History, Our Story

If knowledge is power, then discovering that you been misled is disheartening at best.  History, according to my old school texts, was really "His Story", as if God himself had come up with the plot. What if he hadn't? Or what if we'd messed up the ending? Realizing that my understanding of science and history was both inadequate and faulty, I kept my mouth shut a lot more. My babies kept growing and I planned to teach them myself, so correcting my ignorance was imperative. At the same time, I was wary of "teachers" who showed too much eagerness.  How could I ascertain that a guide esteemed accuracy as much as I did, and wasn't merely pushing an agenda?

I first got acquainted with Garry Wills through his theological writing, but I soon discovered his books on American history--specifically, Head and Heart: American Christianities and Under God: Religion and American Politics. Compared to the filtered texts I had read as a teen, Wills offered a much deeper, broader view of the religious forces that continue to shape our nation and our government. And, unlike David Barton, Wills is an acclaimed historian. I could not get enough, carrying these hefty tomes along on my summer vacation and gasping over all the facts I had somehow missed.

Finally, someone else who had written about Mary Dyer's miscarriage! That story had bothered and mystified me since reading Winthrop's report of the exhumation in The Light and the Glory--a strangely covenantal twist on history with ties to a New England cult. Along with its sequels, also co-authored by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, this version of American history is prominent in some homeschooling curricula and has received accolades from prominent politicians like John Ashcroft and Sam Brownback. But The Light and the Glory was saturated with assumptions about supernatural involvement in human affairs. The Devil was just another character in the story, albeit an invisible one. Now here at last was a genuine professor of history pulling back the veil of mystery and presenting the facts simply, without spooky undertones. I felt as if I was privileged to be one of Wills' students, feverishly taking notes and hanging on every word.

Later on I discovered Sarah Vowell. I had heard her book The Wordy Shipmates discussed on NPR numerous times before I finally checked it out. Sarah's inimitable style suited me exactly. I loved her crisscrossing rabbit trails, her personal commentaries that made the history come alive, the stranger-than-fiction tales that made the facts so believable. The characters--John Cotton, John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams--were familiar names to me, but Vowell's analysis was fresh and honest. Between her and Wills, I finally found a way to understand and relate to the Puritans without feeling bound to defend them.

Replica of a missionary's house, Maui

Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, about the intertwined history of the USA and the Hawaiian Islands, was so good that I read it twice. When I visited the harbor at Lahaina on Maui, I saw for myself the dual influence of New England on that little Pacific island and pondered how it must have confused the locals to have English-speaking sailors and missionaries fighting over foreign moral codes. The heritage left by agrarian New England Calvinists lingers in the pungent air near the sugar mill, and is commemorated by this replica of a clapboard house nestled in the Kepaniwai Heritage Gardens in the Iao Valley.

On another cross-country trip, we listened to eminent historian David McCullough read his history of the American Revolution, 1776. The issues were so much less clear-cut than my old textbooks suggested, the colonists and the British all such colorful characters, the war so horribly cruel. My children wrestle with the complexities of that period every time they watch "Liberty's Kids", a engaging and invaluable series that dramatizes conflicting points of view during the birth of the American nation. Unlike the "homespun" versions, I find that straight history doesn't leave me feeling proud.  

It takes more courage to face history this way, more honesty, more stamina. I find that humanity's past, rather like its present, is anything but clean, anything but black and white. History is not a neat museum placard. The heroes aren't quite pure and the villains aren't quite vile. Every chapter has to be examined through the lenses of its place in time, its place on various maps, its cultural perspectives. And my judgments will change with my understanding. What once looked like moral courage may appear differently when the light shifts. 

I still love history, though, messy as it is. 

Because it is our story.

David Barton: Homespun History

History was my favorite subject as a kid.

I devoured the Little House on the Prairie series, was enchanted by Ben and Me, and giggled through Jean Fritz's junior biographies of King George III, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry. I would slip away into "the study" to read and re-read the fourth grade A Beka textbook on the American colonists, the lives of the presidents in our 1968 World Book, or tales of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus.

Later, our bookshelves bulged with biographies of Lincoln, Anabaptist stories of the Reformation, and thick volumes from Bob Jones University Press skimming across the centuries from ancient Greece to World War II. Once, Dad brought me home a copy of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. And I could recite most of the dialogue from "A More Perfect Union", Brigham Young University's dramatic film about the Constitutional Convention.

