dept is included in the 34 profs who wrote to FRC), math prof Sharon McCathern, Environmental Ethics prof Bron Taylor and English prof Steve Roberts.
UPDATE: Steve Deace posted my rebuttal to Barton.

Institute on the Constitution: Bringing Puritan Back

Thursday nights at 8:00pm (eastern), the National Religious Broadcasting Network is showing the Constitution course developed by the Institute on the Constitution.  A version of the IOTC’s course was planned as a public offering by the Springboro (OH) School District from July through September but was canceled at the last minute due to complaints from community members.
Unlike the Ohio course, the NRB broadcast version does not include David Barton or John Eidsmoe. Rather, IOTC co-founder Michael Peroutka and pastor David Whitney teach this version of the course. In prior posts, I have pointed out that Peroutka is a board member of the League of the South and Whitney is the chaplain of the Maryland chapter of the League.
I watched session two of the course last Thursday. The session was about the influence of Puritan political theory on the founders and the religious views of the founders.  In this post, I want to make a few observations about Peroutka’s views of the Puritans.
In the first part of the session, Peroutka discusses what he believes are contributions of the Puritans to American law and government. Generally, he attempted to draw a straight line from the Puritans to the American Constitution. For instance early in the program, he said, “Civil government has jurisdiction over our actions but not our conscience. Conscience is between God and man.” Peroutka claims this principle comes from the Puritans. However, in my opinion, his effort to find liberty of conscience in the Puritan theory of government fails because he ignores what the Puritan government did.
While it may have been fashionable at one time to link the Puritans to liberty (and some Puritans did speak about “liberty of conscience” — e.g., British clergy William Perkins), a review of basic events will contradict that notion. It is well documented that non-Puritans were not well tolerated in Massachusetts. For instance, Roger Williams was exiled to Rhode Island and set up real religious freedom there.  Of course, there is problem of the witch trials. Furthermore, Quakers were often tortured and sometimes killed for their beliefs.
For instance in the Annals of Salem, this order was passed in 1661:

May 22d. General Court sat. Wm Hathorne and Edmund Batter were Deputies. The former was chosen first reserve Commissioner for the Colony. The Court order that Quakers when discovered shall be made bare from the middle upwards tied to a cart and whipped through the town towards the boundary of Massachusetts, and if returning, that they shall be similarly punished with the addition that some them shall be branded with an R on their left shoulder, and if coming back a third time that they be banished on pain of death.

Pain of death had already visited dissenters prior to the Salem edict. The Boston Martyrs were four Quakers who were executed for their beliefs beginning in 1659. Eventually the British King stopped the executions in 1661.
Nineteenth century historian, George Edward Ellis described the Puritan view of “liberty of conscience:”

The inane assertion, so often flippantly repeated that the Massachusetts colonists came here to seek and to provide a field for the enjoyment of liberty of conscience, and then proved faithless to their profession by securing the right for themselves and denying it to others is simply false to all the facts of the case. What is now really meant by the phrase liberty of conscience was something which those Puritans regarded with shuddering abhorrence. It might with much more truth be said that the leaders of the colony came here to be rid of the liberty of conscience, which was working and showing its fruits in England as will appear on our future pages. Nor is it an adequate interpretation of their errand here to say that they were seeking liberty even for their own consciences. That liberty was already pledged and fettered put under bonds and limitations it was held in subjection to a stern and exacting rule of life and duty found not in their own thinkings and willings but in the Word of God. This complete abnegation of the privilege and license which we associate with liberty of conscience must be kept in mind in all our reading about the beliefs and doings of these Puritans. Fallen and wrecked as in their belief the nature of man was, they would not entertain the thought that any one, however earnest he might be, could find his rule within his own resources of thinking and believing. They read the sentence repeated several times in the Book of Judges that in the lack of any supreme authority every man did that which was right in his own eyes as equivalent to saying that he did what was wrong in the eyes of everybody else.

