Thursday, June 26, 2014

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON: "Rise of a right-wing quack: Faux-historian David Barton’s shocking new influence"

At Salon here. A taste:
... Here’s just one example of his so-called scholarship being debunked by Chris Rodda, the senior researcher for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, via Media Matters. She challenged Barton’s insistence that Thomas Jefferson dated his presidential papers with the phrase “in the year of our Lord Christ,” which indicated that the notorious theist was really a super-Christian (what with the added “Christ” and all). 
According to Rodda, the truth is quite different: Jefferson took pains to omit “in the year of our Lord” in his documents, instead using phrases like “in the Christian computation,” and “of the Christian epoch.” Further, according to Rodda, the evidence Barton provided of Jefferson purportedly using the phrase is, in fact, a preprinted form that Jefferson had no input into creating.

14 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

"Here's just one example" is the same 5 or 10 minor errors that Chris Rodda has been bleating about for a decade now.

Barton's actual "Christian Nation" thesis is quite mild and modest, and holds up very well.

http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=23909

Contrary to what critics imply, a Christian nation is not one in which all citizens are Christians, or the laws require everyone to adhere to Christian theology, or all leaders are Christians, or any other such superficial measurement. As Supreme Court Justice David Brewer (1837-1910) explained:

[I]n what sense can [America] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or that the people are in any manner compelled to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within our borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all. Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal organization is independent of all religions. Nevertheless, we constantly speak of this republic as a Christian nation – in fact, as the leading Christian nation of the world. 8
So, if being a Christian nation is not based on any of the above criterion, then what makes America a Christian nation? According to Justice Brewer, America was “of all the nations in the world . . . most justly called a Christian nation” because Christianity “has so largely shaped and molded it.”

Jonathan Rowe said...

-- According to Justice Brewer, America was “of all the nations in the world . . . most justly called a Christian nation” because Christianity “has so largely shaped and molded it.” --

Even if this is a kinder, gentler thesis, Brewer's sentiments still strike me as absurd. At leas the "of all the nations in the world" part.

America is more of a Christian nation than Calvin's Geneva or Catholic Italy or Anglican Great Britain and so and and so forth?

Jonathan Rowe said...

The bottom line as I see it, if America is any kind of "organic Christian Nation," it is in the sense that America had a defacto liberal Protestant establishment. And I use the term "liberal" in a small l, more generic sense. That is, an 18th or 19th Century "liberal" is not the same as a lefty "Liberal" of today.

However, the "liberalism" of the past like the "Liberalism" of today is not hard core, orthodox biblical Christianity. It's something much more benign and mild.

As James Wilson said of Locke:

"The high reputation, which he deservedly acquired for his enlightened attachment to the mild and tolerating doctrines of christianity, secured to him the esteem and confidence of those, who were its friends."

[Bold face mine.]

Tom Van Dyke said...

America is more of a Christian nation than Calvin's Geneva or Catholic Italy or Anglican Great Britain and so and and so forth?

Quite right about Protestantism. As for "liberal," hard to say. In the 1600s, Geneva, Rome, and London all killed heretics. By the 1700s, there were so many sects of Protestantism, burning the heretics became impractical. Too damned many of 'em.

As for our Judeo-Christian origins, I defer to our friend Dr. Mark David Hall.

http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/2011/06/did-america-have-a-christian-founding

In the least, I submit that reviled David Barton's thesis, linked above, is no more extreme.

jimmiraybob said...

". . . most justly called a Christian nation” because Christianity “has so largely shaped and molded it.”

Well, if we're going to proclaim America to a (fill in the blank) nation based on what has largely shaped and molded it, we should be calling it a Greaco-Roman nation. Not only did ancient Greek and Roman political and philosophical ideas directly influence the founding, they also profoundly shaped and molded Christianity.



Tom Van Dyke said...

Christianity--esp the Scholastics--subsumed [Christianized] the best of Greco-Roman thought.

"Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an auonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk ---philosopher Jurgen Habermas

jimmiraybob said...

Thanks for helping me make my point. Christianity, at least in the Latin church, has always attempted to appropriate ideas, traditions, customs and superstitions from the larger dominant pagan peoples and cultures in which it was developing.

During the Medieval period the Roman church, in collusion with secular princes and kings, did manage to gain a near universal hold over the education and thought of Europe, sanctioning foreign ideas that were valuable to its advancement and attempting to keep the source materials under wraps or destroying them or just letting them rot into oblivion.

But, then came the Renaissance and an influx of original or Islamic translations of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and statesmen. Then the game was on and a rush to seek out original sources and translate then began. Yes, Aquinas and the Scholastics appropriated what they felt to be the best of these ideas that would best suit the religion (and not everybody in the church was happy with the usurpation of pagan influence).

