David Barton in the News: Remember His Earned Doctorate and Division One Basketball Stardom?

Self-styled historian David Barton is in the news calling State Department officials “clowns” while he and Glenn Beck claim to rescue people in Afghanistan. Ministry Watch issued an appropriate “close look” at Beck and Barton’s charity — the Nazarene Fund — since it is unclear what they are doing in the midst of this disaster.

I am not an apologist for the Biden Administration’s handling of the end of the American military presence in Afghanistan. However, if David Barton makes a claim, my experience is that it should be checked out. Here are at least two reasons why.

Unearned Doctorate

Almost 5 years ago now, David Barton released the following video on his Facebook and Youtube accounts:

In this video, Barton very clearly claims to have an earned doctorate while, at the same time, he covers it up and fails to say where he got it. THe day after I saw the video, I discovered the “degree” came from church based LIfe Christian University. The school doesn’t offer history or education degrees and isn’t accredited by any recognized agency. It is registered with the IRS as a church and has no campus. Furthermore, Barton never attended any classes nor did he do any specific work for the so-called “earned” degree.” The president of the school just gave him a degree, perhaps for a fee, although that much was not revealed.

When I posted this information, Barton removed the video from his websites and stopped referring to himself as “doctor.” He never mentioned it again and has refused to ever explain or apologize for the deception. To their discredit, no Christian news outlet has ever pursued him and demanded answers about why he castigated progressives for making up stories, when he spun the yarn.

There are so many more reasons to be skeptical but here is just one more.

David Barton’s Division One Airball

IN 2015, David Barton told a seminar audience that he played basketball with the Oral Robert University Division One basketball squad when he attended the school as a student:

The main claim was:

I remember when I was playing basketball, the college stuff that we did. We started every day with a five mile run, then we lifted weights, then we had an hour of racquetball, then we had two hours of full-court basketball, then we came back for another run. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable, but in those years, our college team set the NCAA record for two years in a row for most points scored. We averaged 105, 104, 103 points a game, I forget what it was. But you had to run a lot, it wasn’t a lot of fun, but you get the results.

As it turns out, Barton did not play for the D-1 team at Oral Roberts.

This was confirmed by the NCAA and school records, calls to the university, and the testimonies of the head trainer and a sports reporter for the school paper at the time. He simply didn’t play on the team but told a story that made it sound like he did.

If a man can weave together those kind of stories about himself, shouldn’t we demand a much higher level of verification before we accept what he says about other things?

For the Sake of James Naismith, David Barton Should Come Clean About His Basketball Claims

During the NCAA tournament, David Barton’s son Tim did a tribute to James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. Watch:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/NLsz__v2of4[/youtube]
The information is largely accurate. Naismith was a ministerial candidate (along with other occupations) who believed he could reach more people via sports than the pulpit. He invented basketball to give young men something to do indoors when the weather was cold outside. It caught on.
I couldn’t escape the irony that Barton’s organization made a link to the NCAA basketball tournament not long after Barton claimed to play for Oral Roberts University’s record setting Division One team. According to ORU, Barton did not play for the team, nor did he accurately describe how the team practiced. I doubt James Naismith would approve.
James_Naismith_with_a_basketballYesterday, Barton claimed to be a translator for the Russian National Gymnastics Team in 1976. I will have more information on that claim in a separate post. At this post, I can say that there are several good reasons to be skeptical.
 

ORU Icon Contradicts David Barton’s Basketball Stories

oru_logoLast week, I posted a statement from Oral Roberts University contradicting David Barton’s claim that he played basketball for ORU during record-setting seasons in the 1970s.

A reader suggested that I contact E. Glenn Smith, head trainer and icon at ORU, for more information on how the record-setting basketball teams of the early 1970s trained. Smith joined ORU as head trainer and director of sports medicine in 1972 and worked with the baseball and basketball teams during his long and distinguished career there. I supplied Smith with the following description of basketball training Barton provided to the Charis Bible School audience. Barton, a 1976 graduate of ORU, said:

I remember when I was playing basketball, the college stuff that we did. We started every day with a five mile run, then we lifted weights, then we had an hour of racquetball, then we had two hours of full-court basketball, then we came back for another run. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable, but in those years, our college team set the NCAA record for two years in a row for most points scored. We averaged 105, 104, 103 points a game, I forget what it was. But you had to run a lot, it wasn’t a lot of fun, but you get the results.

