David Barton: History at Gunpoint

August 29, 2011 in Uncategorized by Leigh Johnsen

I doubt that many Americans know much about David Barton. That’s unfortunate; he’s one of the most influential people in American politics today. Barton’s notoriety arises mainly from an interpretation of early American history that claims the Founders of the United States intended to create a Christian nation.

Barton’s perspective is controversial. In fact, many historians—myself included—don’t believe the evidence supports his assertion. In subsequent entries, I intend to analyze his argument and offer an alternate interpretation. The paragraphs that follow in this entry sketch the outlines of Barton’s life and work, discuss his supporters and critics, and offer an introduction to the nature of the controversy he has generated.1

Barton was born in 1954. In 1972, he graduated from Aledo High School, in Aledo, Texas, and four years later received a bachelor’s degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University. Since then, Barton has worked as a church youth director, a math and science teacher at Aledo Christian School, and the school’s principal. Today, he is best known as the founder and president of Wallbuilders.

According to its Web site, Wallbuilders is “a national pro-family organization that presents American’s forgotten history and heroes, with emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.” Barton makes no secret of his desire to influence public policy. Working through Wallbuilders, he has set out to educate the public with his message; serve as a resource for lawmakers, judges, and other civic leaders; and encourage involvement in the political process among “people of faith.”

By many measures, Barton has succeeded. In 2005, Time magazine featured him as one of the twenty-five most influential U.S. Evangelicals.2 Barton has co-chaired the Texas Republican Party and published an avalanche of videos, books, and newsletters. Other tools of his include a daily radio program, appearances on right wing radio and television shows, and a speaker’s bureau that features a former judge and a state politician.

Barton’s message has attracted friends in high places. “I almost wish that there would be a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, at gunpoint no less, to listen to every David Barton message,” former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has stated.3 Another admirer, U.S. senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, credits Barton with providing “the philosophical underpinning for a lot of the Republican effort in the country today—bringing God back into the public square.” To media personality Glenn Beck, Barton is “the Library of Congress in shoes.”4

Beck obviously exaggerates, but Barton does own an extensive library, which he sees supporting his perspective. According to Wallbuilders’ Web site, Barton has “collected thousands of first-edition works of our Founding Fathers.” “[I]t is primarily in these original resources that we conduct our research,” claims Barton’s online biography. “From these priceless resources we are able to document the rich religious and moral history of America as well as to establish the original intent undergirding the various clauses of our Constitution.”

But can Barton actually support his claims? Critics don’t think he always can. Writing in the New York Times, author Erik Eckholm has characterized Barton as “a biased amateur who cherry-picks from history and the Bible.”5 According to Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Barton “offers up a cut-and-paste version of U.S. history liberally sprinkled with gross distortions and, in some cases, outright errors.”6 Historian John Fea has raised similar issues and suggested that Barton’s study of the past may have violated “every rule of historical enquiry.”7

Other critics of Barton include J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty; Baylor University historian Barry Hankins; former U.S. Senator Arlen Spector, of Pennsylvania; and historian Richard V. Pierand, of Gordon College, a multidenominational Christian college in Wenham, Massachusetts.8

At first glance, the argument over Barton’s view of American history may seem esoteric and inconsequential. But there’s more going on than meets the eye. If the United States was founded as a Christian nation, as Barton claims, and if the original intention of the Founders should have guided successive generations, as Conservatives like Barton tend to assert, then the current pattern of church-state relations in America is misguided. In fact, it begs for correction.

Barton’s interpretation empowers him and his followers to seize the initiative. It enables them to claim the mantle of the Founders, solidify their identity as successors of the American Revolution, and enter the political arena with unwavering confidence. Through them, it holds the potential to transform the U.S. pattern of church-state relations into something alien to many Americans in the twenty-first century.

Barton’s view of early American history has revolutionary potential. Whether it accurately reflects the past is open to serious question.

