Seems like yesterday that ResultSource and Mars Hill Church’s book selling scheme came into the public consciousness. However, it was a year ago today that Warren Smith’s article was posted. The next day, I posted the contract signed by Mars Hill Church executive pastor Sutton Turner and ResultSource CEO Kevin Small that spelled out the arrangements which if followed would lead to a spot on the New York Times best-seller list.
While it took several months for Mars Hill Church to unravel, that March 5, 2014 revelation seemed to alert even friends that something might be seriously wrong at the megachurch. The disclosure ignited an ongoing conversation about the ethics of buying a spot on best-seller lists. Later, it became known that Les and Leslie Parrott, and David Jeremiah also used similar schemes to elevate their books to the best seller lists. However, they have not experienced the same level of criticism and attention as has Driscoll.
In the aftermath of the Mars Hill debacle, at least one publisher (Crossway) took a vocal stand against deception in book marketing, but it is not clear that the revelations about buying a NYT’s best seller has led to significant changes. Christian media (with two exceptions) have not been aggressive in reporting on Christian authors who have manipulated the best seller lists. The largest Christian publishers (HarperCollins Christian and Tyndale House) and have refused to answer questions on the subject.
Since he resigned in October 2014, Driscoll has kept a relatively low profile. He may return to the limelight in June and July as a speaker for the Hillsong conferences in Sydney and Europe. Hillsong still has Driscoll listed as “the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and one of the most popular preachers in the world today.” I recently wrote and tweeted Hillsong to ask about the description and speaking engagement. No answer as yet.
Category: Religion
Should America Establish Christianity as a State Religion?
Everyone who reads here should know where I stand on that question — absolutely not!
I was surprised and sad to see that among Republicans, I am in the minority. According to a Public Policy Polling survey (question 17), 57% of Republicans said they “support establishing Christianity as the national religion.” Thirty percent did not support that policy and 13% were unsure.
Tom Ehrich pointed to the poll results in his commentary opposing the establishment of Christianity. Ehrich asks, if the U.S. is a Christian nation, then whose Christianity do we follow?
He begins:
(RNS) A recent survey found that 57 percent of Republicans agreed that Christianity should be established as the United States’ national religion.
Not only would this violate the clear wording of the Constitution and the intention of the founders to keep religion and government separate, it also raises a difficult quandary.
Whose Christianity?
I have asked a similar question before of those who want to turn America back to God.
Which god?
Ehrich rightly questions the wisdom of having one approach to Christianity endorsed by the government. As Benjamin Rush believed, Christianity doesn’t need government help. Ehrich writes:
We are safe from religion — which was the founders’ goal — when all religious voices can be heard. A competition of ideas is healthy. But if one religious voice became dominant, the resulting intolerance would take us back to the religious wars that tore Europe to pieces.
Among current GOP candidates, Mike Huckabee did best among those who said Christianity should be established as the national religion. Of course, Huckabee is a big supporter of David Barton’s Christian nationalism. Those who think Barton is a side show need to wake up and smell the poll numbers.
What Really Happened In the Settlement of David Barton's Defamation Suit?
In an email to supporters last week, David Barton said that his historical claims had been vindicated by winning a defamation lawsuit. Barton wrote:
The more publicized of the two defamation lawsuits we won was the one where David was labeled an anti-Semite, racist, and white supremacist. But the second lawsuit we won addressed the false claims that David’s works are widely discredited, that he is an admitted liar, that he makes up his history, etc.
What second lawsuit?
Prior to this email, Barton had told audiences that his historical claims had been vindicated by the lawsuit he settled with Judy Jennings and Rebecca Bell-Metereau. However, I demonstrated that the only publicized judgment on that case did not mention his historical claims but did admit that he was not a white supremacist. Here is the apology from Jennings and Bell-Metereau that was filed as a result of the settlement of Barton’s suit against them:
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.
And then here is what Barton said about that apology to Sons of Liberty radio on January 30, 2015:
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.
He made it sound like the apology included vindication of his historical claims. However, the apology only covers the white supremacy charge.
Now Barton says he won a second lawsuit about his historical claims. In the email, Barton asked his supporters to go on blogs and websites and take up for him. As a reference, Barton linked to a World Net Daily article by John Aman on his settlement. In that article, Aman says Barton won a second lawsuit.
