Tag: david Barton

David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – Gnadenhutten and the Christian Indians

Last Thursday, I wrote about my appearance on the Paul Edwards radio show, just after David Barton was on to respond to my series on Thomas Jefferson. During his time, Barton claimed that Thomas Jefferson signed an act three times “to propagate the gospel among the heathen.” Here are Barton’s exact words:

The actual quote out of all three acts was “to propagate the gospel among the heathen.” Now, when you take the context of those three federal acts, and you know, you can check the acts, March 3rd, 1803, March 19, 1805, I can give you the dates, you can look them all up and read it. It says, ‘for propagating the gospel among the heathen.’ Now this is not a territory exchange, by the way, and even if it were, let’s say the United States today makes some kind of territory exchange with the Cherokee tribe in North Carolina, or Oklahoma, what do you think happens if the federal government puts in money to pay a Catholic priest, or to build a Catholic church, even if that’s what the Cherokees want?

I demonstrated on Thursday that Congress, on June 1, 1796, provided land to Christian converts from among the Delaware tribe via a trust to a group called “The Society of United Brethren for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen.” Just to be clear, here is an image of the title of the bill:

Note the the 1796 bill, enacted when George Washington was President, was titled, “An Act regulating the grants of land appropriated for Military services, and for the Society of the United Brethren, for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen.” (Click the link to see the entire Act). Over a decade after the Delaware converts and the Brethren missionaries had been displaced to Northern Ohio, the Congress made arrangements for the Society of Brethren to take trust of the land on behalf of the Christian Indians. As the language of the Act makes clear the phrase “propagating the gospel among the heathen” was a part of the legal name of the responsible  organization.

As I noted last Thursday, Jefferson later renewed the act for the purposes of providing new law relating to military lands, with nothing new regarding the Brethren or the Christian Indians. The Society’s name remained in the title of the Act, which is apparently where  David Barton comes up with his claims about Jefferson.  Once the original act was signed by Washington, the Brethren went to work trying to rebuild the mission in Eastern Ohio. Eventually, the Society ceded the land back to the federal government because the converts did not return in sufficient numbers to make the mission viable.
The narrative developed by Barton is misleading and obscures the situation. All Jefferson did was approve bills that had a religious society’s name attached to the title.
I am reviewing this again because I continue to be bothered by Barton’s appropriation of this story as evidence for his view of Christian America. This bothers me for at least two reasons. First, he does an injustice to the historical record which includes the initial Northern relocation of peaceful elements of the Delaware tribe, and the massacre at Gnadenhutten. The Christian converts were marched to Northern Ohio and left there without provisions. Then when a group returned to Gnadenhutten to find food, they were brutally killed by the Pennsylvania Militia. The Society of the Brethren had to constantly bring the horrible treatment suffered by the native people to the attention of the “Christian nation” in order for even the most basic of response, years later. Barton’s narrative misrepresents the role of federal government and minimizes the Gnadenhutten atrocity.
Second, Barton complained on the Paul Edwards program that liberals would protest if the federal government today used funds for religious purposes with Native Americans, apparently oblivious to the fact that the federal government pushed Christianity on Native American tribes until early in the 20th century. Native children were removed from their families in elementary school and sent away to boarding schools, sometimes run by church groups. They were forbidden to speak their language or follow native customs. Some recall harsh punishments if the rules were violated.  Even Christian Native Americans say that the treatment was demeaning. By using the treatment of Native Americans as evidence for his vision of Christian America, Barton inadvertently demonstrates at least one peril of his construction.
Next: Did Jefferson authorize the Capitol for church services and/or order the Marine Band to act as a worship band?
Previously:
David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – United Brethren and the Christian Indians
David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – In the Year of Our Lord Christ
David Barton on Thomas Jefferson: The Kaskaskia Indians
Was the Jefferson Bible an evangelism tool?
More on Thomas Jefferson and Christianity
David Barton: Pluralism not the goal of the First Amendment
Related:
Did the First Amendment Create a Christian Nation?