Notes

1. A more lengthy discussion of David Barton and his career can be found in Wikipedia, from which verifiable information otherwise uncited in this entry has been taken.
2. David Van Biema et al., “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America,” Time, Nov. 7, 2005.
3. Bob Allen, “Huckabee Defends Praise for Controversial Historian,” Baptist Standard, Apr. 8, 2011.
4. Chris Vaughn, “A Man with a Message: Self-taught Historian’s Work on Church-State Issues Rouses GOP,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 22, 2005, reprinted online in Baylor in the News; Kayla Webley, “Perusing the Glenn Beck University Curriculum Guide,” undated article online at
Times NewsFeed.
5. Erik Eckholm, “Using History to Mold Ideas on the Right,” New York Times, May 4, 2011.
6. Rob Boston, “David Barton: Master of Myth and Misinformation,” Institute for First Amendment Studies, 1998.
7. John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), xxvi.
8. Walker’s critique is particularly helpful. See J. Brent Walker, “A Critique of David Barton’s Views on Church and State,” printed online at the Web site of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Apr. 1, 2005.

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The Founders and Separation of Church and State

November 29, 2010 in Uncategorized by Leigh Johnsen

The ballots have been cast and the electorate has spoken. Counting continues in a few close races, but the U.S. midterm elections of 2010 have all but ended. A number of notable moments from the campaigns stick in my mind, but one of the most memorable comes from a debate between Delaware U.S. senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell and her opponent, Chris Coons.

The issue was creationism in public schools. According to Coons, the U.S. Constitution permits its teaching in private and religious schools, but under the “indispensable principle” of separation between church and state “religious doctrine doesn’t belong in our public schools.”

“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” O’Donnell asked.

To support his argument, Coons pointed to the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion. “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?” O’Donnell questioned in surprise. According to witnesses, a gasp arose from members of the audience, many of whom were law school faculty and students.

I find this exchange memorable not because of O’Donnell’s ignorance, which the audience seems to have assumed, but because it represents the public emergence of a reworked vision of U.S. history common among many Americans who seek closer ties between church and state. Echoes of this view can be heard throughout the “Real America” of which former Alaska governor Sarah Palin talks, and I suspect it will surface again in the new congress scheduled to convene in January 2011.

At this point, let’s admit that the precise words “separation of church and state” don’t appear in the Constitution. But does the concept emerge in some other form? I submit that it does, and I find the evidence compelling that the founding generation intended the government they formed in Philadelphia to keep religion at arm’s length.

My reasoning reaches back to the earliest days of the Republic. At the end of the American Revolution, shaky public finances plagued the country, armed insurrection had rocked the Northeast, and hostile European powers threatened national security. Many at the time considered the Articles of Confederation, the framework of national government throughout the War, inadequate for the task and saw the need for a stronger central government. The result was an initiative favoring a new system, the Philadelphia Convention, and the creation of the U.S. Constitution.

According to early American historian Robert Middlekauff, the ensuing debate over ratification revolved around the issue of how much power the proposed government would be able to exercise.1 Even its supporters, the Federalists, admitted limitations. Writing in Number 84 of the Federalist Papers, for example, Alexander Hamilton expressed a conviction common among the document’s supporters when he depicted the authority of Congress being limited to certain powers explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.

“[W]hy declare that things shall not be done for which there is no power to do?” he asked. “Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?”2

Other things in addition to freedom of the press were at stake. As written in Philadelphia, the Constitution granted Congress power to deal with such issues as borrowing money, regulating commerce, and establishing post offices. However, nowhere did it give Congress authority to pass legislation that involved religion. Only once was religion even mentioned (Article 6 prohibits religious tests for federal officials), and the effect was to lessen its potential influence in public policy even further.

So what about the First Amendment’s prohibition against the “establishment of religion” and its guarantee of “free exercise”? If the provisions weren’t needed, as Hamilton and other Federalists claimed, how did they end up becoming part of the Constitution?

The answer is politics.

According to constitutional historian Leonard Levy, opponents of ratification, the Antifederalists, remained concerned about the potential abuse of congressional power and demanded amendments that explicitly reined it in as the price for their support.3 Hamilton, James Madison, and other supporters of ratification essentially shrugged and repeated their denials. But they went on to engineer a solution that met their opponents’ demands and secured enough votes for ratification. One of the earliest actions of Congress under the new constitution was enactment of legislation guided by Madison that in due course became the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.

The beginning words of the First Amendment are significant: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first clause does not simply prohibit the establishment of a national church, as the late William Rehnquist once claimed. It forbids Congress from passing legislation of any kind related to the establishment of religion. The second clause places additional limits on congressional power.

