So I’m calling foul on David Barton.
He has a new book out on Thomas Jefferson entitled The Jefferson Lies. (Which I have ordered from my library to look through and possibly review. However, I am not linking it because this is not an endorsement.)
According to the book description, this work is supposed to “correct the distorted image of a once-beloved founding father, Thomas Jefferson.”
Through Jefferson's own words and the eyewitness testimony of contemporaries, Barton repaints a portrait of the man from Monticello as a visionary, an innovator, a man who revered Jesus, a classical Renaissance man―and a man whose pioneering stand for liberty and God-given inalienable rights fostered a better world for this nation and its posterity. For America, the time to remember these truths again is now.
“A man who revered Jesus.” How does that square with Jefferson’s famous bible? Barton explains on his website: “What Jefferson did was to take the ‘red letter’ portions of the New Testament and publish these teachings in order to introduce the Indians to Christian morality.”
Christian morality maybe, but certainly not Christianity. Even if the part about evangelizing the Indians is true (and it’s historically dubious), Jefferson’s bible is certainly not merely a simplified edition. In a letter to Adams, Jefferson described it as a fixing of the historical record:
We must reduce our volume to the simple Evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphiboligisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his and which is as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dung-hill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages.
You can read the result for yourself. As it shows, the "amphiboligisms" "misconceptions" “dicta” and "dung-hill" cut out by Jefferson include all the miracles as well as the resurrection, reducing the gospels to a mere "code of morals." If Barton thinks that’s orthodox Christianity, he fails not only as a historian, but also as a theologian (ironically, his background is theology, not history, and we already knew he had difficulty distinguishing between Christianity and Mormonism.)
A review in the Wall Street Journal nails this point exactly:
Jefferson was "pro-Christian and pro-Jesus," [Barton] says, although he concedes that the president did have a few qualms about "specific Christian doctrines." The doctrines Jefferson rejected—the divinity of Christ, the Resurrection, the Trinity—are what place him in the camp of the deists and Unitarians in the first place. It was Jefferson's difficulty with these doctrines that persuaded his close friends Benjamin Rush and Joseph Priestley that Jefferson's skepticism went beyond anything even these latitudinarian believers could endorse.
I don’t dispute that Jefferson was a very influential founder, or that he made immense contributions to the nation (although he was also a mass of contradictions). But to claim him as a devout evangelical Christian is to make Christianity subservient to political ideology. It is no different than the often complained about practice of liberals claiming Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, or Abraham Lincoln was homosexual. With claims such as these Barton has crossed a line that no Christian or historian should cross. He has redefined orthodox Christianity to exclude the divinity of Christ, and he has rewritten history to serve his political ends. Barton has done to Jefferson what Jefferson did to Christ - rewrote history to exclude the inconvenient parts and then justified it by claiming to “fix” the record.
The word for that is propaganda.
Update: here are my additional thoughts after exploring the book itself.
Definitely agree. I think the big problem is his tendency to put the founding fathers on a sort of pedestal, instead of admitting that some of them had some pretty serious flaws.
ReplyDeleteNicholas,
ReplyDeleteI disagree with much of what you say in this post, although I applaud your spirit. I ended up doing my own response here (http://themostidealisticcynicever.blogspot.com/2012/05/as-some-of-you-know-this-blog-is.html) because I didn't want to write paragraphs of comments.
As a side note, I do encourage you to read the book. Whether or not you agree with Barton's conclusions, I think you'll find it a fascinating read. Keep up the good work!
Dick,
DeleteThank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts. I hope to be able to address them in the near future.
Not a problem. I look forward to it!
DeleteFirst, thank you for your thoughts on my post. I’m glad we’re able to engage in this.
DeleteSecond, please read the review by the Wall Street Journal written by a Jefferson expert. It goes into more detail than I was able to.
Third, the argument that Jefferson did include miracles in his bible has been online. The miracles aren’t there. Also, it is not just a compolation of the words of Jesus, since all his words relating to his divinity were cut out.
Fourth, Jefferson couldn’t be Christian if he rejected core tenets of Christianity (such as the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the Resurrection). He may have thought of himself as “christian” and described himself as such, but he first had to redefine the term to something it’s not. Here Barton suffers from lack of purpose. If he, as you assert, is simply trying to argue that Jefferson not atheist or clock-maker diest, he’s correct. But he’s also not refuting any lie or adding anything to the historical record, as there appears to be no serious scholarship to the contrary. Your argument requires the premise to be a straw-man.