David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – In the Year of Our Lord Christ

Yesterday, I addressed David Barton’s claim that Thomas Jefferson authorized funds to evangelize the Kaskaskia Indian tribe. What he actually did was sign a treaty which provided funds to the tribe to help build a church and help fund the services of a Catholic priest for a brief period. The 200 or so Kaskaskia Indians were already predominantly Catholic and the funds amounted to part of a transaction in exchange for their land.
Today, I want to examine the claim by David Barton that Thomas Jefferson was so religious that he included mention of Jesus as Christ in government documents. Specifically, Barton points to the document to the left and says there is significance in the phrase, “In the Year of Our Lord Christ.” (click the image to enlarge it)
On his Wallbuilders site, Barton explains what he sees as the significance of the appellation:

Following is an original document in our possession, signed by Thomas Jefferson on September 24, 1807. This document is permission for a ship called the Herschel to proceed on its journey to the port of London. The interesting characteristic of this document is the use of the phrase “in the year of our Lord Christ.” Many official documents say “in the year of our Lord,” but we have found very few that include the word “Christ.” However, this is the explicitly Christian language that President Thomas Jefferson chose to use in official public presidential documents.

You can click the document to see the portion Barton has placed on his website. The English part is not completely visible, while the Dutch component is. I have enlarged the section which contains the phrase in question.

Jefferson did indeed sign this sea letter allowing safe passage for the Herschel to travel to London. However, Jefferson did not choose the “explicitly Christian language” in this document.
As is obvious from the document, this is a form which was preprinted with writing added based on the specific situation. This particular form was required by the Treaty with Holland of 1782 to be used as a kind of passport – called a sea letter – to allow safe passage of ships from an American port to the port of an enemy; more about that to come.  See the image below which describes the form as the “form of the Passport which shall be given to ships and vessels in consequence of the 25th article of this treaty:”
This particular image comes from a book titled Reports of Cases Argued and Decided by the United States Supreme Court, compiled by a New York lawyers group in 1882.  The treaty referred to here was signed with Holland in 1782, the same year Holland became the second nation, after the French, to recognize the independence of the fledgling United States. England had declared war with Holland in 1780. 
By 1807, Holland was essentially controlled by the French who were at war with England. For an American ship to sail to London, the sea letter displayed by Barton was necessary for safe passage. The treaty specified that

Art. 10. The merchant ships of either of the parties, coming from the port of an enemy, or from their own, or a neutral port, may navigate freely towards any port of an enemy of the other ally; thev shall be, nevertheless, held, whenever” it shall be required, to exhibit, as well upon the high seas as in the ports, their sea-letters and other documents, described in the twenty-fifth article, stating expressly, that their effects are not of the number of those which are prohibited, as contraband: and not 35*] *having any contraband goods for an enemy’s port, they may freely, and without hindrance, pursue their voyage toward the port of an enemy. Nevertheless, it shall not be required to examine the papers of vessels convoyed by vessels of war, but credence shall be given to the word of the officer who shall conduct the convoy.
Art. 11. If, by exhibiting the sea-letters, and other documents, described more particularly in the twenty-fifth article of this treaty… (my emphasis)

Note the phrases in bold print. When moving toward the port of an enemy, the ship was to have a sea letter. The form of the sea letter was prescribed by treaty to contain the language it did. Now compare the Herschel sea letter with the form prescribed by treaty in the image below:

The language is the same. Jefferson was bound by treaty to use this form and did not choose to use this “explicitly Christian language.” John Adams is credited with negotiating the treaty but given the frequency of the phrase in other French treaties and documents of the era, my assumption is that the language was considered standard. Many early Canadian documents also used the phrase, but I doubt Mr. Barton would make the same religious attributions to the signers of those documents that he does in the case of Jefferson.
Next: Did Jefferson approve church services in the Capitol and order the Marine Band to play for them?
Related:
David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – Gnadenhutten and the Christian Indians
David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – United Brethren and the Christian Indians
David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – In the Year of Our Lord Christ
David Barton on Thomas Jefferson: The Kaskaskia Indians
Was the Jefferson Bible an evangelism tool?
More on Thomas Jefferson and Christianity
David Barton: Pluralism not the goal of the First Amendment
Did the First Amendment Create a Christian Nation?