Neither individually nor collectively did the two Religion Clauses of the First Amendment expand underlying restrictions on the new government. Any effort to do so would have jeopardized the possibility of support that Federalists hoped to gain from their critics. From the Federalists’ perspective, the Religion Clauses simply articulated limitations already woven into the fabric of the Constitution.

If the founding generation intended to create a national government in which church and state were closely aligned, they set out in a very strange way. By forbidding religious tests for civil servants, they signaled willingness to trust political power with believers and nonbelievers alike. They forbade Congress from limiting religious freedom or enacting legislation related to religion and religious establishments. And in the document’s preamble they depicted the new government coming into existence not because “it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World,” as the Articles of Confederation (Article 13) had asserted, but from the initiative of “We the People.”

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the 1789, when George Washington entered office under the new constitution. Understanding the actors and their thinking may be difficult for us nowadays, but the evidence I find tells me that those who wrote and negotiated ratification of the Constitution intended to keep religion at arm’s length.

I’m hard pressed to find any phrase that captures the essence of this arrangement more accurately than “separation of church and state.”

Notes

1. Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 654-655.
2. Quoted in Leonard Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York: MacMillan, 1986), 65.
3. I am especially indebted to ibid., 63-89, for this part of my argument.

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The Myth of a Christian Nation

September 12, 2010 in Uncategorized by Leigh Johnsen

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told that the United States is a Christian nation. The assertion has become so common nowadays that it seems to have entered the collective subconscious. But is it true? In the Myth of a Christian Nation (2005), author Gregory Boyd argues that it is not.  He bases his claim on a close reading of the Bible, particularly the New Testament.

Boyd pastors the Woodland Hills Church, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 2004, some of his parishioners approached him with a request that he enter the political arena and preach against such hot-ticket issues as abortion and homosexual rights, in accordance with the agenda of the Religious Right. He refused and instead delivered a series of sermons against politics in the pulpit. He titled the series “The Cross and the Sword” and it eventually became the basis for the Myth of a Christian Nation.

Boyd’s thesis is blunt. “I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry,” he writes. “Rather than focusing our understanding of God’s kingdom on the person of Jesus—who, incidentally, never allowed himself to get pulled into the political disputes of his day—I believe many of us American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues” (11).

In Boyd’s view, the problem arises from incompatibility between earthly governments, which he characterizes collectively as “the Kingdom of the Sword,” and the Kingdom of God. Boyd recognizes an obligation among Christians to honor earthly governments, in accordance with Romans 13. But he also finds evidence in Scripture that they have a “strong demonic component” (22), and sees them characterized by unregenerate passions, social unrest, threats, violence, and “tit-for-tat” retaliation—domestically and internationally. “So long as people locate their worth, significance, and security in their power, possessions, traditions, reputations, religious behaviors, tribe, and nation rather than in a relationship with their creator” (26), explains Boyd, these outcomes are inevitable.

Not so with God’s Kingdom. According to Boyd, the centrality of Jesus sets the Kingdom of God apart from earthly governments. In fact, he writes, “Jesus was the embodiment—the incarnation—of the Kingdom of God” (29). To Boyd, this reality gives the Kingdom of God the same self-sacrificing qualities of agape love that Jesus taught and demonstrated on earth. Thus, members of the Kingdom—those in “relationship with their creator”—promote peace rather than violence, refuse to retaliate, rely on persuasion instead of force, and find fulfillment in service for others.  In contrast to earthly kingdoms, which strive for power “over” people, “the Kingdom of God advances by people lovingly placing themselves under others, in service to others, at cost to themselves” (31).

To Boyd, the term Christian nation is essentially an oxymoron.  “No version of the kingdom of the world, no matter how comparatively good it may be, can protect its self-interests while loving its enemies, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, or blessing those who persecute it . . . ,” he writes. “By definition, you can no more have a Christian worldly government than you can have a Christian petunia or aardvark” (54).

Boyd’s book can be read on a number of levels. On one, it can be seen as a wide-ranging indictment of many modern American Evangelicals and a call for renewed discipleship. According to Boyd, not only is subscription to the myth leading Christians to misrepresent history and God, it is also burdening missionaries with nationalistic baggage, encouraging moralistic crusades, and giving a green light for Christians to hand over responsibilities to government that they, as followers of Christ, have a mandate to assume themselves.

