david barton – Page 42 – Warren Throckmorton

Why the Aitken Bible Story is So Important to Glenn Beck and David Barton

Reinventing the Aitken Bible story is very important to Glenn Beck and David Barton. America as a covenant nation is important for different reasons for both men and the myth of Congress printing the Bible fits right in to their world view. However, as has been shown many times, the story is not what they make it out to be.

In his recent talk to Fellowship Church, Glenn Beck began his false narrative about Aitken’s Bible by shouting, “Don’t let anybody tell you we are not a Christian nation because are absolutely a Christian nation!” Then he incorrectly told the audience that Congress printed the first English language Bible in America. He ended the story by repeating the assertion that the U.S. is a Christian nation.

In a recent talk to Osborne Baptist Church, David Barton again implied that Congress wanted the Aitken Bible used in schools. Watch:

Barton finished his story about Aitken by saying.

The first English Bible was done in 1782, its got Congressional endorsement and its done for the use of schools? I thought the Founding Fathers didn’t want the Bible in schools. See, if you don’t know your history, you put up with policies you should never put up with. When you know your history, you have a different view of what public policy should be.

The point for both Barton and Beck is to influence people to think about America’s founding as a foundation for public policy now. Barton wants the Bible in schools so he makes up a story where Congress printed/endorsed (he has told the story both ways) a Bible for the use of schools. If the men who wrote the Constitution wanted the Bible in schools then it has to be Constitutional for the Bible to be used in schools now.

If the story is told straight then it isn’t as useful. It certainly could support the idea that the founders were friendly toward religion, but it doesn’t say anything about federal policy toward Bible reading in schools. If the rest of the story is told, then it isn’t as useful either. Aitken wanted Congress to appoint him as the official Bible printer, but Congress declined. He wanted his Bible to be the authorized Bible for the new republic, but Congress declined. Furthermore, Congress didn’t put a nickel of tax payer funding into the project.

When listening to either Beck or Barton speak, be aware that the history lessons may not be completely true and that the real object is to persuade you to believe something that isn’t true so you will do something you might not otherwise do.

David Barton Tells Half-Truth to the Wall Street Journal

David Barton just can’t stop it.
In a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Barton says his book, The Jefferson Lies, is “upcoming.” He also falsely says that Virginia state law prohibited Jefferson from emancipating his slaves.
On July 2, Fergus Bordewich wrote a review of two books on Thomas Jefferson. At least one of the books mentioned David Barton by name as an example of an author who elevated Jefferson to counterfactual heights. Barton was offended and so the WSJ allowed him space to defend himself (might require an account to read it all).
First, Barton defends Jefferson against the charge of having children with Sally Hemings. My reading of that material is that one cannot be sure about the truth. Barton is more sure of himself there than he should be.
It is intriguing that Barton calls The Jefferson Lies “upcoming.” Naturally, he failed to mention that another description of the book would be “removed from the shelves” or “debunked.” I have established that Simon & Schuster is not going to publish it so it is now a mystery who will publish the second coming of the book voted by History News Network readers as the least credible history book in print.
Regarding Jefferson and slavery, Barton sticks to his false claims about Virginia law. He says Virginia limited emancipation starting in 1691. In 1723, Barton says Virginia law prohibited freeing slaves. He is correct that in 1782 Virginia allowed emancipation but then takes us down a rabbit trail. He says slave owners had to provide income for young, old or infirm slaves. That sounds like all of them. However, slaves between 18 (females) or 21 (males) and 45 could be emancipated (see the case of Robert Carter who freed all of his slaves). Jefferson freed exactly two of his more than 200 slaves during that period of time, both members of the Hemings family. It not only was legal to do, Jefferson did it twice, and other slave owners freed some or all of their slaves.
Barton then does what he often does. He pulls out something true but fails to tell us when it was true. Barton said the 1782 law required freed slaves to leave the state. Not true. It was not until 1806 that the requirement to leave the state was added to Virginia law, and even then the legislature could exempt a slave upon request. Thus, there was a 24 year period where Jefferson could have freed his adult slaves to remain in Virginia.
In his WSJ defense, Barton reveled in author Andrew Burstein’s reference to him as a “self-taught historian.” In Barton’s case, self-taught means unable to self-correct. He is still making the same mistakes that caused Thomas Nelson to pull The Jefferson Lies from publication.

