A college psychology professor's observations about public policy, mental health, sexual identity, and religious issues
At #3 and #5 of the top 25, two of the articles on David Barton’s book, The Jefferson Lies, brought World Magazine lots of traffic in 2012.
The third most read article was The David Barton Controversy and the fifth was Lost Confidence which reported the removal of The Jefferson Lies from publication by Thomas Nelson publisher.
Watch for more on this story in early January.
Prospective Christian law students pay attention.
Mat Staver, Dean of the Liberty University Law School told OneNewsNow, the “news service” of the American Family Association that Islam is more political ideology than religion and as such does not merit the same religious liberty protections. Staver said
“One of the issues, however, that needs to be considered is whether or not there will be much emphasis placed on advancing the Muslim cause,” he notes. “Certainly that could be a concern to many people around the country.”
He explains why that should be a concern in a law school.
“Islam is a political ideology. Certainly it takes characteristics of religion, but by and large, at its core, both in the United States and around the world, it is a political ideology,” Staver asserts. “Consequently, to use the same kind of laws for an advancement of a political ideology that you would for religious liberty could eventually cause some concerning issues that we want to address.”
Thomas Jefferson certainly disagreed with this analysis. When Jefferson commented on his Virginia law on religious freedom, he said the law was meant to cover all religions. Specifically, Jefferson wrote:
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally past; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Islam], the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
The Virginia statute is not the First Amendment but it is clear that James Madison, acting in sympathy with Jeffersonian views, intended the same scope for the First Amendment.
Another frightening aspect of Staver’s reasoning is that it could easily be applied to other religions, including Christianity. Churches that pass out political guides and organize members to vote GOP could easily be considered to be purveyors of a political ideology.
Although Kirk Cameron cites none of his own research, he refers approvingly to an article by Stephen McDowell (Providence Institute) which is hosted on the Wallbuilders website about the Founders and slavery. McDowell refers to Thomas Jefferson but does not give the whole picture. Historian Paul Finkelman in the NY Times accentuates the negative but reports Jefferson’s racist views and his active involvement in owning slaves much more accurately.
As we document in Getting Jefferson Right, Jefferson was not a passive slave owner, and he was legally allowed to free his slaves but did not do it. I am pretty sure Cameron has been made aware of the problems with Wallbuilders’ “scholarship” and yet he continues to promote it.
While I am recovering, I have a lot of time to read. Currently, I am reading David Barton’s Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White, The Founders’ Bible, Jonathan Merritt’s A Faith of Our Own and Henry Wiencek’s new book Master of the Mountain about Jefferson as slave owner.
Thus far, I am very impressed with Wiencek’s book. He looks at numerous primary source documents to show the real Jefferson as slave owner. This book more than debunks David Barton’s whitewash of Jefferson in The Jefferson Lies. We covered similar ground in Getting Jefferson Right but Wiencek devotes an entire book to the topic.
Although I have not finished the book, I can already recommend it. See this Smithsonian article for an extended look at what is in the book. One topic we did not cover in GJR was Jefferson’s treatment of the “nail boys” – the young boys assigned to make nails for Jefferson. In graphic terms, Wiencek details the atrocities committed against these 10-15 year old slaves. Wiencek produces evidence from a page of Jefferson’s Farm Book which has only recently become available.
There is much more and I hope to write a more formal review when I finish the book.
As I feel up to it, I am gradually working my way through the massive Founders’ Bible published by a subsidiary of Windblown Media (publishers of The Shack). In this post, I want to briefly address the Founders’ Bible articles on Thomas Jefferson and the Jefferson Bible.
On page 64, a biography of Jefferson appears. It is generally accurate but it seems oddly placed in the Old Testament. Jefferson had little good to say about the way God was presented in those books.
On page 1445-1449, Barton summarizes the material from his ill-fated The Jefferson Lies regarding what Jefferson included in his two Gospel extractions (aka The Jefferson Bible). As in The Jefferson Lies, Barton claims Jefferson included miraculous healings from Matthew in his 1804 version. As I pointed out in a previous post (and we detail in Getting Jefferson Right), this claim is false. Jefferson’s list of texts did not include miracles from Matthew 9 and there is no evidence that he included them. Moreover, Barton does not provide any primary source evidence; he simply cites an erroneous citation from a tertiary source. The Founders’ Bible publishers place the article on the Jefferson Bible in Matthew 9 which makes the situation all the more absurd.
Barton also says on page 1446 that Jefferson included passages referring to the Resurrection. He probably would defend himself by saying he meant the general resurrection of people on judgment day. However, the average reader would not know that. The article may as well been placed at the end of Matthew closer to the Resurrection of Christ which is another passage not included in either of Jefferson’s extractions.
Even though The Jefferson Lies is no longer available from Thomas Nelson, you can get the same faulty claims now in The Founders’ Bible.