Saturday, July 23, 2016

Beck & Metaxas Made a Huge Mistake

Throwing their hat in with David Barton. And others should learn from their example. This is why I feature the criticisms on my blogs. 

Yet again John Fea and Warren Throckmorton have posts criticizing Eric Metaxas' new book, but this time connecting him to, you guessed it, David Barton. From Fea's:
  1.  Metaxas’s view of Winthrop’s use of the phrase “city on a hill” IS taken out of context.  I encourage you to take David Barton’s advice and read the original source– “A Modell on Christian Charity.”  You should also read Hillsdale College professor David Gamble’s  In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. And don’t forget the post by Tracy McKenzie, chair of the history department at evangelical Wheaton College. 
  2.  I am sure I have addressed this before, but it needs to be said again.  For years Barton has been telling the ordinary evangelicals who follow him that he is right about American history because he owns a lot of documents.  He claims that he reads the original documents and suggests that professional historians do not.  This is a completely absurd claim.  ALL professional historians read and interpret primary sources.  This is what we do.  Doing history–especially the history of political ideas– has very little to do with whether or not someone one can hold an original document in their hands.  For example, if Barton had a copy of the Declaration of Independence would he be in a better position to interpret the ideas in the document than someone who was merely reading the Declaration of Independence online or in a textbook?  I have never been to Wallbuilders or seen David Barton’s collection of documents, but I am pretty certain that most of the documents he possesses are easily accessible for historians in online and print collections.  Unless one is writing a history about these books, letter, and manuscripts as physical objects or pieces of material culture (which is not how Barton uses the documents–he peddles in ideas), the fact that Barton owns these documents ... does not make his interpretations of history any more right or wrong.
Yes, Barton's point that he "has" the documents is snake oil worse than the Afrocentric claim that Western Civilization "stole" documents and therefore the ideas from Africa, to the exclusion of Africa having those ideas.  As though cultures steal from one another like people steal cars (where the original possessor no longer has the actual object itself and its benefits).

In the modern age, almost any historical document a party physically owns can be viewed in some kind of copy. The same isn't true of antiquity.

While Fea and Throckmorton may be (?) Left leaning, I don't see either of them as hard Left. And another critic, Dr. Gregg Frazer is not a man of the Left in any sense. Likewise a number of other prominent Right leaning Christian intellectuals have criticized Barton.

I am a libertarian and will be voting for Gary Johnson this term. I don't consider myself either a man of the Left or the Right. And this may surprise some folks: I actually like both Glenn Beck and Eric Metaxas. Beck is going to be voting for Gary Johnson just like I am. Beck is not a scholar. He is an entertaining media presence. But when he picks scholars to endorse, he should pick good ones.

Metaxas has more intellectual credibility than Beck. And likewise he should throw his hat in with scholars with more credibility than David Barton. (And arguably, because of his intellectual background, should know better than Beck).

11 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

This is a tempest in a teapot created by the anti-Religious right. Metaxas wrote a harmless little book calling for the return [?] of more virtue and faith in American life.

The opposition to it says more about the critics than it does about him.
And by going on David Barton's show and commiserating about the predictable attacks from the left, Metaxas did not endorse every aspect of Barton's [admittedly flawed] work. It's a crap argument to suggest he did.

Art Deco said...

While Fea and Throckmorton may be (?) Left leaning, I don't see either of them as hard Left. And another critic, Dr. Gregg Frazer is not a man of the Left in any sense. Likewise a number of other prominent Right leaning Christian intellectuals have criticized Barton.

You keep trading in this dubious description. Now go look at Throckmorton's wretched blog. A half-dozen posts about Eric Metaxes interspersed with a half dozen about David Barton interspersed with a half-dozen about Mark Driscoll (a megachurch pastor undone by a concatenation of problems), interspersed with attacks on Ted Cruz. Here's an alternative thesis: Fea and Throckmorton are parties to intramural disputes within evangelicalism and within the institutions for which they work. There is text and subtext to their commentary. Too bad for Messiah and Grove City, but not something in which anyone else has much of a stake.