David Barton on Thomas Jefferson: The Kaskaskia Indians

 
UPDATE: For more information about Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President, go to GettingJeffersonRight.com.
Recently, I have been writing about the First Amendment. In the process, I have been reading much about the religious views of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison, all firm defenders of freedom of conscience.  Jefferson is particularly interesting given claims made about him by historical document collector David Barton. Barton runs an organization called Wallbuilders, dedicated to finding God’s hand in American history.
Over the next several days, I plan to examine some of these claims. Given the blog format the examination will be brief but I hope sufficient to demonstrate that what is being claimed by Mr. Barton about Jefferson is often misleading.  Barton has made several claims about Jefferson in a variety of places but I will use a recent audio file from his WallbuildersLive site as a springboard. On his April 11 podcast, Barton said:

And then there’s Thomas Jefferson. Not only did Jefferson recommend that the great seal of the US depict a Bible story and include the word God in the national motto, but as President, Jefferson negotiated treaties with the Indians in which he included direct federal funding to pay for Christian missionaries to evangelize the Indians. And these treaties were ratified by the US Senate. Furthermore, Jefferson closed Presidential documents with the appellation, “In the Year of Our Lord Christ,” thus invoking Jesus Christ into official government documents.
You know I have a lot of fun with Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, because people think they know those two, but you take those two, and they are clearly the least religious of the signers of the Declaration. And by using their original documents, they look like a couple of radical right, Bible thumping evangelicals. And they’re the least religious, And I’ll give you a great example. We moved into the US Capitol in 1800, November of 1800. And when we moved in, one of the first acts of Congress was to approve the use of the Capitol as a church building. You can find that in the records of Congress, Dec 4 1800. Now, who did that? You had the head of the Senate and the head of the House, the speaker of the House was John Trumpbell, the president of the Senate who approved that was Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson approves church in the Capitol? Yep, he went there as Vice President, he went to the church at the Capitol for 8 years as President, and as President of the US, he’s going to church, and this is recorded in all sorts of members of Congress, their records, their diaries, because they went to church at the Capitol too. And so, Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States, thinks, you know I think I can help the worship services at this new church at the Capitol, they met in the Hall of the House of Representatives, so Jefferson ordered the Marine Corp band to come play for the worship services, in the church services at the US Capitol. The worship band is the Marine Corp Band? Pretty good worship band. Thomas Jefferson did that. I thought he wanted separation of church and state. If you read his letter on separation of church and state, he said separation of church and state, he makes it very clear, separation of church and state will keep the government from stopping a public religious activity.
We’re not going to learn about what Jefferson actually did cause we’ve got a couple of his phrases where we can say he didn’t like religion. So we’re not going to look at the fact that in 1803, Thomas Jefferson, President of the US, signer of the Declaration, did a treaty with Kaskaskia Indians, where that he gave federal funds to send missionaries to the Indians, ratified by the US Senate. Now, I don’t know anybody on the radical religious right that would be comfortable with doing that today but Thomas Jefferson did. It was not a problem for him. So we look at the guys today and we look only what appears to be their non-religious or anti-religious side, and we think that is who they are…And You look at the rest of Jefferson and he would make most Christians today look embarrassingly shallow and yet Jefferson still had questions about the divinity of Christ and still so much further in promoting Christian principles.