Glenn Beck and David Barton: More Evidence Congress Did Not Print the Aitken Bible

Both Glenn Beck and David Barton have said in public presentations that Congress printed the first English Bible in America (Aitken Bible). Most recently, Beck told Fellowship Church in Fort Worth TX that the first thing Congress did after we won the war for independence was to print a Bible.
Barton has recently backed off slightly from that claim that Congress printed the Bible, acknowledging that Aitken printed it but still falsely portraying Congress as endorsing the Bible for use in schools (see video below). Barton’s evolution on the issue came after years of criticism from observers outside and inside the church. He finally shifted his story a bit after a Family Research Council vice-president deleted a video of Barton’s tour of the Capitol during which he told the false story. Watch Barton’s two stories:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/6K5ofr-VBvI[/youtube]
At 2:37 into the clip above, Barton appears on Glenn Beck’s show and told Beck that Congress printed the Aitken Bible. Beck apparently has not gotten the memo that Barton misled him because Beck spread that same false story on July 5 to the Fellowship Church.
Barton’s presentations still contain misinformation. In June, Barton spoke to the Osborne Baptist Church in North Carolina. There he again told an Aitken Bible story. Watch:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/93zX5xz7V_4[/youtube]
Barton Still Embellishes the Story
This clip may get a post of its own but for now, I want to demonstrate that Barton is still embellishing the story and making it say something it doesn’t. In this clip, Barton says Congress authorized Aitken’s Bible for the use of schools. As I have pointed out, the Congress didn’t mention schools; Aitken did. Aitken would have been happy to have schools use it, or Congress buy it for soldiers, or, as the ad below suggests, customers buy it in bulk. He invested a lot in his Bibles and wanted people to buy them.
In the clip above, Barton said:

Within months of the final battle at Yorktown, a plan is proposed to print the first English Bible in America.

As I pointed out on Tuesday, Aitken approached Congress with a petition dated January 21, 1781, nine months before Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. Barton wants to make the listener think we won the war and then Congress cooked up the idea to print Bibles. However, note how he tells the tale in the passive voice; he says vaguely “a plan is proposed.” Yes, a plan was proposed, but not by a legislator and not after the war ended. Aitken told Congress in January 1781 that he

hath begun and made considerable progress in a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools,

The plan was proposed by Aitken, not Congress, and the plan was proposed nine months before the end of the war by a man who had already “made considerable progress.” Note that it was Aitken who told Congress that his Bible could be used in schools. Congress said nothing in response about it and the Congressional commendation did not mention schools at all. Barton tries to fool his listeners by taking Aitken’s words and putting them in Congressional mouths. Note that the ad below doesn’t mention anything about schools.
The ad below along with other evidence I have presented help to put the embellishments of Beck and Barton into some perspective. Aitken approached Congress with a proposal for them to review his work, and authorize his Bible as the version approved by government. Congress declined to make Aitken the official Bible vendor, nor did Congress take action to make his Bible the authorized version. Even though Aitken appears to be a Christian believer, he also needed to make back his investment as the ad below demonstrates.
This ad is dated August 11, 1782. Even though he had no Congressional commendation at the time of this ad, he announced that he would begin selling them in October. Aitken did not submit his Bible to Congress until September 9, 1782 with the proclamation dated September 12. He wanted a commendation (who wouldn’t?) but he didn’t need it because the Bible was not a project of Congress.

The top part of ad above is the identifying information from Early American Imprints. The rest of it is a solicitation from Robert Aitken offering to sell his Bible individually or in bulk at a discount. Below is a sample page from the Bible.
Aitken Bible Sample Page At some point, I hope someone else will ask Beck and Barton why they mislead their audiences with this story. In his Osborne Baptist speech, he says why he does it (listen to Barton near the end of the clip). He wants public policy to change to be in line with his preferences that public school children learn the Bible. He apparently thinks that twisting the Aitken Bible story helps his cause. As I have asserted before, I believe this deception is scandalous. It is a major story which is being mostly ignored by the Christian media and Christian leaders while Beck and Barton laugh all the way to the bank.