But, the later Medieval Church and the universities, by then largely controlled to varying degrees by the Church, were starting to lose the battle over strict control of ideas. By the time of the Reformation and Enlightenment, with its emphasis on naturalism and reason, the choke hold of the Scholastics was broken. Bye bye Aristotle and hello Epicurus.

To this day in the west, Christianity, at least within some traditions, still values interaction with reason and the classic pagan philosophical ideas and they do the best that they can to subsume these ideas into their own traditions.

But, as can so clearly be seen in our time, the larger culture is/was free to openly explore and adapt and adopt and build upon the best of the ancient pagan philosophical ideas along with the best of earlier and contemporary innovations by Christian intellectuals (whether Protestant or Catholic)*.

This is largely what happened during the last American colonial moments when the best of our intellectuals, steeped in Enlightenment ideas and ways of thinking, were forging the blueprint for a new nation.

And remember, it wasn't modern secularists and atheists that started calling the founders, or at least a substantial number of founders, deists and atheists, it was contemporary theologians and clergy. it isn't modern secularists and atheists that came up with the idea that the Constitution is a godless document, it was contemporary theologians and clergy. Why? Because they, the founders, framers and the Constitution, settled on a system of national governance that could accommodate a plurality of religious and secular ideas from a radically diverse population.

And today, as then, there are Calvinists with their versions of subsumed pagan philosophical ideas, there are Catholics with their versions of subsumed pagan philosophical ideas, and there are other religious with their versions of subsumed pagan philosophical ideas. And, of course, there are secularists and atheists with their versions of subsumed pagan philosophical ideas.

At least now, as opposed to then, secularists and atheists and Protestants don't face the harsh persecution and punishments that drove subsumation of pagan ideas along clandestine routes. If there is one Enlightenment ideal incorporated through the founding that has flourished on these shores, it's the idea that all people have a right of conscience and a right of expression without fear of government or ecclesiastic interference and suppression.

*Heck, just look at George Brat who just beat out Eric Cantor in the Republican primary in Virginia. He's a self proclaimed Calvinist Catholic with strong secular libertarian underpinnings (Ayn Rand, Calvin and Pope Leo I walk into a bar....OK, Aquinas too.). Go figure what that means. One thing for sure though, he's busy doing some mighty subsuming.

lee said...

JMS--Usually the master of the appropriate quote, TVD I am afraid even failed to make his own point. Habermas appears to say that the modern Western ideas that he lists came exclusively from Judeo-Christian notions of justice and love, not from any syncretism with or subsumption of pagan ideas by Christians.

lee said...

Sorry JRB for the JMS. I guess I'm ADD.

jimmiraybob said...

lee, no problem. How could I feel offense by a temporary elevation. :)

Also too, speaking of Calvinist Catholic hybrids, this is from Mathew Stewart's Nature's God(1):

"Denis Diderot was a complacent student of theology until, in the same years that Northhampton was being revived [jrb - Jonathan Edwards and the Great Revival], he encountered a frenzied mob of convulsionaires in the streets of Paris.(41) The convulsionaires experienced divinely inspired seizures for hours at a time, believed in faith-based cures, and, though nominally Catholic, preached a theology striking in its similarity to Jonathan Edward's Calvinism. These frenzied enthusiasts soon came to serve Diderot, Voltaire and their fellow philosophes as the defining example of everything that their philosophy was not."

1) A few posts ago Jon featured this book:

Mathew Stewart (2014). Nature's God, The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. p. 56

Tom Van Dyke said...

lee said...
JMS--Usually the master of the appropriate quote, TVD I am afraid even failed to make his own point. Habermas appears to say that the modern Western ideas that he lists came exclusively from Judeo-Christian notions of justice and love, not from any syncretism with or subsumption of pagan ideas by Christians.


Sorry, Lee, I left the dots unconnected.

It's those Judeo-Christian ethics of justice and love that "Christianize" the Greco-Roman tradition. That all men are created equal--what Habermas means by "egalitarian universalism"--is not a pagan concept.

jimmiraybob said...

TVD - "It's those Judeo-Christian ethics of justice and love that "Christianize" the Greco-Roman tradition. That all men are created equal--what Habermas means by "egalitarian universalism"--is not a pagan concept."

the problem with pinning your argument to one dated source is that there's no chance for context and no chance for discussion and no chance to see what that source would say 10, 15 or 20 years later.

If Imago Dei, man being created in the image of God, or "the gods" since Yahweh in Genesis speaks in terms of "we" and some interpret that as speaking within a pantheon of gods, ..... if Imago Dei means.....and I should point out that there is not consensus within the Christian theological community as to what it means or if it even holds up after the fall, .... if Imago Dei is a basis for a "universal egalitarian" movement withing the Church*, then it has not always been and maybe has never been the dominant normative force within what might be called Christendom.

