Tag: david Barton

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.
Aitken Ad Imprint
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 PageAt 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.

Marty Duren on Patriotic Church; Ed Young Are You Reading?

If Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Texas isn’t reading this op-ed by Marty Duren in WaPo, he should be.
Ed Young is going to have Mormon Glenn Beck in this weekend to teach his congregation providential theological history. Beck says he isn’t going to teach theology but a providential view of the founding era is theology in the LDS church. Young’s going all in.
Surely, he isn’t alone. David Barton is probably speaking somewhere at some church.
In his article, Duren notes that most Christians think God has a “special relationship” with America.

But with 53 percent of Americans still believing “God has a special relationship” with the United States, I am mystified. Among evangelicals 45 and older that figure is a staggering 71 percent. They may be the majority, but they will not read of National VIP status in heaven.

I am over 45 and definitely in the minority. In my view, the statement “God has a special relationship with the U.S.” is a theological one. And it is in error. Practically, it makes no sense. Who does God meet with to discuss this special relationship? Who represents the U.S. to God? Who is the American Moses? Glenn Beck? Franklin Graham? Kenneth Copeland? Chuck Pierce? Sorry if I left out any candidates.
Lots of wannabes but really, there is no American Moses.
I love America. I love freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. I would rather live here than anywhere else. But the Bible has to be tortured, just like history, to get America as the New Israel.
 

Glenn Beck Says David Barton Has a PhD, Barton Says He Doesn't

Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla picked up on Glenn Beck’s claim last week that David Barton had a PhD in Education.  Mantyla remembered that Barton once said he didn’t have a PhD. Watch the video:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/JEeW8E4tMiI[/youtube]
So yes, Mr. Beck, Barton is a guy who thinks he knows history.
In the clip above, Barton talks about a book in which he was involved where he claimed to debunk his fellow PhD authors on chaplains at the University of Virginia. Check out these posts (here and here) which school him back.
When Brian Williams embellished his biography to the public, it was a major story and Williams lost his job. However, in Glennbeckistan, where the truth goes to die, fraudulent credentials are handed out and people who mislead you and your audience with pretend history are brilliant.

Glenn Beck Says David Barton Has a PhD in Education

It certainly appears that Beck meant his remarks to be taken seriously. Watch:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/g3tKEVq0ENA[/youtube]
The transcript of the interview is here with the relevant section below:

GLENN: Bless you too. David Barton. President of Wall Builders. You know, we should call him Dr. Barton. You know, he has his PhD I think in history and education. Too many people just dismiss him as — as — you know, oh, just some guy who thinks he knows history. No, he has his doctorate in hist…education and he’s a brilliant, brilliant man.

I have never heard that claim before. The only education I know about is a BA in religious education from Oral Roberts University. Barton’s bio doesn’t mention it. I am pretty sure we would have heard about that before now.
Perhaps Barton was off the phone, but I think he should correct the record now. If you listen to Beck and Barton, Mr. Barton has a PhD in education, played Division I basketball while in college on a record setting team, and translated for the Russian national gymnastics team.
I wonder if Barton also told the truth about chopping down a cherry tree.