David Barton and Early Retirement: Actually Not a Bad Idea

David Barton is again claiming that living according to his understanding of the Bible will lead to a long life. This time the issue is retirement. He says since the Bible doesn’t talk about it, then Christians shouldn’t retire because it is a pagan concept. Watch:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/Fu_dNSvRLW4[/youtube]
He claims that Deuteronomy 6:24 promises good consequences to people who do what God wants us to do. So if there are negative consequences from some activity or practice (e.g., retirement) as demonstrated by science, then God must not want us to do it.
He then quotes unnamed actuaries as saying that people live 2.4 years past retirement on average. He says the statistics are there that show God did not design us for retirement.
Barton’s citation of 2.4 years is meaningless in absence of knowledge of the health status of the population involved or the average age of retirement in the population. Does this figure combine men and women? Blue-collar workers and people in professions? Furthermore, we don’t know how this figure compares to people who never retire. Misusing numbers, we could make Barton look pretty bad because those who never retire live zero years beyond retirement.
Studies of mortality and retirement are mixed, leaning in more recent work toward the finding that retirement has a beneficial effect on health and mortality. However, in some populations, people seem to have more trouble when they retire. I am going to look at two representative studies, one in favor of early retirement and the other demonstrating that retirement may lead to other problems which can shorten life.
The first study is titled “The Causal Effect of Retirement on Mortality: Evidence from Targeted Incentives to Retire Early” and was published in August 2013 (link). To help me understand the nuances of the study, I contacted co-author Jochem Zweerink at the University of Amsterdam. The study’s abstract says:

This paper identifies and estimates the impact of early retirement on the probability to die within five years, using administrative micro panel data covering the entire population of the Netherlands. Among the older workers we focus on, a group of civil servants became eligible for retirement earlier than expected during a short time window. This exogenous policy change is used to instrument the retirement choice in a model that explains the probability to die within five years. Exploiting the panel structure of our data, we allow for unobserved heterogeneity by way of individual fixed effects in modeling the retirement choice and the probability to die. We find for men that early retirement, induced by the temporary decrease in the age of eligibility for retirement benefits, decreased the probability to die within five years by 2.5 percentage points. This is a strong effect. We find that our results are robust to several specification changes.

In non-academic speak, Zweerink told me, “we indeed find that retirement has a beneficial effect on longevity.” He also told me that there is a positive effect on the spouse of men who retire early. Please note that this study included data on the entire population of the Netherlands.
On the flip side, there is a 2010 study by Andreas Kuhn and colleagues from the University of Zurich which finds some clues about why some studies might find negative consequences from retirement. This study’s abstract reads:

We estimate the causal effect of early retirement on mortality for blue-collar workers. To overcome the problem of negative health selection, we exploit an exogenous change in unemployment insurance rules in Austria that allowed workers in eligible regions to withdraw permanently from employment up to 3.5 years earlier than workers in non-eligible regions. For males, instrumental-variable estimates show that retiring one year earlier causes a significant 2.4 percentage points (about 13%) increase in the probability of dying before age 67. We do not find any adverse effect of early retirement on mortality for females. Our analysis of death causes suggests that male excess mortality is concentrated among three causes of deaths: (i) ischemic heart diseases (mostly heart attacks), (ii) diseases related to excessive alcohol consumption, and (iii) vehicle injuries. These causes account for 78 percent of the causal retirement effect (while accounting for only 24 percent of all deaths in the sample). About 32 percent of the causal retirement effect are directly attributable to smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.