If, on the other hand, he’s trying to at least implicitly baptise Jefferson into the modern evangelical conservative movement (as I believe to be the case, since he’s already argued that unitarians at the time of the founding were “evangelical”, he’s simply selectively cherry-picking history to lead his audience to a false conclusion. That he gets the unitarian issue wrong and that he gets the Mormon issue wrong does not make him credible to speak on Jefferson’s religious beliefs. I’ll have to look at the book directly to see if Barton has changed his tune, but I’ve seen nothing to make me believe he has (and plenty to confirm that he has not).
So at its best the book is a refutation of straw men. At worst, it’s calculated political propaganda. Either way it’s historically deceptive.
Not at all a problem. I looked at the WSJ review, but your links to your second point aren't working. I'm especially interested in this, as the arguments by Barton that the (two) "Jefferson Bibles" contained miracles are not original to David Barton; he was relying on other sources, if I remember correctly. I agree with your forth point--that Jefferson redefined the terms "Christian" (he also said that he was "a sect unto himself") but I don't believe that David Barton is entirely refuting straw men, as you'll see when you read it. It is possible that the arguments that Jefferson was an atheist/deist are not being made by "legitimate historians," but they ARE definitely being made, even if it is only be screaming liberal humanists, and the Sally Hemings story is mainstream. I'd say the book is a refutation of some conceptions (or distortions) of Jefferson, and an attempt to paint him in a very positive light.
DeleteAs far as unitarians = evangelical, I didn't know Barton said that. He doesn't say that in this book, as far as I've seen. I believe it IS true that Unitarians were more mainstream in the 1700s as they are today, but I'm pretty sure they, or at least their leaders, were all wrapped up in denying Jesus' divinity/the Trinity (hence their name) from the beginning, which I'd say is a heresy. Nowadays they don't care if you worship a rock! ;) From what I've seen, Barton is not attempting to baptize Jefferson into the modern evangelical conservative movement, but he IS trying to make him seem as friendly to and supportive of the modern evangelical conservative movement as possible.
Sorry the links didn’t work. Here are the links I had regarding the miracles:
Deletehttp://wthrockmorton.com/2012/04/04/the-jefferson-lies-does-the-jefferson-bible-include-the-miracles-of-matthew-9/
and
http://wthrockmorton.com/2012/05/14/what-did-jefferson-include-in-his-edited-gospels-aka-the-jefferson-bible/
Not a problem-thanks for the links! I'll follow up later when I get a chance to examine them more closely.
DeleteNicholas,
DeleteMy brief survey of Barton's work and Throckmorton's assertions that The Jefferson Lies had some inaccurate sources seems to bear Throckmorton out, although I don't have access to all the references cited in The Jefferson Lies (a couple of them, like the Jefferson Bible itself, as well as Charles Sanford's work, which was cited in The Jefferson Lies and mentioned by Throckmorton, are on Google Books to some degree or another.) I'm glad you brought this to my attention, and I'm really interested to see how this plays out. Thanks for the info!
I am really impressed that this is such a serious, respectful, and researched comment conversations.
DeleteWell said. I appreciate much that Barton has preserved and elucidated to often historically unaware believers, especially pastors, but that is no excuse for stretching the truth to the breaking point.
ReplyDeleteGood article, Nicholas.
ReplyDeleteArguably, the greatest contribution Jefferson made to forming our country was the Louisiana Purchase. I don't see why so many Christians believe it is so necessary to defend every Founding Father, especially those who were not critical figures to the formation of our nation. I would rather tie back to Madison or one of his mentors (John Witherspoon, for example) in an argument before tying back to Jefferson. With Madison as the framer of the Constitution and Witherspoon as his mentor and fellow Continental Congressmember, I find their contribution to the discussion inherently greater than our diplomat to France.
I agree, Centaur. I'm not sure why Christians feel that every single Founding Father has to be established, labeled, and defended at all costs as a firm Bible believer. They weren't all. They were shaped by that worldview and culture, and some of them *were* solid Christians. Why can't we just take what we have and be honest about the rest?
ReplyDelete