Aman wrote:
Barton also won in court against W.S. Smith, a self-described atheist who published an online article in 2010 calling Barton “an admitted liar” whose “books have been picked apart time and again and exposed as fallacious.”
Smith was a no-show throughout the lawsuit, disappearing shortly after Barton sued him in September 2011. Barton’s legal team hired a private detective and published notices in Texas newspapers statewide in an unsuccessful attempt to find the elusive writer.
Smith disappeared after he boasted, in an email to Huffington Post columnist Chris Rodda that he was “happy to meet” Barton in court “because the truth in [sic] on my side.”
“If this is what you want, Mr. Barton, then let’s do it,” Smith said. “Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on. The path you’ve chosen will lead only to your embarrassment and ruin.”
Three years later, a Texas court found Smith’s assertions about David Barton both false and defamatory.
A review of Parker County, TX court records tells a different story. Something does not add up.
The W.S. Smith mentioned by Aman in WND wrote an article for Examiner.com where he contested Barton’s veracity. However, according to Aman, Smith went into hiding. Thus, it is unclear how Barton could win a lawsuit against Smith if Smith could not be found. In fact, Parker County, TX records show that the suit against Smith was dismissed by Barton on April 18, 2012. There was no judgment against Smith according to these records. See below:
“Notice of Partial Non-Suit” means that Barton dismissed his case against Smith but not the other two defendants. Note that there was no judgment (“Judgment Amt. 0.00”). A search of the Parker County records only shows two cases, one initially involving Smith with the dismissal noted, and another just involving Jennings and Bell-Metereau:
The first case (#CV11-1349) is the case where W.S. Smith is first named as a defendant but then later dropped from the case. It was filed on 9/1/2011. The second case (#CV14-0922) was filed just against Jennings and Bell-Metereau, probably for the purpose of settlement. Note that the second case does not have W.S. Smith’s name on it. Smith was dismissed from the first case and not a part of the second.
Barton has now claimed that he won a second case; WND said the same thing. Where is the case? Who was involved? The Parker County records don’t support the narrative in Barton’s email or the WND article.
In a future post I will examine whether or not Barton really won a million dollars.
To find the cases, go to Parker County’s website portal to look up judicial records (link). Click “Civil Records” and then you will come to a search screen. Enter David Barton’s name and click “Search.” You will come to the screen that looks like the image just above. Click on the case links corresponding to the Wallbuilder Presentations, etc. versus the defendants.
BarbWire Article and Graphic Turns Opposition to President Obama in an Ugly Direction
As do other websites, Matt Barber’s “news” website BarbWire runs many articles which are provocatively titled. One late last week caught my attention, in part because of the irresponsible title and in part because the graphic misquotes President Obama.
The article claims Obama met with Islamic leaders to coordinate attacks on Christians. For some reason the word verbal is in brackets:
President Obama met with American Islamic leaders in early February at a secret White House meeting, and what those involved revealed through their subsequent actions is that Obama hosted that meeting in order to design and implement coordinated [verbal] attacks on Christians.
As it turns out, a Muslim comedian and two people in the administration seemed to say similar things about bad things done in the name of Christianity after this meeting. As far as I can see, the administration wants to keep the war on ISIS a political event and not collaborate with the opposition to make it into a holy war. In any event, as a Christian, I am not offended when people point out the truth that Christians have done horrible things in the name of Christ. I am grieved by that fact but don’t feel attacked.
In short, no individual Christian has been attacked via this so-called coordinated effort.
Also, someone at BarbWire included an image which misquotes Obama:
I don’t find anything like this on page 261 but on page 309 of Audacity of Hope, Obama has this to say about Arab immigrants:
The President doesn’t focus on religion and pledges to oppose internment of Arab Americans. I would take the same position in the face of any such proposals.
The graphic misquotes Obama and takes his words completely out of context, leading to an implication at odds with what he said. The article doesn’t prove anything nefarious and certainly doesn’t prove that the President coordinated any attacks on anyone. The graphic is false, completely irresponsible and turns the article, such that it is, in an ugly direction. It should be removed.
UPDATE: Sometime in the middle of the night, Barbwire switched out the images. Now the one below leads off the article:
The following editor’s note appears:
[Editor’s note: the original featured image accompanying this article contained an inaccurate quotation. We regret the error, which was not the fault of the author.]
This is not much of an improvement as it makes it appear that Obama somehow represents organizations which support jihad.
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?