In addition, Boyd’s book can be viewed as a path-breaking synthesis.  All too often in recent years, law, philosophy, and public policy have dominated discussions of government and religion in the United States. Serious, systematic analyses of the subject from a Christian perspective have been notably absent. Boyd’s book breaks new ground by offering the first sophisticated, Bible-based justification of separation between church and state formulated in recent times.

Despite its freshness, however, this book is not the first of its kind. Boyd writes in a tradition of Christian separatism present in Europe half a millennium ago in the Radical Wing of the Protestant Reformation and four centuries ago in the founding of Britain’s North American colonies. Evidence and reasoning similar to his can be seen in the writings of such Christian advocates of religious freedom as Roger Williams and William Penn, the founders of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, and Isaac Backus and John Leland, prominent Baptists of the Revolutionary Era. Through them, the impulse is known to have entered the cultural bloodstream of the new nation.

The importance of this 219-page book transcends its modest size. Not only does it challenge Christians to take membership in God’s Kingdom seriously, it also fosters legitimization of separatism as a Christian position. Meanwhile, it also holds promise of helping Americans rediscover their past, which includes the origins and nature of religious freedom.

The Myth of a Christian Nation has a compelling message. It deserves to be read widely.

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The Problem with Religious Tests

July 23, 2010 in Uncategorized by Leigh Johnsen

How much would you pay to hold political power—to shape public policy, to appear on television each night, to make life-and-death decisions? Billionaire and former E-Bay executive Meg Whitman recently spent about seventy million dollars of her own money to defeat insurance commissioner Steve Posner in California’s Republican gubernatorial primary, and she’s destined to spend a whole lot more against her Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown, before the November elections.

Most of us can’t part with such sums of money, but what about our integrity? Would we be willing to tell a white lie? How about embellishing our military record? Would our thirst for power be strong enough for us to misrepresent our religious beliefs?

I asked myself such questions shortly after South Carolina’s recent Republican gubernatorial primary runoff. The election pitted Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer against thirty-eight-year-old Nikki Haley, an ambitious state legislator born into an East Indian family, raised as a Sikh, and converted to Christianity shortly before she married her Methodist husband thirteen years ago.

Haley eventually prevailed in the runoff; she faces Democrat Vincent Sheehan in November. But she won only after considerable controversy. In May, Will Folks, a former press secretary for South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, claimed to have had an adulterous relationship with her several years earlier. In response, Haley asserted her innocence, claiming total faithfulness to her husband. Early in June, Larry Marchant, a consultant for Andre Bauer, levied similar allegations of his own, which Haley also denied.

Another line of attack surfaced the same day as Marchant’s, when Republican state senator Jake Knotts, a supporter of Haley opponent Andre Bauer, referred to Haley as a “raghead” during an interview with Pub Politics. “We’ve already got a raghead in the White House,” he said in reference to U.S. president Barack Obama and his father’s Muslim background, “we don’t need another raghead in the governor’s mansion.”

Marchant’s comments hit close to home. South Carolina is not famous for its ethnic and religious tolerance. One of the last things Haley probably wanted was affiliation with a black politician whom many people—particularly in the right wing of the Republican Party—consider foreign born and un-American. Above all, she probably didn’t want Bible Belt voters dwelling on her non-Christian background.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for reassurances of Haley’s Christianity to surface. I assume they were genuine, but let’s pretend for a moment they weren’t. In today’s political climate, the cost of not offering such assurances can be high—particularly in the South. As a result, office seekers who actually have little use for Christianity are encouraged to stretch the truth.

In effect, Haley faced a religious test. In the minds of many voters, adherence to Christianity determined her suitability for office. Nowadays, such tests are informal, enforced only by the shared attitudes of voters. But in earlier times, they were enshrined in colonial laws that automatically excluded from political office atheists, Jews, Anti-Trinitarians, Catholics, and others considered unorthodox. Then, as now, the political system encouraged dishonesty among candidates.

Reading the minds of those who founded the American Republic can be difficult. But their attitude toward religious tests was straightforward. According to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, they disapproved: “[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” it reads.