This study examined the outcomes of early retirement on blue-collar workers in Austria. For these workers, retiring early is associated with earlier death for men but not women. Breaking the results down, it appears that early retirement gives some men more time to drink, smoke, eat bad food and get in car accidents (those all could be related). In other words, if you are thinking of retiring early so you can pursue an unhealthy lifestyle, then better to stay working. However, many other people retire because of pre-retirement health concerns and their demise can’t be blamed on retirement.
Reality isn’t as neat as David Barton’s poor exegesis of Deuteronomy 6:24. Those verses were given to Israel as a people and not you and me as individuals. And when one looks at all the data, the complexity is clear. For instance, in the Austrian study, women have different outcomes than men. Do the different outcomes mean that women can go against Barton’s interpretation of the Bible and do well, but men can’t?
Many studies show that retirement can be beneficial depending on what a person does. Many people retire from their job but don’t stop being active. They engage in more leisure if they have the means, but they often work part-time, or volunteer. I have been in churches where retirees carry on much of the work of the church because they have the time to do it. My plan is retire from teaching and then do something else. Maybe I’ll get a degree in history. I’ll surely have more time to debunk bad history if I am still interested in doing that then. If Barton never retires, then I will have no shortage of things to do.

Message to Glenn Beck and Fellowship Church: Congress Didn't Print the Aitken Bible

In addition to faulty theology, there are several glaring historical errors in Glenn Beck’s talk to Fellowship Church on July 5. Sadly, the audience is less knowledgeable now than before he spoke. Here is one example.
Glenn Beck told Fellowship Church that the first thing Congress did after the United States won the Revolutionary War was to print a Bible in English. Watch:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/cBgkSUILZEw[/youtube]
Transcript:

Don’t let anybody tell you we are not a Christian nation because we absolutely are a Christian nation. This is one of seven Bibles, three or four of them are held by the Smithsonian. Three are in private hands; extraordinarily rare. It’s called the Aitken Bible. This was the first thing Congress did when they started. We couldn’t print the Bible. So when we first established ourselves and we won the war, the first act was to print the Aitken Bible. When it was given to George Washington, he wept, and he said, ‘finally, a gift that is meaningful enough to give to the men that served by my side.’ We are a Christian nation. And we need to start behaving like a Christian nation, with love and respect, and take the beam out of our own eye before looking at the speck in someone’s else’s. We’re losing memberships in our churches because, stop talking about the things that the Bible tells us to do. Let’s start doing them!

It is ironic that Beck tells the audience to start doing what the Bible says just after he consistently bore false witness about the Aitken Bible.
Let me take Beck’s claims bit by bit.

It’s called the Aitken Bible. This was the first thing Congress did when they started. We couldn’t print the Bible. So when we first established ourselves and we won the war, the first act was to print the Aitken Bible.

Beck was holding up a copy of what appeared to be the Aitken Bible. It is rare and valuable. It is also true that the British prohibited Bibles printed in America. However, nothing he said after that is true. Congress did not print the Bible and the involvement with Aitken’s project was not initiated by Congress. Furthermore, the timing of Aitken’s request and Congressional response do not match Beck’s passionate claim. It most certainly is not the first thing Congress did after the United States won the war for independence.
Robert Aitken petitioned Congress in a letter dated January 21, 1781. He wanted the approval of Congress for a Bible he was printing and he wanted to be the official Bible printer of the United States. You can read his petition here and here. I have it below as well.

To the Honourable The Congress of the United States of America

The Memorial of Robert Aitken of the City of Philadelphia Printer

Humbly Sheweth

That in every well regulated Government in Christendom The Sacred Books of the Old and New Testament, commonly called the Holy Bible, are printed and published under the Authority of the Sovereign Powers, in order to prevent the fatal confusion that would arise, and the alarming Injuries the Christian Faith might suffer from the spurious and erroneous Editions of Divine Revelation. That your Memorialist has no doubt but this work is an Object worthy the attention of the Congress of the United States of America, who will not neglect spiritual security, while they are virtuously contending for temporal blessings.

