Category: history

David Barton on Real Life with Jack Hibbs: Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?

David Barton was on Calvary Chapel pastor Jack Hibbs’ show Real Life with Jack Hibbs last night. Part one is available on You Tube with apparently more to come. They didn’t get into much until near the end of this segment. At about 22 minutes into the video, Barton accuses others of using history to support an agenda. Then he illustrates how he revises the work of PhDs in history with original sources by citing his involvement in a 2011 book with Daryl Cornett, William Henard, and John Sassi titled, Christian America? Perspectives on our Religious Heritage. In that book, Daryl Cornett said about the University of Virginia:

At the University of Virginia there was no Christian curriculum and the school had no chaplain.

Barton cited that claim to Jack Hibbs. Watch:

Barton claims to have refuted Cornett by going to an original source. While it is true that the University of Virginia eventually created a chaplain position, this was not the case from the beginning of the school. Originally, UVA did not employ chaplains. Barton doesn’t tell you that scholars are concerned with the founding of the school and no academic historian I am aware of disputes that the school eventually added chaplains.
Barton tells Jack Hibbs that the claim about chaplains and the UVA is made in connection to Jefferson (who died in 1826). In addition, Barton says he has a newspaper from “that era” which contains an ad by the chaplain of UVA. However, what Barton does not tell Jack Hibbs is that Jefferson was long dead before that newspaper article was published in 1837. By not placing the events in proper context, Barton misleads the audience to think the existence of chaplains at UVA came when Thomas Jefferson was alive. Not so.
The claim about chaplains at UVA is also in Barton’s pulled-from-print book The Jefferson Lies and was one Michael Coulter and I addressed in our book Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President. To fully address Barton’s claim and our response to it, I have taken that section from our work on the 2nd edition of the book and made it into a pdf file for review.
Barton’s claim to correct academic historians is stunning. From the pdf, let me take just a bit of what Barton does to James Madison. From Getting Jefferson Right:

Another aspect of the chaplain story bears comment. Barton takes portions of a letter written by James Madison and selectively portrays the quote as an announcement about chaplains. Here again is what Barton quotes [from The Jefferson Lies] from Madison:

By 1829, when the nondenominational reputation of the university had been fully established, James Madison (who became rector of the university after Jefferson’s death in 1826) announced “that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by…services of clergymen.”

Rather than a public announcement or a policy change, Madison wrote those words in a May 1, 1828 letter to Chapman Johnson, one of the members of the university Board of Visitors. The actual quote depicts a completely different meaning than Barton implies. Here is the entire section of the letter, from which Barton lifts his quote. Barton leaves out the words from Madison which are required to understand the meaning. Another unwarranted change Barton makes is to add the word “permanent.” What Barton omitted is in italics below:

I have indulged more particularly the hope, that provision for religious instruction and observances among the Students, would be made by themselves or their Parents & Guardians, each contributing to a fund to be applied, in remunerating the services of Clergymen, of denominations, corresponding with the preference of the contributors. Small contributions would suffice, and the arrangement would become more & more efficient & adequate, as the Students become more numerous; whilst being altogether voluntary, it would interfere neither with the characteristic peculiarity of the University, the consecrated principle of the law, nor the spirit of the Country.

Contrary to Barton’s claim, Madison did not make an announcement in 1828 that permanent provision for religious worship would be made by clergymen. Instead, he told one of the university board members his hope that parents and students would voluntarily secure clergymen to provide religious services if so desired by the parents and students. Indeed, reading the entire letter, Madison’s view was that such instruction should come in this voluntary manner rather than having it come via the hiring of members of the clergy to teach.vii Such an arrangement would preserve the independence of the school from religious entanglements and disputes while respecting the free exercise of religion. Barton’s selective quotation of a primary source obscures Madison’s meaning and adds a revised one he apparently prefers.

Obviously, Barton is the one doing the revising. Barton said Madison wrote this:

 “that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by…services of clergymen.”