Jonathan Rowe said...

Tom: Barton was a guest on Metaxas' show and EM enthusiastically endorsed Barton's flawed work.

Artie: Perhaps what you posit is accurate. I don't see how it contradicts what I write or makes my assertions "dubious."

Art Deco said...

I don't see how it contradicts what I write or makes my assertions "dubious."

Does your taxonomy illuminate or confound?

Jonathan Rowe said...

My posts are always illuminative.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Tom: Barton was a guest on Metaxas' show and EM enthusiastically endorsed Barton's flawed work.

You and other Barton attackers continue to ignore the larger counterargument Metaxas makes:

My thesis is that they are annoyed by our conclusions so they kind of nitpick and they find one little thing. If there’s something that’s in my book that’s wrong I want to change it, I don’t want it to be there. But they kind of jump on that and they write a whole essay on the thing that is wrong.

Flaws in some details do not necessarily doom the the thesis. Barton-haters get so steamed they can't see anything.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/01-einsteins-23-biggest-mistakes

John Fea said...

Not a man of the left...or right.

John Fea said...

Art Deco wrote:
"Fea and Throckmorton are parties to intramural disputes within evangelicalism and within the institutions for which they work. There is text and subtext to their commentary. Too bad for Messiah and Grove City, but not something in which anyone else has much of a stake."

Am I engaging in intramural disputes within evangelicalism on my blog? Sometimes. But I also try to write for anyone interested in historical thinking and (mostly) early American history. I can't speak for Warren or Grove City, but I am not engaged in any intramural squabbles at Messiah College. In fact, I am not even sure most of my colleagues read my blog.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Blogger John Fea said...
Not a man of the left...or right.


Such self-evaluations are...problematic. In fact, they go to the argument that "social science"--more accurately, social scientists--claim a lack of human bias and thus attempt to elevate their opinions and value judgments to the level of fact.

I had posted this here and there in the "Historians versus Trump," Leo Strauss's critique of Max Weber in his seminal Natural Right and History. It's one of Strauss's best and most important arguments.

https://is.gd/kWuvdM

I do hope you and our readers will give it a whirl. It's good to question our presuppositions, and the conceit of one's own neutrality is perhaps the most insidious.

Whether or not you're a gentleperson of the left, John, as "Art Deco" noted in another thread--and about Warren Throckmorton on this thread--the animus against the Religious Right is palpable, indeed objectively measurable.

On what do you spend your time and energy? In Throckmorton's case, it's quite exclusively left or at least anti-right. So if Metaxas is to be tarred with the Barton brush, you're rather in bed with Throckmorton yourself.

=:-O

For if Warren Throckmorton spends 90% of his time and energy attacking the right, whether or not he's a "left-winger' is rather moot.

[And as for the "Historians Against Trump," how they differ from Howard Zinn and his far-left

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/index.shtml

cabal infesting our education system is I suppose another one of those honest inquiries that no longer are possible in the anti-Socratic age.]

Thx for stopping by. Enjoy the Strauss.

Art Deco said...

but I am not engaged in any intramural squabbles at Messiah College. In fact, I am not even sure most of my colleagues read my blog.

It wouldn't matter if they read your blog or not. If you're on faculty committees (and hiring committees in particular) and you have a systemic position, you're involved in intramural disputes.


You have an extensive publication record and thus a research programme. Some people do and some people do not. Some of the people who do have these sore-thumb oddities in them when they were inveigled by someone else into a collaborative project which bore scant resemblance to much they'd done before or have done since.

And I assume you're not cold-calling around trying to get the speaking engagements of perfect strangers cancelled.

Tom Van Dyke said...

heh

http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2015/02/throckmorton-david-barton-on-real-life.html