I then asked Smith if this routine sounded “like the type of practices and training Ken Trickey or the coach after him ran.” Smith wrote back immediately and said simply:

Trick [ORU coach Ken Trickey] ran the loosest practices ever!  They were nothing but Run and Gun Scrimmages for the entire practice!!  Smitty

In a subsequent email, it was obvious Smith did not know who Barton was and he wondered if perhaps Barton attended before Smith joined the school in 1972.

I followed up by asking if Ken Trickey’s replacement, Jerry Hale, ran loose practices or ever required players to play racquetball. Smith replied that Hale was more organized but did not include racquetball as a part of the training routine.

After this exchange, it appears to me that nothing David Barton said about playing basketball at ORU is accurate. First, Barton said he played for the record-setting team. This claim was denied by the athletic department at ORU. Then Barton went into great detail about the training routine which he said led to record-setting results. However, according to the trainer who was there, the practices were not as Barton described.

Barton isn’t the first celebrity to misremember, make up or exaggerate sports prowess.

ESPN basketball analyst Skip Bayless greatly exaggerated his role on his high school basketball team which led to several media stories and a public confrontation from ESPN co-host Jalen Rose. Bayless’ sports career inflation made number 40 on the 50 biggest sports lies put together by the Bleacher Report.

When it was alleged that Republican Colorado Senate candidate Cory Gardner lied about his role on his high school football team, the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple thought it was important enough to check out. It turned out that Gardner played a little football but perhaps not as much as he implied. However, the story didn’t hurt him; he unseated Mark Udall in last year’s Senate race.

Apparently, truthfulness about past sports involvement matters to conservatives when the politician is a liberal as in the case of V.P. Joe Biden’s short-lived football career. Several conservative news outlets accused Biden of lying about playing football at the University of Delaware. He did play but didn’t play in a victory over the Ohio University Bobcats as Biden claimed.

Paul Ryan misremembered his marathon time which brought lots of media attention. He was running for V.P. at the time.

Back in 2001, George O’Leary resigned after 5 days on the job as football coach at Notre Dame because he made up aspects of his football and academic accomplishments. That was number 2 on the Bleacher Report top 50.

So far Christian media have ignored the story.

The significance of these gaffes is that Barton has similar problems when it comes to history and the Constitution. For instance, Barton claims that the Constitution quotes the Bible verbatim. Everybody knows that is not true. Even if one believes that the Bible had some influence on the writers of the document, the Constitution doesn’t do what Barton claims.

Oral Roberts University: There is No Record of David Barton Ever Playing Basketball for ORU

Earlier this month, David Barton told the audience (at about 5:20 – 6:30) at Charis Bible College his college basketball team set an NCAA scoring record. Watch:

Barton said:

I remember when I was playing basketball, the college stuff that we did. We started every day with a five mile run, then we lifted weights, then we had an hour of racquetball, then we had two hours of full-court basketball, then we came back for another run. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable, but in those years, our college team set the NCAA record for two years in a row for most points scored. We averaged 105, 104, 103 points a game, I forget what it was. But you had to run a lot, it wasn’t a lot of fun, but you get the results.

Barton graduated from Oral Roberts University in 1976. Right Wing Watch writer Kyle Mantyla looked up the roster from those record setting years and did not find David Barton’s name. Anyone can check the roster for ORU basketball at the ORU athletics website.

Wondering if perhaps there was a J.V. team or if he played some other year, I called Oral Roberts University’s Public Relations’ Office to ask if Barton ever played basketball for ORU. According to the PR Office, “After checking with the Athletic Office, there is no record of a David Barton ever playing basketball for ORU.”  While it is possible that Barton played intramural basketball, he is not listed on the varsity roster for any season. In his speech at Charis, he makes a clear connection between the workouts he says he was a part of and the record setting teams of the early ’70s.

Is the Brian Williams disease going around? Recently, the Secretary of the VA McDonald said he was in Special Forces and had to admit he wasn’t. I wonder what Barton, an Oral Roberts University Board of Reference member, will do about this.