However, James Madison actually wrote this:

I have indulged more particularly the hope, that provision for religious instruction and observances among the Students, would be made by themselves or their Parents & Guardians, each contributing to a fund to be applied, in remunerating the services of Clergymen, of denominations, corresponding with the preference of the contributors. Small contributions would suffice, and the arrangement would become more & more efficient & adequate, as the Students become more numerous; whilst being altogether voluntary, it would interfere neither with the characteristic peculiarity of the University, the consecrated principle of the law, nor the spirit of the Country.

I hope it is obvious that the import of this is not about when UVA had chaplains. It is about credibility and what appears to be an intent to mislead people.
I have images of the Globe newspaper Barton referred to. Barton touts his original documents but I haven’t found anything yet that I can’t get via an historical data base. The letter was in an 1837 edition but wasn’t an ad to get students to come to UVA.
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To read the segment on chaplains at UVA, click Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?

Simon & Schuster Has No Plans to Publish David Barton's The Jefferson Lies

Yesterday, I wrote about how Thomas Nelson removed David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies from publication in late July, 2012. According to philosopher Jay Richards, Barton’s book was investigated by Thomas Nelson and then removed from their catalog several days before anyone reported it publicly. Richards led an effort to gather information to inform Glenn Beck about the historical problems in Barton’s work. Beck, along with other religious conservatives, eventually chose to ignore the evaluations of academic historians in order to preserve Barton’s reputation and influence.
For his part, Barton minimized the devastating critique from various historians. He also said publisher Simon and Schuster was prepared to publish The Jefferson Lies.

After Thomas Nelson dropped the book, The Jefferson Lies was subsequently reviewed and then picked up by Simon & Schuster.
Clearly, Thomas Nelson’s public statements about the reason for pulling the book are incongruous with the above facts, so was there perhaps some other reason behind their announcement? Quite possibly, for only two weeks prior to suddenly dropping The Jefferson Lies, Thomas Nelson had been taken over in an acquisition by Rupert Murdoch and HarperCollins Publishers.6
Thanks to Throckmorton and other critics, The Jefferson Lies will reach a far larger audience through Simon & Schuster than it would have with the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson.

To my knowledge, this claim has never been withdrawn. The rumor that Simon and Schuster was about to publish Barton’s book has been going around since The Jefferson Lies was pulled. Today, I can announce that Simon and Schuster has no plans to publish the book. According to Jennifer Robinson, Vice President and Director of Publicity with Threshold Editions at Simon and Schuster:

There are no plans for Threshold to publish The Jefferson Lies.

Threshold is an imprint of Simon and Schuster which has published books jointly with Mercury Ink, Glenn Beck’s publishing imprint. I wrote Ms. Robinson again to ask if Mercury Ink was going to publish the book and she referred me to Kevin Balfe at Mercury Ink. Balfe has not responded as yet. According to Mercury Ink’s website, Simon and Schuster is a partner in some manner (probably distribution) which led me to ask Ms. Robinson if publication by Mercury Ink could be construed as publication by Simon and Schuster. In her reply, Robinson said I needed to hear from Mercury Ink and added:

S&S is not publishing the book.

If Mercury Ink provides an update, I will add it to this post. For now, according to Simon and Schuster’s representative, there are no plans for them to publish The Jefferson Lies.
 

The Invasion of America

No, this is not a post about a tea party conspiracy theory involving immigration.
Rather, watch this video about Native American dispossession.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/pJxrTzfG2bo[/youtube]
Two of our favorite Christian nation proponents, David Barton and Bryan Fischer, believe the native people got what was coming to them. The history cannot be undone, but we should never forget.
(hat tip to John Fea)

David Barton Distorts Things Even When He Wins

As I noted here previously, David Barton settled his defamation lawsuit out of court last year. Barton had been accused of being known for appearing at white supremacist rallies by two 2010 candidates for the Texas Board of Education. The Democrat candidates criticized their GOP opponent of relying on Barton who they implied was a white supremacist. Barton and his opponents settled with Barton gaining a financial settlement of an undisclosed amount and an apology. Here is the apology:

During our respective campaigns in 2010 for separate positions on the Texas State Board of Education, we published a video entitled: ”A True Tale From Texas,” that created a false impression about David Barton. The purpose of that video was to discredit our Republican Party political opponents on the State Board of Education, and those on whom they relied, by depicting their position as politically extreme and detrimental to education. Thus, the video stated that David Barton, who advised the State Board of Education, is known for speaking at white supremacist rallies. We believed that statement had been fact-checked by our political consultant, Scott Garrison, who relied for confirmation solely on information provided him from The Texas Freedom Network. As professionals in education and the proper use of language, we understand that this statement suggested that David Barton is a white supremacist, and that the two organizations he is affiliated with, WallBuilder Presentations, Inc. and WallBuilders L.L.C., were associated with or supportive of white supremacists. After learning more about Mr. Barton, we realize this statement was false. We separately and jointly apologize to Mr. Barton for damage to him individually and to his two organizations as a result of that statement.

There is nothing in this apology about Barton’s historical claims or status as an historian. The claim at issue related to white supremacy.
However, as RightWingWatch pointed out last month, Barton told his Wallbuilders’ audience that he had won vindication for his work as an historian so that people who want to use his history can now defend themselves.  Reread the apology above. There is nothing there about Barton’s historical claims.
More recently, at the end of last month, Barton appeared on the Sons of Liberty radio show and said similar things about vindication for his historical claims. Listen:

Host Tim Brown begins by describing the court settlement and asking Barton about the results. Barton tells Brown that the defamation settlement is bad news for the left. At 2:10 into the clip, Barton says:

So after that having gone on for a number of years, we decided to take some folks into court on those two major claims, that we make up our history and it’s all inaccurate and that we’re white supremacists and anti-semitic. And going through the court process, we went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court and came back to District Court, and at that point, the folks settled the case and the court entered a large judgment with a validation of, no the defendants admit that he is not a racist, he’s not anti-semitic, he doesn’t make up his history, and so that’s what we were after was getting some validation that allows us to push back on them when they start telling people  you can’t trust Barton because he makes up all his history. No, you can trust him because here’s the original documents posted on the website.

According to documents posted on Barton supporter Donna Garner’s website, the apology I posted above is what the parties agreed to. There is nothing in that statement of apology about Barton’s historical claims. Now his claims about his claims are suspicious.
I am writing this on the day after NBC News anchor Brian Williams admitted that a story he told about being in a helicopter hit by rocket-propelled grenade fire while in Iraq in 2003 was false. Williams’ future is now the subject of speculation with some journalists calling for him to be removed from his position.
Before its over, Williams might wish he had Mr. Barton’s supporters. Two major Christian organizations, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family have engaged in varying degrees of cover up of Barton’s false historical claims. Other ministers and Christian leaders are also privy to the work of academic historians regarding certain of Barton’s claims, but feature him anyway.

Mike Huckabee and David Barton Coming to PA Pastor's Conference in March

Yesterday, the PA Pastors Network, a small group of far right pastors announced that Mike Huckabee will appear via video at a March 19 conference at Lancaster Bible College. Also appearing will be David Barton, and George Barna. The title of the conference (U-Turn: A Conversation with Pastors on Society, Culture, and Leadership) makes it sound like a stop on the promo tour for Barna’s and Barton’s new book (U-Turn).

Other confirmed speakers for PPN’s “U-Turn” conference include: author Steve Scheibner, Gary Dull of the American Pastors Network, Sandy Rios of the American Family Association and American Family Radio, Jeff Mateer of the Liberty Institute, Paul Blair of Reclaiming America for Christ, and Ralph Drollinger of Capitol Ministries, who will speak on PPN’s Ministers Together project, an initiative which brings together pastors and elected officials on a biblical rather than political basis.

Looks like big fun if you are a tea partier or Christian nation advocate. Sam Rohrer heads the PA pastors’ organization and is also working with David Barton on the initiative to make the Ukraine a biblically based nation.
Lancaster is about 5 hours from here; maybe I’ll go over and see what happens.
PA is home to numerous conservative Christian historians (Historians at GCC and Messiah College come to mind immediately and there are others). If Sam Rohrer wanted pastors to hear from Christian historians on the nation’s founding, he has a wealth of options.