The principle claims I plan to examine are that Jefferson:

  • signed a treaty which provided federal funds to evangelize the Kaskaskia Indians
  • closed Presidential documents with the statement: “In the Year of Our Lord Christ,” thus setting out Jefferson’s belief in Jesus as Christ.
  • approved holding church in the US Capitol and ordered the Marine Band to play for the worship service.
  • merely had questions about the divinity of Christ. In fact, he looks like a “radical right, Bible thumping” evangelical when one examines the original documents.

First, did Jefferson enter into “a treaty with Kaskaskia Indians, where that he gave federal funds to send missionaries to the Indians?”
When I first heard that claim, I thought I would find evidence that Jefferson authorized funds to give to a church organization or denomination for the purpose of sending missionaries to an unchurched tribe. The phrasing of Mr. Barton makes it sound like the government paid missionaries to spread Christianity and make converts.
I did not find that.
In 1803, a treaty was signed with the Kaskaskia tribe which contained the following reference to religion. This is the only treaty I can find in 1803 with the Kaskaskia tribe.

ARTICLE 3.
The annuity heretofore given by the United States to the said tribe shall be increased to one thousand dollars, which is to be paid to them either in money, merchandise, provisions or domestic animals, at the option of the said tribe: and when the said annuity or any part thereof is paid in merchandise, it is to be delivered to them either at Vincennes, Fort Massac or Kaskaskia, and the first cost of the goods in the sea-port where they may be procured is alone to be charged to the said tribe free from the cost of transportation, or any other contingent expense. Whenever the said tribe may choose to receive money, provisions or domestic animals for the whole or in part of the said annuity, the same shall be delivered at the town of Kaskaskia. The United States will also cause to be built a house suitable for the accommodation of the chief of the said tribe, and will enclose for their use a field not exceeding one hundred acres with a good and sufficient fence. And whereas, The greater part of the said tribe have been baptised and received into the Catholic church to which they are much attached, the United States will give annually for seven years one hundred dollars towards the support of a priest of that religion, who will engage to perform for the said tribe the duties of his office and also to instruct as many of their children as possible in the rudiments of literature. And the United States will further give the sum of three hundred dollars to assist the said tribe in the erection of a church. The stipulations made in this and the preceding article, together with the sum of five hundred and eighty dollars, which is now paid or assured to be paid for the said tribe for the purpose of procuring some necessary articles, and to relieve them from debts which they have heretofore contracted, is considered as a full and ample compensation for the relinquishment made to the United States in the first article.

The United States gave money toward a church building and provided a stipend for a priest to continue work already begun, which included both religious and non-religious duties.
The Kaskaskia were already Catholic converts. Nothing is said directly about evangelizing, and is an inference. Nothing in the treaty required the priest to attempt to make converts. He certainly could have involved himself in numerous other pastoral duties to the already converted, in addition to his duties teaching literature. Apparently the funds were paid to the tribe for the listed purposes.
One reason why this treaty is important to those who want the government to establish Christianity as the nation’s religion is because funds were paid for religious purposes. However, it is very important to remember that the Indian tribes were considered sovereign nations. This treaty provides money for another, albeit very small nation of people, to pursue religious ends of their choosing. This is not the same as awarding money to a state government for the purpose of paying ministers. Some state governments debated those kind of proposals but eventually all of those initiatives were defeated.
In addition, it appears that Barton wants to make Jefferson look more evangelical than he was. He attempts to compare Jefferson’s action in signing the treaty to today’s evangelicals who would not be comfortable with such an arrangement, thus casting Jefferson as one who was willing to mesh political policy with religious practice.
In fact, the Kaskaskia tribe turned to Catholicism via the ministry of Father Marquette in the mid-1600s. By the time they signed the treaty with the United States, there were only about 200 members of the tribe.  The United States government recognized their allegiances and responded accordingly. What Jefferson allowed was an acknowledgement of the practices of Kaskaskia tribe rather than an effort to convert them with government money.
Next: Did Jefferson sign official documents with the appellation, “In the Year of Our Lord Christ?”
Previously: Was the Jefferson Bible an evangelism tool?

