A college psychology professor's observations about public policy, mental health, sexual identity, and religious issues
I don’t think I need to add much to this New York Times article. Note who is “running strong.”
HNN is accepting nominations for history books that nobody should take seriously. Do you have a book in mind? Send an email to [email protected]. Next week readers will vote on the nominees to name the least credible history book in print!
I have some ideas. Want to share yours?
While you’re at it, check out HNN…
David Barton will be on the 700 Club today and although the video is not yet available, a summary of his appearance is on the 700 Club website. He is supposed to talk about Jefferson and says falsely that Jefferson was an active member of the Virginia Bible Society, that he financed a Bible edition in 1798, and that he demonstrated interest in bringing Christianity to Indians. He will apparently also discuss the Jefferson Bible.
Under the church and state section, the narrative refers to the 1947 Emerson v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that applied the Establishment Clause to the states. Barton has an interesting reading of the case:
In 1947 in Emerson v Board of Education (sic), the Supreme Court announced it would reverse this historic meaning and ruled that a school in Illinois had made the mistake of allowing voluntary religious activities by students, a practice that had characterized American education for the previous three centuries.
In fairness, perhaps the narrative was written by someone else who got the name of the case and the state wrong. Everson actually upheld a New Jersey public school board’s policy of providing transportation to Catholic schools for children in their district. You can read that decision here.
Probably Illinois came into the picture due to Barton’s criticism of McCollum vs. Board of Education decided in 1948. That case was in Illinois and related to religious instruction being offered in the public school. You can read that case here.
A prime finding of that decision was:
This utilization of the State’s tax supported public school system and its machinery for compulsory public school attendance to enable sectarian groups to give religious instruction to public school pupils in public school buildings violates the First Amendment of the Constitution, made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Even though the classes were voluntary, the school organized the religion classes to the degree that the court believed religion was being established. Barton says that these decisions reversed all prior practice. Not quite. See this case for a much earlier state case where the schools were not permitted to include mandatory Bible readings.
Rolling over in their grave, they are…
I wonder if Thomas Jefferson provides commentary on some of the books. Prior to the book of Revelation, Jefferson could enlighten readers with this little gem:
It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the book of Revelation] and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams. I was therefore well pleased to see in your first proof sheet that it was said to be not the production of St John but of Cerinthus a century after the death of that apostle. Yet the change of the author’s name does not lessen the extravagances of the composition and come they from whomsoever they may I cannot so far respect them as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events past or subsequent. There is not coherence enough in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas. You will judge therefore from this how impossible I think it that either your explanation or that of any man in the heavens above or on the earth beneath can be a correct one. What has no meaning admits no explanation and pardon me if I say with the candor of friendship that I think your time too valuable and your understanding of too high an order to be wasted on these paralogisms. You will perceive I hope also that I do not consider them as revelations of the Supreme Being whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to Him a pretension of revelation couched at the same time in terms which He would know were never to be understood by those to whom they were addressed. In the candor of these observations I hope you will see proofs of the confidence esteem and which I entertain for you.
USA Today weighs in a bit on The Jefferson Lies.
I talked about Robert Carter in a prior post. Carter set in motion a plan to free his slaves beginning on August 1, 1791. Fresh from the Northumberland District Court in Heathsville, Virginia, I have copies of the Deed of Gift which Carter filed on August 1, 1791. I will pull out a couple of pieces of it and then provide links to all the pages which you can click through to review.
David Barton wrote in The Jefferson Lies that Thomas Jefferson was unable to free his slaves due to Virginia law. However, in Getting Jefferson Right, we demonstrate that Virginia law changed in 1782 to allow emancipation both during an owner’s life and at his death. The law was in effect for 24 years until it was modified in 1806 to make manumission more complicated for the slaves.
It is one thing to examine the law, but it is another thing to see the law in application. Robert Carter, a wealthy plantation owner who also sat on the Governor’s Council, submitted a deed, in accord with the law, on September 5, 1791. The process would take years and involve other people Carter appointed when he left Virginia.
Carter wrote the Deed of Gift on August 1, 1791 and included a list of 452 of his slaves covering all or part of five pages. Slaves over age 45 would be handled in another manner. Page one is here so you can see the format of the deed:
First, Carter introduced the list, then provided a listing of his plantations and finally a list of his slaves by name, age and location.
The next three pages contained an inventory of human beings and then on the fifth page of the deed, Carter provided his rationale and legal basis for the emancipation.
This section is quite important so I type it out here for easier reading (start at the red slash at the end of the first line):
And whereas I have for some time past been convinced that to retain them [slaves] in slavery is contrary to the true principles of Religion & Justice, that therefore it was my Duty to manumit them, if it could be accomplished without infringing the laws of my Country, without being of disadvantage to my neighbors & the Community at large: And whereas the General Assembly for the Commonwealth of Virginia did in the year seventeen hundred eighty two enact a Law entitled “an Act to authorize the manumission of slaves” now be it remembered that the said Robert do under the said Act for myself my heirs my Executors & administrators emancipate from slavery all such my slaves in the aforesaid Schedule (as are under the age of forty-six years) but in a manner & form as hereafter particularly mentioned & set forth.
Virginia law set age restrictions on manumissions and the older slaves would be handled differently. However, this document provides clear reference to the Virginia law passed in 1782 which allowed Carter to do what he listed here.
As recently as last week, David Barton told a radio audience that Jefferson could not free his slaves due to Virginia law. I don’t know how long it will take for someone in the Christian community to hold him accountable for this but the evidence is here that he is wrong.
Some have asked me why this matters. First of all, I would like to think that Christian leaders would not want to put out falsehoods. Second, I recently spoke to an African American pastor who told me that Barton’s whitewash of Jefferson’s record is offensive to him and his colleagues. According to this pastor, lifting up Jefferson as an abolitionist and civil rights champion hinders racial reconciliation within the greater Christian community.
Robert Carter’s entire Deed of Gift (click the links)
Page one, two, three, four, five, & six.
For more on Jefferson and slavery as well as other matters covered in David Barton’s recent book, see Getting Jefferson Right.