Tag: david Barton

David Swartz on Responding to the Claims of Christian Nationalists

Yesterday, Asbury College history prof David Swartz briefly opined on the Christian nationalist appropriation of the Bible as foundation for their view of American history. Swartz extends an article by Seth Perry in a recent Religion and Culture Web Forum.

Swartz discusses the reaction against linking the Bible with Christian nationalism and notes that evangelicals have blurred distinctions at least since the 1970s. He writes:

Piling on have been evangelical historians represented at hundreds of state universities and Christian liberal arts colleges. In the 1970s and 1980s they were led by a scholarly triumvirate made up of Robert Linder (Kansas State), Richard Pierard (Indiana State), and Robert Clouse (Indiana State). In the 1980s Mark Noll and George Marsden conducted a sometimes-combative dispute with Francis Schaeffer over the notion of Christian America. And more recently, Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College and John Fea of Messiah College have taken on David Barton and enlisted dozens of colleagues in opposition to his flood of books, speeches, and videos. Largely due to their activism, publisher Thomas Nelson in 2012 pulled Barton’s book The Jefferson Lies.

Well, that is appreciated.

Swartz ends by saying, “a formidable evangelical brain trust stands united in support of the kind of nuance and context practiced by the broader historical guild.”

He is correct that a consensus has developed among Christian scholars to support good history and oppose simplistic Christian nationalist accounts of the nation’s founding (my paraphrase). More importantly, many are speaking to Christian organizations, albeit with mixed success.

For instance in 2013, the Family Research Council removed a error filled video of David Barton talking at the Capitol after numerous historians complained and requested action.  However, this year, the FRC had Barton back to repeat the Capitol Tour.  FRC’s fall back to pragmatism was disappointing and demonstrates the great gulf between Christian parachurch organizations and Christian scholars.

In Georgia's 10th District, David Barton is Again an Issue

This week, GOP voters in Georgia’s 10th District will decide which candidate, Jody Hice or Mike Collins, will face the Democrat nominee in the Fall. Richard Zimdars, a columnist for the Athens Banner-Herald, watched the two candidates debate and for at least two reasons decided that Collins might be the better choice. First Collins seemed more likely to work with opponents in Congress to achieve legislation. Second, Hice touts an endorsement from David Barton which is a problem for Zimdars. He writes:

Hice’s acceptance of Barton’s endorsement leads me to believe Hice lacks the capacity for close critical examination of his endorsements, not a good sign for the 10th District’s future if Hice becomes our national representative.

This is what Bob Barr should have said about Barry Loudermilk.

Bob Barr's Strange David Barton Claim

This is old news but an article on right wing opinion site American Thinking got me to writing.
Bob Barr and Barry Loudermilk are seeking the GOP nomination next week to run for Georgia’s 11th District Congressional seat. Last week, they debated and in the debate Bob Barr made a strange charge against Barry Loudermilk. Watch, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l35geIQXnJg#t[/youtube]
Barr accuses David Barton of being anti-Semitic and challenges Loudermilk to deny Barton’s endorsement. The article that caught my eye on this was penned by David Brog and titled “Bob Barr Crosses the Line.” And indeed, Barr crossed the line. Some Jewish observers I know are uncomfortable with Barton’s Christian nation zeal but more to the point of Barr’s accusation, Barton is a big supporter of Israel. In fact, at times, he gets a little silly with it (e.g., predicting weather problems for nations that mess with Israel). Barr’s claim was just wrong and I hope Barr will apologize for it.
Sadly, Barr blew a chance to highlight Barton and Loudermilk’s vision of a Christian nation, based solely on Christian principles, giving advantage to Christian people. The Barton endorsement of Loudermilk is problematic on so many levels, and Barr chose to mention two things that aren’t even issues. Neither man appears to have sufficient discernment to serve in Congress. One thinks Barton is a Constitutional expert and the other thinks Barton opposes Israel. Heaven help the GOP voters of the 11th District.

Historian Thomas Kidd: On Slavery and George Whitefield

Thomas Kidd is professor of history at Baylor University and a prolific writer. In 2012, World Magazine published Kidd’s reporting on Thomas Nelson’s decision to remove David Barton’s book The Jefferson Lies from publication.
In October 2014, Yale University Press will publish Kidd’s book on George Whitefield. In his most recent newsletter, Kidd addresses the uncomfortable fact that many otherwise admirable figures in our history owned slaves. In the case of Whitefield, he not only owned slaves but worked to advance slavery.  Kidd gave me permission to use this material from his Thursday newsletter:

The most challenging issue for a biographer of George Whitefield (as with Patrick Henry) is his identity as a slave owner. I admire Whitefield and Henry, as well as similar figures of their time such as Jonathan Edwards or George Washington, but their owning people as slaves remains an unavoidable moral problem.
How does one admire a historical figure who kept slaves? How does an author fully convey his disapproval of American slavery, while not condemning an individual altogether? I am not sure that I have gotten the balance exactly right, but we want to avoid two extremes.
One extreme might suggest that Whitefield was a great man of God, and that harping on his owning of slaves denigrates his memory as a Christian hero.
The other extreme might say that whatever Whitefield accomplished for God was fatally tainted by his owning slaves, so he is better forgotten or just used as a cautionary tale.
I think the better approach is to humbly acknowledge that we all have moral blind spots. We can justify all manner of habits and practices that, in three centuries’ retrospect, may seem appalling. But this does not excuse Whitefield’s complicity in what was a fundamentally immoral system, from the terrible wars and slave catching trade in Africa, to the horrible passage of the forced Atlantic voyage, to the dreadful working conditions for slaves, to the physical and sexual abuse that many slaves endured in the Americas.
Jonathan Edwards seems an easier case to forgive, as he only kept a few household slaves and just occasionally spoke in public about the rectitude of slave owning. Whitefield, by contrast, was arguably the key figure in having slavery introduced in the colony of Georgia, where it was originally banned. I was dismayed to find archival evidence that Whitefield may have even allowed slaves to work at the property of his Bethesda before Georgia made slave owning legal.

Although I personally lean a little more toward the “fatally tainted” extreme, I like the way Kidd articulates the situation. What I also like about Kidd’s work is that he does not hold anything back. While he confesses his personal admiration for the good the man did, Kidd presents a complete picture of his evil deeds (e.g., Whitefield working to advance slavery in Georgia). This seems to me to be the proper role of the historian.