Under this persuasion, your Memorialist begs leave to inform your Honours That he hath begun and made considerable progress in a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools, But being cautious of suffering his copy of the Bible to Issue forth without the sanction of Congress, Humbly prays that your Honors would take this important matter into serious consideration & would be pleased to appoint one Member or Members of your Honourable Body to inspect his work so that the same may be published under the Authority of Congress. And further, your Memorialist prays, that he may be commissioned or otherwise appointed & Authorized to print and vend Editions of the Sacred Scriptures, in such manner and form as may best suit the wants and demands of the good people of these States, provided the same be in all things perfectly consonant to the Scriptures as heretofore Established and received amongst us, And as in Duty bound your Memorialist shall ever pray

Robt. Aitken Philadelphia. 21, Jany. 1781.

Aitken appeared to be under the impression that the United States might operate like Britain and regulate the authorized version of the Bible. He wanted his Bible to be the one approved by the government. In addition, he wanted Congressional awareness and approval because it had been illegal to do what he was doing under British rule. In fact, the war had not yet been won when Aitken began his work. He had already printed the New Testament but wanted to finish the job. “Being cautious of suffering his copy of the Bible to Issue forth without the sanction of Congress,” Aitken didn’t want to do anything which Congress might oppose.
Cornwallis surrendered to the American forces on October 19, 1781 so Aitken’s petition came prior to the end of the war, not first thing after we won. Congress appointed a committee to interact with Aitken as he progressed on his project. Aitken sent a copy of his Bible to Congress on September 9, 1782. The Congressional proclamation about the Bible was dated September 12, 1782. . The treaty of Paris formally ending the war did not come until September 3, 1783. The proclamation from Congress is below in the first paragraph:

There is nothing in this proclamation about Congress as Bible printer. Congress clearly recognized Aitken as the author and recommended his work for religious and artistic achievement. It was Aitken’s idea, his work, his investment, and eventually his loss. He didn’t make money on the project, and because Congress didn’t fund the project, he offered the Bibles to George Washington with the suggestion, made by a friend, that Washington ask Congress to purchase Bibles for the troops who had fought in the war.
Beck embellished the story more by involving Washington. Beck claimed:

When it was given to George Washington, he wept, and he said, ‘finally, a gift that is meaningful enough to give to the men that served by my side.’

There is no record that Washington wept when Aitken’s friend, John Rodgers, requested that Washington asked Congress to buy copies of the Bible for his troops. Washington declined politely saying that most of the troops had gone home and so he couldn’t make such a request. Washington’s return letter on the subject indicated that he would liked to have given the troops a Bible but not in the manner claimed by Beck. Here is what Washington replied to Aitken’s friend, Rev. Rodgers.

Your proposition concerning Mr. Aikin’s Bibles would have been particularly noted by me, had it been suggested in season, but the late Resolution of Congress for discharging part of the Army, taking off near two thirds of our numbers, it is now too late to make the attempt. It would have pleased me well, if Congress had been pleased to make such an important present to the brave fellows, who have done so much for the security of their Country’s rights and establishment.

Beck’s quote from Washington is quite a dramatic embellishment as is most of what he had to say to Fellowship Church. Beck’s story about Congress and the Aitken Bible is false; his citation about Washington is highly inflated and misleading. Most people listening would go away thinking that the first thing Congress did after winning the war for independence was to use public funds to print a Bible and give it to the American troops with the heartfelt approval of George Washington.
Beck’s key story used to support the claim that the U.S. is a Christian nation turns out to be a fabrication.
Beck has to know this. It has been pointed out publicly by numerous writers. Even if somehow he has avoided reading the many debunkings of this story, the alternative isn’t much better. He is either knows the story is a fiction or he is a very, very bad historian. Fellowship Church’s spokesman told Christian Post that Beck was “unmatched” in his knowledge of history. If that is so, then Beck misled Fellowship Church on July 5 with knowledge aforethought.
If Glenn Beck and Ed Young want to honor the passionate plea Beck made to Fellowship Church to stop talking about the things the Bible says to do and to start doing them, then they need to come clean to the congregation and set the facts straight.
For more on the Aitken Bible lie and the involvement of Washington, see this Huffington Post article by Chris Rodda.