-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Religious Right faux-historian David Barton’s new book, The Jefferson Lies, is an attempt to portray the third President as an orthodox Christian. Barton has a Bachelor of Arts degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University. Two professors, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter, from Grove City, a private Christian institution north of Pittsburgh, have written an e-book, Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President, wherein they expose Barton’s revisionism.We shall look at the “In the Year of Our Lord Christ” claim of Barton about Jefferson and give you a flavor of the kind of “evidence” that suits Barton’s purpose.
The phrase “In the Year of Our Lord Christ” appears on sea letters, or passports as they were then called, that allowed merchant ships safe passage when entering certain ports. Barton notes a passport for the Herschel on its journey to London and explains:
Many official documents say “in the year of our Lord,” but we have found very few that include the word “Christ.” However, this is the explicitly Christian language that President Thomas Jefferson chose to use in official public presidential documents.
From the accompanying image, it can be seen that Jefferson did indeed sign the passport that allowed safe passage for the Herschel. However, Jefferson did not “choose” the “explicitly Christian language.”
In 1782, the Treaty with Holland, the second country after France to recognize the independence of the new United States, proscribed the form of the passport. As can be seen from the image, the treaty explains how the document is to be worded.
Jefferson did not “choose” to use the phrase, the phrase was an obligation of the treaty. In the image of the sea letter it can be seen that “In the Year of Our Lord Christ” is preprinted and Jefferson, or more likely one of his scribes, inked-in the date.
This is the dilemma the Religious Right has with Jefferson. They can either downplay Jefferson’s role and importance in the founding of our country, or they can try to portray Jefferson as one of them. Both tactics have been used. Both have failed. Barton’s revisionist history demonstrates their desperation for their religion to get credit for America’s founding.
It would be kind of pathetic if they didn’t want to destroy the secular foundation of American Exceptionaism.
H/T: Americans United, Christianity.com, Warren Throckmorton.
*********** Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger ***********
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Citing ‘Lost Confidence,’ David Barton’s Publisher Pulls Book On Jefferson
CASEY MICHEL
AUGUST 17, 2012
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/david_barton_jefferson_lies_pulled.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
Excerpt:
In 2005, David Barton was riding high. The Texas native had been serving as the state’s GOP co-chair for eight years, and he had just been asked by the Republican National Committee to liaise with social conservatives during the run-up to the 2006 elections. Meanwhile, the self-styled historian, who had founded his WallBuilders publishing organization in 1988, was pushing an ever-increasing amount of texts, amicus briefs, and books that sought to stamp an undeniably Christian slant on American history.
It all led to Barton being named one of the nation’s top evangelicals by Time — a fact, and a rise, made all the more remarkable by Barton’s lack of a historical background.
Now, however, Barton’s star seems to have dimmed. Thomas Nelson Publishers announced this month that it has ceased publication of The Jefferson Lies, Barton’s latest work.
Casey Francis Harrell, the director of corporate communications at the publishing firm, said that, due to a spate of recent complaints, Thomas Nelson had “lost confidence in the book’s details.” The Jefferson Lies, a New York Times bestseller, has been pulled from Thomas Nelson’s website, and the company has asked online retailers to cease offering the work to the public. The cessation came only two days after NPR’s “All Things Considered” ran a stinging commentary of Barton’s work.
Fun Jefferson fact: The total amount of money he spent on wine while President:$10,955.90, or roughly $175,000 in today’s dollars.
I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments, but I think one can learn a lot about how Jefferson felt towards religion by the simple fact that he put together his own bible. Jefferson put his bible together by cutting out all of the teachings of Jesus and putting them in a new book, while leaving all of the supernatural and dogma out of it.
Plain and Simple, Jefferson believed in the teachings of jesus, the falibility of organized religion, and had a vague belief in a higher power.
agrippamom,
Something that we don’t learn about the New England immigrants is that the folks coming to New England came as indentured servants of corporations as well. The Mayflower had, in addition to the Pilgrims, a number of “strangers”, people added to the ship by the corporation. The contract they were presented with before they left had them working 4 days for the company, 2 days for themselves, with Sundays for worship. After they were settled, their contract was modified such that they were to work 5 days for the corporation and 1 day for themselves, with one day for worship. The Pilgrims had religious freedom in Holland but they were concerned that their children were becoming Dutch.
It seems to be fairly well known that in spite of their desire to worship as they pleased the New Englanders were intolerant of those who chose to worship differently and drove them out of their communities. Some things never change.
Unless they reinvent history they’ve got nothing legitimate to hang their hats on in their crusade to remake this country into an old testament paradise. Just calling him/them on their lies won’t stop them, just like the President producing his birth certificate won’t stop the birthers. Reality doesn’t enter into the equation.
David Barton is just a plain liar. He is not even very good at it.
This constant business to try to make the United States a “Christian” country is just an attempt to make their religion “the” national religion. Isn’t that why the colonies were started in the first place?
David Barton Lies About US History
Top Evangelical David Barton: “Why Don’t We Regulate Homosexuality?”
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLvR2SXKYGc
Mr. Barton got a degree in teaching Sunday School. Nevertheless, he is the official historian of the religious right. Is it any wonder that Republican social policy lacks depth and intellectual rigor?
Y’all remember JFK on Jefferson before the group of Nobel Prize winners, I hope?
And why don’t we take that all-seeing eye off the top of the pyramid on the dollar bill?
Or is that the one belonging to the surveillance system of tomorrow.?
“… also view these attempts as intentionally subverting and thus dangerous to our nation as a whole. Mr. Barton needs to be identified as such and called to account by Jefferson scholars everywhere..”
Blouise….
Could we have him cited as a terrorist or supporter thereof and have Obama fix him?
oh , I forgot, they just banned those studies of European migration in America in Arizona high schools.
To say nothing about Tucson or Santa Fe being the oldest colony in the United States.
Actually, the attempt by the religious right and their ilk to create the fiction that our nation was founded as a Christian one goes much deeper than that.
If you ask most Americans where our country began, they can tell you all about the Puritans, Pilgrims, and Plymouth Rock, but almost NONE of them know a thing about Jamestown.
Jamestown was NOT founded as a religious enterprise, but a commercial one full of settlers who: desired to get out of England; were prisoners forced out of England; became bond servants to escape; etc. Religion had very little to do with it.
However, find it in your US History book- if you can. There may be a mention, but only a mention, while PAGES go on about the Pilgrims.
Give me BREAK!!! Most of our Founding Fathers came from the OTHER colonies, not Massachussetts, but you’d think they were the first an most important Virginia’s House of Burgesses and system of government, as well as its Constitution, also had a PROFOUND effect on our government, whereas the repressive government formed in Massachussetts took some time to catch up to the freedoms afforded in other colonies.
You never read about that in the history books, only about the lie.
Until ALL of it is exposed for what it is, our kids will continue to believe the lies because it goes unexposed from the earliest pages of their history books.
… all in the name of Jesus, don’t ya know
“Ah, what would they have to say about Jefferson packing his pipe with home grown marijuana?” (shano)
That he was experimenting with the results of crop rotation … and rope-making?