When Bill Gothard first distributed David Barton "America's Godly Heritage" to homeschooling families in his Advanced Training Institute, I was entranced. We listened to that first cassette together and marveled at Barton's rapid-fire diction. After that, I would follow along with the tapes with my notebook and pencil and try desperately to copy out the quotations from the Founders as Barton galloped from one to the next at rodeo speed. Protected as I was from secular influences and celebrity worship, Barton was the equivalent of a rock star in my world. I collected Barton's numerous books and a stack of cassettes. I copied out and memorized my favorite lines. When he addressed the national ATI conferences in Tennessee, I was giddy with excitement. I wished the audience would quit applauding so he could fit in more of his speech!

Besides Barton's books on American history, I even purchased his obscure 31-page booklet How to Have Success With God, published in 1984:

"To God, obedience is better than anything."
"The more you do of what you hear from God, the more you will hear from God what to do!"
"Be a Christian who enjoys obeying God and you will enjoy being a Christian!"

Today, "David Barton is a former Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas and a political consultant for the Republican National Committee. He is also a bestselling author and political activist who has worked diligently to arouse true patriotism and restore America to her Biblical foundation."

But back then, Barton and his organization Wallbuilders had not yet gained notoriety outside Texas. In time he would get chummy with Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, U.S. Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, and the chairman of Gothard's Board of Directors, Congressman Sam Johnson of Texas. Brownback would say of Barton, "His research provides the philosophical underpinning for a lot of the Republican effort in the country today -- bringing God back into the public square." And that was a mission I supported wholeheartedly.

When my worldview began to unravel, however, I revisited the Wallbuilders' website, curious for answers that would settle some of my doubts. For the first time I realized that David Barton has no credentials as an historian or an archivist. He holds a B.A. in religious education from Oral Roberts University and has been both a [math and science] teacher and a principal at a private Christian school in his hometown of Aledo, Texas.

As a homeschooled student myself with limited exposure to the ways of academia, I could sympathize with Barton's ignorance of correct protocol for citing sources. But I was flummoxed to learn that he lacks primary sources for some of his quotations. Including some of my favorite quotations--lines I used to recite glibly at candidates who brought up the spurious "separation of church and state". Now this was unsettling. 

I hadn't heard David Barton for well over a decade when he appeared as a guest on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". Well, here was a blast from my past! I settled in to listen to the Texan's familiar too-rapid drawl and was surprised. Before, I had only heard Barton lecture to sponge-like crowds. His material seemed much less concrete in an interview before a skeptical audience. (And this incredible exchange with Glenn Beck puts Barton much closer to "unintentional comedian" than "educator.")

Disillusioned with Barton, and with those who unquestioningly accept his version of the past, I discarded the remaining Wallbuilders publications on my bookshelf and set out to round out my re-education on American history and the variegated experiences and ideals of the brilliant yet flawed men who penned our founding documents. Thus did they launch these United States on her voyage into their future, hoping that we would prove equal to the task of sailing her, of maintaining her trim and keeping her prow pointed forward.

Even if we were to concede that America was intended to be a "Christian" nation (in spite of plain evidence to the contrary), even if we acknowledge that weather patterns were divine intervention on behalf of the Continental Army and that the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the Constitution, even if we were to accept Barton's version of the past, how would that enlighten our present conversation? It does not therefore follow that George Washington would now use his influence in favor of creationism in science textbooks. It would be presumptive to assume that John Adams would cast his vote today for pointless transvaginal ultrasounds or that James Madison would oppose national healthcare. We could not even conclude that Thomas Jefferson would want his children reciting a pledge to a flag, much less to a nation "under God".

Mike Huckabee thinks our country would be improved we the people were all forced "at gunpoint, no less" to listen to David Barton's spin on our history. But I cannot help wondering how our Founding Fathers would respond today if they could hear Barton's appeal to an unrecognizable tradition. These men jettisoned the heavy time-worn design in favor of a revolutionary new ship of state they believed capable of carrying "we the people" through the vicissitudes of history. They were open-minded scientists, philosophers, and inventors, eagerly seeking and adopting new information and technological advances. Certainly, our nations' founders looked to the past for guidance as they plotted a new course. But to David Barton, history and tradition are anchors with which to slow progress and avoid forward-thinking.