If it had been, then how did the Church* justify prompting and colluding with the civil authorities in torturing, burning to death, strangling to death, hanging to death, and generally murdering so many thousands and perhaps millions who were created in the image of God? Those whose ideas, whose consciences doomed them? What kind of normative message was that? I'll tell you what it was, it was "get the fuck in line" and not, "you are all equal among all men and all women of all nations."

There has been a generally humanistic, and what we might call today, a liberal trend withing Christianity, that did deal with humanity in an egalitarian and merciful sense, but that was never really a dominant force until historically recently. And, that, in large part, is due to the Enlightenment breaking of the old order and arbitrary authority, including ecclesiastical influences and colluding secular rulers.

The egalitarian, or cosmopolitan, spirit was alive and well as a pagan concept as expressed by no less that Cicero and Seneca - and was never extinguished or completely subverted by the Church or even Aquinas. It was and is a part of the tradition that Christianity, or at least some purported Christians, seek to make exclusive claim. Christian ideas may have added to the tradition but that does not establish sole proprietorship.

Unfortunately for your thesis, humanity and human intellectual change over time is a collaborative process. And humanity is diverse and complex.

*I use Church here to denote the institutional as well as the larger body of Christ....the people.

Tom Van Dyke said...

is due to the Enlightenment breaking of the old order and arbitrary authority including ecclesiastical influences and colluding secular rulers.


That was the Protestant Reformation, which predates the Enlightenment.

The egalitarian, or cosmopolitan, spirit was alive and well as a pagan concept as expressed by no less that Cicero and Seneca - and was never extinguished or completely subverted by the Church or even Aquinas

Subverted? Hardly.

By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.--Aquinas

As for Cicero's egalitarianism it is true some can be found there. However, the Stoics were never dominant in Greco-Roman political philosophy, and found much more congenial audiences with the spread of Christianity.

The Stoics are indeed "subsumed" in and by the Christian tradition, in the sense of being absorbed. The Stoics do end up winning the battle of the ancients, but only when wielded by Christianity.

jimmiraybob said...

Generally, the European Reformation was about reforming the Church* while largely maintaining the social regime known as the estates of the realm. The first estate was the clergy, the second estate was the nobility – hereditary aristocracy, and the third estate was the peasants and later the merchants and town folk. If anything, it was about democratizing Christianity in the sense of Biblical and doctrinal issues, but it was largely a matter of theology and Church politics entwined with secular politics – authority over the third estate still rested with the first two). Maybe on the radical fringe there was some headway on a broader egalitarianism scale that would include the third estate – for instance, Luther appears to have been sympathetic toward the peasants in the German Peasants War (against unjust conditions) but decided to maintain allegiance with the ruling nobility as he watched 10s – 100s of thousands of peasants and minor nobility killed.

The Enlightenment, at least the more radical aspects, was about a larger program of reforming the whole of social institutions, wrestling away arbitrary secular and ecclesiastical authority and building toward a far more egalitarianism and general democratization, including individual rights of conscience, freedom of expression and freedom of the press (if this seems familiar it should). It was about breaking the stranglehold of the hereditary nobility and ecclesiastical elite.

While the Protestant Reformation (and general dissenting movements), along with power struggles between the secular authorities and the orthodoc and reformed Churches, may have provided the first chinks in the armor of established authority, the Enlightenment led to an age of reason over unjust secular rule and revealed religious dogma and led to full scale democratic revolutions.

As I’ve always contended, especially as goes the American Revolution and founding, it was a mixed intellectual bag with respect to the history of the ideas that precipitated rebellion and reinvention, with religion and Christianity playing a part but also with un-Aquinian-subsumed pagan (esp. Greco-Roman) influence. The old order was broken and it’s hard to imagine that it could have happened without the re-emergence and acceptance of pagan ideas about philosophy and the cosmos, politics, and human nature.
Goodbye Aristotelian metaphysics and hello Epicurus.

While Aristotle and a few of the ancient ideas were subsumed by, as in absorbed by, Christianity (at least some tradition(s) within Christianity)**, the reception in Medieval and early Modern Europe of unfiltered works by the likes of Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, and Epicurus (particularly via Lucretius’ de Rerum Natura) was pivotal in sending Scholastic influence to the back burner and opening up a whole new and expanded worldview, or as some would put it w-w. They called it the New Philosophy.

*I use Church here to denote the institutional as well as the larger body of Christ....the people.

**I don’t know why you keep using this assertion since it’s uncontested but inconsequential in the larger scheme of intellectual development in the late Medieval and early Modern (except, of course, among adherents of the subsumed version(s)).