So why did this passage find its way into the Constitution? A number of possibilities come to mind, but two in particular stand out. First, I suspect that at least some members of the founding generation viewed a prohibition against religious tests as facilitating the unending quest for honesty among officeholders. Second, I also suspect some members recognized that the provision would discourage hypocrisy in religious matters.

The world would probably be different today if the American political system truly took this passage to heart. Perhaps we wouldn’t be so accustomed to seeing self-professed Christian politicians caught up in un-Christian scandals after they enter office. And, if she wanted, maybe Nikki Haley would even be able to run for governor of South Carolina as a Sikh.

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Prayer and Hypocrisy

May 20, 2010 in Uncategorized by Leigh Johnsen

Is it ever inappropriate for a Christian to pray? Strange as it may seem—especially coming from one who considers himself a Christian—I believe it is. And I believe that Christian Scripture supports my position.

This issue arose recently after I learned about the Congressional Prayer Caucus, a coalition of Washington politicians chaired by Congressman Randy Forbes. To Forbes, a Christian who sees “freedom for religion” rather than “freedom from religion” as a pillar of the American republic, prayer has played a central role in the nation’s political life since its founding. He believes it should continue to do so, and he has a special burden for what he sees as threats to the “right to pray.”

So what is the nature of those threats? Forbes points approvingly to public prayers in such political settings as the opening of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. He sees them sanctioned by tradition. But he perceives dangers arising from judicial decisions that restrict prayers within such government-sponsored contexts as public high school football games and graduations.

I don’t share Forbes’s alarm. Nor am I willing to accept his interpretation of American history and the judiciary. However, my major concern with Forbes and the Congressional Prayer Caucus is religious in nature, and it revolves around one simple question: What would Jesus do?

Christian Scripture is not silent on this point. In fact, the subject of prayer surfaces often in the New Testament Gospels. In the book of Matthew, Jesus himself offers a how-to lesson on prayer shortly after he delivers the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. His instruction starts with a warning: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” (6:1 NRSV).

Jesus goes on to describe two groups of people who violate this advice. The first sounds “a trumpet” whenever it gives alms (v. 2) and the second “love[s] to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others” (v. 5). Jesus uses a harsh term to describe both groups: hypocrites.

Nowadays, the word hypocrite carries a meaning somewhat different than it did in Jesus’ time. In first century Greek, a hypocrite was an actor. In effect, I see Jesus telling his disciples not to try looking like someone they really aren’t. More specifically, he advises them not follow practices that appear pious while they themselves actually lack piety.

But I also detect something else. Jesus doesn’t explicitly tell his disciples not to be hypocrites—though that can probably be assumed. Instead, he instructs them not “to be like the hypocrites” (v. 5; emphasis supplied). In this passage, I see Jesus asking his disciples to distance themselves from behavior that makes them look like hypocrite-actors. Then, to drive the point home, he issues additional instructions. “[W]henever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your father who sees in secret will reward you” (v. 6).

Scripture tells me that Jesus followed his own advice. I read about him “going up into a mountain apart” (Matt. 14:23); visiting the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:41); and withdrawing into “the wilderness” (Luke 5:16). With the exception of his crucifixion—when he lacked mobility—I do not find him engaged in prayer within any setting other than the intimacy of his disciples or in solitude.

I am not claiming that Forbes and members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus are hypocrites. Only God knows their hearts. In part, I’m suggesting that I find their initiative misguided. No power on earth has the capability to interfere with the “right” of Christians who follow Jesus’ advice and pray individually from their hearts, as he taught his disciples.

I’m also suggesting that their initiative has the potential to harm Christianity. Who can blame a jaundiced public for perceiving hypocrisy—however unjustly—in the actions of politicians already viewed on the whole as dishonest, lacking in morals, and eager to pander for votes? Although they may be inaccurate, many people will inevitably see the initiative as a clever act whose primary motivation is political gain.

As a result, Christianity gets burdened with baggage it neither wants nor needs, and the Good News is obscured.

So do I consider prayer inappropriate at times for those who profess Christianity? Yes, I do. According to Christian Scripture, context and motivation make a world of difference. And I hold this conviction not because I oppose Christianity, but because I value the instruction and example of Jesus too much to shortchange them.

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