 

 

David Barton: Pluralism not the goal of the First Amendment

Now I know where Bryan Fischer gets at least some of his material.
On an April 11, 2011 archived program, a brief statement is made by Barton which sounds a lot like Bryan Fischer’s argument that Christianity is the only religion covered by the First Amendment.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Unearthing America’s Christian Foundations, part 1
(at about the 12 minute mark, a narrator introduces David Barton)

This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. Joseph Story is one of the most important names in American jurisprudence. Not only was he placed on the US Supreme Court by President James Madison, he also founded Harvard Law School and authored numerous legal works on the Constitution. While today’s revisionists claim that the goal of the First Amendment was absolute religious pluralism, Joseph Story vehemently disagreed. He declared, “The real object of the First Amendment was not to encourage, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but was to exclude all rivalry among Christian denominations.” According to Founder Joseph Story, Christianity, not pluralism, was the goal of the Founding Fathers in the First Amendment for only a Christian nation is tolerant and thus is truly pluralistic.

Barton must have another version of Story’s book because the wording is a little different in his quote than what I found in Google’s archived copy:

The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects…

Barton’s brief argument is worded somewhat differently that Bryan Fischer’s but the effect is the same. According to Barton, pluralism springs from non-pluralism. I addressed Fischer’s argument here and here. One must go on and read all of what Story has to say about the First Amendment. Furthermore, taken to logical conclusion, this argument would establish Christianity as the religion of the nation, something the Founders specifically did not do.  
David Barton is a favorite of Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, two potential GOP Presidential candidates. Huckabee gushed recently

I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced at gunpoint no less, to listen to every David Barton message and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.

Gingrich has said that if (when) he runs for President, he will call on Barton for help. In light of Barton’s view of the First Amendment, I hope media inquire about Huckabee’s and Gingrich’s view of the First Amendment. Do they believe it only applies to Christians?

More on Thomas Jefferson and Christianity

Monday, I disputed the notion that Thomas Jefferson was an evangelical Christian who hoped to evangelize Native Americans with his edited version of the New Testament. There I provided evidence that Jefferson was not a Christian in the evangelical sense. Here is additional evidence that Jefferson was not the Christian portrayed by David Barton and other revisionists of Jefferson’s beliefs.
First in a April 11, 1823 letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote:

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god. Now one sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians: the other five sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knolege of the existence of a god!

No love for Calvinists there. Then, in the same letter, he wrote regarding the virgin birth:

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

The virgin birth a fable?
In an April 13, 1820 letter to William Short, Jefferson left no doubt what he thought of the Apostle Paul:

But while this Syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in it’s true and high light, as no imposter himself but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it &c. &c. It is the innocence of his character, the purity & sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquence of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologias in which he conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes indeed needing indulgence to Eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies too may be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I seperate therefore the gold from the dross; restore to him the former & leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and firm corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines led me to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that his part composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man. The Syllabus is therefore of his doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other antient and modern moralists, with a mixture of approbation and disent.

To Jefferson, then, much of the New Testament is falsehoods, made up about Jesus, rendering Him unrecognizable.
Then in another letter to Short, dated October 31, 1819, Jefferson wrote:

But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems,* invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.
* e. g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy.

Note what Jefferson considered to be “artificial systems.” There is not much left for what evangelicals would consider a Christian. Imagine now if a social conservative GOP candidate called the miraculous aspects of Christianity, “rubbish.” And yet, David Barton and by extension Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich promote this revisionism regarding Jefferson.
There are other quotes I have seen, now having reviewed most of the letters between Jefferson and John Adams. Both men seem to believe there was a creator god which via some intelligence plays a role in the affairs of men, but they, most clearly Jefferson, would not be comfortable religiously at evangelical churches today.
Postscript: Thomas Jefferson was born on today’s date, April 13, 1743.