During the session, Peroutka uses the topic of  liberty of conscience to condemn hate crimes legislation. He says several times, “There is no such thing as a hate crime.” He adds that you can’t punish thoughts and opinions. However, his Puritans did. The Puritans passed laws regulating life in minute and intrusive ways. Contrary to Peroutka’s claims that the Puritans gave us liberty of conscience, consider the Cambridge Platform of 1648. The following principles promote the state regulation of private religious belief and action:

It is the duty of the magistrate to take care of matters of religion and to improve his civil authority for the observing of the duties commanded in the first as well as for observing of the duties commanded in the second table [of the Ten Commandments]. They are called gods. The end of the magistrate’s office is not only the quiet and peaceable life of the subject in matters of righteousness and honesty, but also in matters of godliness, yea of all godliness. (p 84)
Idolatry, blasphemy, heresy, venting corrupt and pernicious opinions that destroy the foundation, open contempt of the Word preached, profanation of the Lord’s day, disturbing the peaceable administration and exercise of the worship and holy things of God, and the like are to be restrained and punished by civil authority. (p, 85)
If any church, one or more, shall grow schismatical, rending itself from the communion of other churches or shall walk incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt way of their own contrary to the rule of the Word, in such case the magistrate is to put forth his coercive power as the matter shall require.  (p 85)

Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts because he “broached & dyvulged dyvers newe & dangerous opinions against the authoritie of magistrates” Anne Hutchinson was banished due to her beliefs about worship. Clearly the Puritans in power punished thoughts and opinions.
Actually, a more interesting aspect of Puritan history is the transition from theocratic impulses to the American revolution. The people in the colonies went a long way from state religion and control to a Constitution which contained no meaningful religious reference and no religious test for office. Peroutka’s Constitution course completely misses this, apparently because he wants to teach American law and government as a Puritan invention.
In the next post, I will address Peroutka’s thoughts on the religious beliefs of the founders. They are quite Barton-like and so it is familiar ground.
 

How Racial Politics "Helps" and Hurts the GOP

For the GOP, how important is  Rand Paul’s aide Jack Hunter’s involvement in the League of the South and neo-Confederate causes? I wrote earlier this week that the League’s leaders are in a messy divorce with the GOP but perhaps I spoke too soon. At the state level, linking up with secessionists might be viewed as a necessary strategy. So says editor of the SC Charleston City Paper, Chris Haire. Haire published a number of Jack Hunter’s columns prior to Hunter’s employment with Paul. Haire says he published Hunter’s columns to depict the real state of affairs in the SC GOP. He then opines:

I believe my intentions are pretty clear: This is what Republicans are in South Carolina, and at the national level they still continue to court racists and Lost Causers. Deeply entrenched racism is all but destroying the GOP at the national level while it continues to help them at the statewide level.

I think he could be right. Segue to this Atlantic column by Michael Wear for a look at the evangelical input on immigration reform. Clearly racism and alliances with secessionists and anti-immigration elements will hurt the GOP outside the South and in national elections but could be the face of certain GOP state organizations. Just to be clear, when I say “helps,” I mean in the pragmatic sense that candidates who claim to be protecting whites in some way bring  voters to the GOP side. In my view, this strategy is inherently self-defeating.
In the near term, the immigration reform debate chronicled in Wear’s column could signal a shift in GOP politics. If the House GOP members get this wrong, they risk closing the door to minorities and losing a segment of evangelicals as well.
 

Springboro Confederate Flag Waving, League of the South Defender Says He Was Misunderstood

This is why it is good to shine light in dark places.
Defending the indefensible often leads to backpeddling.
In actuality, Sonny Thomas, the fellow who showed up at the Springboro School Board meeting and defended the Constitution course written by a League of the South board member didn’t back off much. He now says he was trying make a point about symbolism. I guess in a way he did what he set out to do. However, the symbolism which most people associate with the Confederate flag is repulsive.  He acknowledged that most people viewed it as racist, a sentiment which was confirmed in the Cincinnati.com article by Cincinnati area minister, Damon Lynch.
Not sure how Sonny’s reframing of the situation will sit with his ideological peers. On at least one white nationalist blog, he was getting cheers for his efforts. Occidental Dissent posted a link to the Daily Caller article on the subject with the headline, “Go, Sonny, Go.” According to the blogger, Sonny was in attendance at the unabashedly white nationalist Council for Conservative Citizens 2013 conference.
Kelly Kohls, president of the school board, told me in an email that she was surprised by Thomas’ remarks. She told me that board policy allows prearranged speakers to talk about whatever they want to talk about for three minutes. She said she felt between “a rock and a hard place” because she disagreed with his message but also worried about a free speech lawsuit if she shut him down.
Looking into Thomas’ background, it is hard to see how his remarks were surprising. This is not his first national media rodeo. In 2010, he was in the news for making disparaging remarks regarding Hispanics via twitter.  There were ripples throughout the tea party world; for instance, James Traficant and others pulled out of a Springboro tea party event due to Thomas’ involvement.