I have seen more references to David Barton than is usual lately. Mostly I come across his name when Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars debunks one of Barton’s offerings. But now I’m reading about him in other places. For example, Tipsy notes a squabble between Barton and Ann Althouse.
There is an almost hermetically sealed, alternate intellectual universe where the half-truths and fabrications of guys like Barton are taken, almost literally, as Gospel. They strive to portray Founding and pre-Founding America as a place where there was not a notion that a wall should exist between (Christian) Church & State; and where other religions may have been tolerated but not equal in the eyes of the government. (See “Dominionism“) Chris Rodda has undertaken to debunk a good number of these in her “Liars for Jesus” (pdf). But, as historian Paul Harvey notes, such debunking is necessary but not sufficient because Barton is simply playing a different game than historians.
Barton’s intent is not to produce “scholarship,” but to influence public policy. He simply is playing a different game than worrying about scholarly credibility, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. His game is to inundate public policy makers (including local and state education boards as well as Congress) with ideas packaged as products that will move policy.
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Barton’s success at withstanding the phalanx of professional critics comes because he taps into a long history of “Christian Nation” providentialism.In short, perhaps the best way to understand Barton is as a historical product of Christian providentialist thinking, one with significant historical roots and usually with a publicly convincing spokesman. He is the latest in a long line of ideologically persuasive spokesmen for preserving American’s Protestant character.
Barton is the intellectual descendant of “Parson” Weems, Lost Cause historians, and William Jennings Bryan. (Harvey notes that Bryan’s Christian Nation bordered on socialism, in sharp contrast to the coldly libertarian one envisioned by Barton.) Harvey goes on to argue that the “debate” about the Founders view on religion is mostly fictitious — at least as argued against Christian Nationalists. The “godless” view of the Constitution recognizes that the Founders were, by and large, religious people. They just did not believe that religion should have any special privileges at the federal level. Harvey concludes:
The Christian Nation “debate” is not really an intellectual contest between legitimate contending viewpoints. Instead, it is a manufactured “controversy” akin to the global warming “debate.” On one side are purveyors of a rich and complex view of the past, including most historians who have written and debated fiercely about the founding era. The “other side” is a group of ideological entrepreneurs who have created an alternate intellectual universe based on a historical fundamentalism. In their drive to create a usable past, they show little respect for the past as a foreign country.
Guys like Barton are looking at the past, not for its own sake & not to understand it, but as a tool to achieve a predetermined purpose. And what’s the point? To influence politicians and policy. And it’s working. Mike Huckabee likes Barton so much that he joked that he wanted every American to be forced to listen to him at gunpoint.
And I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced, at gunpoint no less, to listen to every David Barton message and I think our country would be better for it.
G.O.P. Presidential frontrunner, Michele Bachmann, wants Barton to teach “Constitution classes” to new members of Congress.
Bachmann and Barton have a long relationship going back to Bachmann’s time as state senator. Barton was invited to Minnesota to help Bachmann with legislation on school history standards, she’s appeared his radio show numerous times, and she and Barton have conducted tours in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate to tea partiers how religious the Founding Fathers were.
And, the other likely G.O.P. Presidential nominee not named Mitt, Rick Perry, used Barton as a textbook expert. Using Barton’s mythical story of the Founding is argument by appealing to (fabricated) authority. They want a present where their view of Christianity dominates government policy; so, they want to create the illusion that there was a happier time in our past where our country embraced their policy views so that they can further argue that we should “return” to that embrace and, thereby, return to that happier time. This is necessary since, often times, the general public is a little skittish about embracing those views on their own merits. (See, e.g., a wife should graciously submit to her husband.) This is the sort of thing that gives rise to Stephen Colbert’s quip that reality has a known liberal bias.
Very well reasoned…and I wouldn’t try that last idea on anyone in your vicinity.
Oh, yeah. Amy is all about graciously submitting!
The reality is that our forefathers were products of their times as much as we are today. The settlement of America (by choice and otherwise) was in many cases to escape authoritian churches (Rome and Church of England) and still strongly against muslim and jewish thinking. The forefathers were for the most part believers of the “facts” as to white people and males. While there was some strong positions as to separation of church and state at the federal level in part this could have been a response to the past and the conditions in some states where a particular religion did have great influence and this particular religous view was not shared in other parts of the young nation. There may even have been fear of a particular religous view becoming a dominant factor thus better to seek separation than run the risk of a controlling religion. The strong statements as to “back to the founding fathers” is just too simplistic as this group of white men would not likely be comfortable in today’s U.S. society (but in reality there are parts of the world where many of their beliefs still hold sway, but generally we do not endorse that thinking today –my beliefs are right and women have no rights.) Interesting as to how our founding fathers would view even the idea of women candidates for the presidency of the country.
While I’ve never even heard of Barton before, by your description here, he sounds a lot like Krugman then, in writing about the past as a tool to shape present policy. I’ll to have to sample something by him, because while you describe it as ‘coldly libertarian’, to wish away the separation of church and state is anything but libertarian as far as I know it.
Economic libertarianism anyway. The choice of Krugman is a false equivalency. So far as I know, he doesn’t cherry pick quotes; and he actually does seem to want to know how the past worked even if you disagree with his conclusions.
I’m reasonably confident that, if confronted with a Thomas Jefferson quote that “Christianity is for chumps,” Barton would move on to the next page, looking for something to support his idea of a Christian Nation. If Krugman came across a Kenyes paper that says, “you know what, after further study, this priming the pump business doesn’t work” he’d take a hard look at that study.
I’m sure you could find people on the Left doing something more equivalent to Barton; I don’t think you could find front running Democratic candidates holding those people up as examples of what should be taught in our schools.
It is interesting to note that the first ideas of Church and State being separated manifested themselves in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where they had specific provisions in their charter forbidding clergy or lay clergy from serving in government. The reasoning was slightly different, however, in that the colonists believed that it was government that would corrupt the church, not the church corrupting government.
Perfectly reasonable, given the context of their beliefs. They were not as separatist as the Plymouth colony, and many felt that the Anglican Church had been corrupted by power, but was not inherently evil.
I don’t think that much of this ideology survived the roughly 150 years to the Constitutional Convention, but it is hard to know what is in a person’s heart.
My digression aside, I don’t believe that fundamentalism has a particular political ideology. In the 1980s, the Republican Party aligned with many fundamentalists on issues like abortion, and a coalition was born. The cynic in me tends to think that leveraging the Moral Majority and other movements at the time was a convenient electoral strategy by blue blooded R’s. Over the past 30 years, that group has demanded and received more influence in the party and now shapes much of its platform. I think it is one of the reasons the libertarians in the country identify less with the Republicans. Much as there is stress between unionists and immigration advocates in the Democratic Party, there is stress between the small government advocates and the moral interventionists in the Republican Party.
Probably more of a commentary on shortcomings of a two party system than anything.
The choice of Krugman is a false equivalency. So far as I know, he doesn’t cherry pick quotes; and he actually does seem to want to know how the past worked even if you disagree with his conclusions.
No offense, but you don’t know what you are talking about. The economics blogs are full of Krugman critiques that are based exactly on what you describe. Just one example.
Krugman in his current iteration is an ideologue.
So are you saying that the way you think Krugman gets things wrong is equivalent to the way Barton gets things wrong?
Of course it is! Krugman is an ideologue, you just choose not to see it.