When my daughter was very young, she used to protest when we explained disagreeable facts. "I don't want that to be true!", she would cry. Perhaps Barton is ignorant of the way he misleads and misinterprets evidence in order to achieve his political agenda.

Or perhaps he just doesn't want history to be true.

Faith of our Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson

Many years ago, I stood behind a church pew and argued with a college student who was the son of a Reformed Presbyterian minister. My family had just attended the Sunday evening service at his father's Pennsylvania church. Decades earlier, the building had belonged to a Christian & Missionary Alliance congregation. It was where my parents had been baptized as adults, where they were invited to sing cantatas with the choir, and where I was dedicated to the Christian God by a Pastor Raymond Dibble. We were in town to revisit those memories, but I was more fascinated by this Presbyterian church's songbook: a psalter that contained nothing but metrical psalms put to hymn tunes or chants.

I was also surprised to meet a young man close to my own age who had no aversion to conversation with a female. We stumbled onto the subject of American history, a favorite of mine. My fascination with the guy probably made me over-assertive. His studies had convinced him that Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian. At least not in the sense that his preacher-father would ever use that word. My home-education reading had led me to believe the opposite, and I was as stubborn as a bulldog. Not often did I have the opportunity to verbally wrestle with a handsome, intelligent young man! The intellectual contact made me as giddy as his wavy hair and Scottish last name did.

When my parents loaded us all back into the car to return to our hotel that night, my belief in our Christian founding fathers was still unswayed, though I did wonder how such such a cute Christian young man could defend such error so sincerely! I may even have been slightly jealous that he got to study such subjects in college.

My information had come largely from David Barton and ATI Wisdom Booklets. It was many more years before I realized the difference between real historians and David Barton. My definition of "Christian" has also undergone multiple revisions since that time. And now I understand what that pastor's kid was trying to explain to my much younger, naive but inquisitive and ever-searching self.

Thomas Jefferson

(Source: Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia at Monticello.org)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. (Letter to Peter Carr, 1787)

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. (Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1803)

In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to them. . . . We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the Amphibologisms into which they have been led by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging, the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. (Letter to John Adams, 1813)

I must ever believe that religion substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. (Letter to Miles King, 1814)

But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems,* invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.
* e. g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, &c.
(Letter to William Short, 1819)

No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances towards rational Christianity. When we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus, when, in short, we shall have unlearned every thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples: and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian. I know that the case you cite, of Dr Drake, has been a common one. the religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor. (Letter to Timothy Pickering, 1821)

The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors. (Letter to John Adams, 1823)

Belief or Truth

(January 12, 2012)
I was a child when my parents took us to a 2-day creationism conference. There were workshops and kids' sessions, slide presentations of Mt. St. Helens and cartoon drawings of Adam and Eve hanging out with dinosaurs. One guy talked about imagining in his bathtub how a flood could cause a forest to petrify. Another described being hit by lightning while on a mountain in Turkey, looking for Noah's Ark.

Ken Ham

My favorite speaker had a short beard and an Aussie accent. A kind of missionary to America, Ken Ham explained that fighting social evils like porn and abortion and divorce was futile as long as people kept believing in evolution. To really rebuild society, we needed to start by converting people to Biblical creationism. If they weren't convinced that the universe was formed by God in six days, they couldn't accept the concept of sin and salvation and needing a blood sacrifice to gain forgiveness and even if they claimed to be Christians, their faith would be wishy-washy at best. Using cartoons and an overhead projector, Ken made us laugh at ignorant "scientists" who believed they could tell how old fossils were, tossing in some anti-gay humor for good measure.

Mike Warnke

On the long drive to the conference, we listened to a Focus on the Family broadcast. Mike Warnke was giving his "testimony" and we were both riveted and entertained. Years later, Mike was exposed as a fraud--never having been the Satanist high priest he said he was, yet still selling Christians his lurid tales of degeneracy and conversion. Mike never denied the devil, as it were. He stands by his discredited and impossible stories today and continues to peddle his "ministry" to gullible audiences.

The creationist speakers turned out to be dishonest, too. While I thought they were trying to teach me to love truth AND scienctific research, they were priming me to support their agenda. A decade after the conference, I was mailing them my prayer requests, along with checks for a new museum project in Kentucky.

Another decade passed, and I was in church watching Focus on the Family's "The Truth Project". It slowly dawned on me that unqualified men were still trying to define "truth" for me. Men who did not share my thirst for knowledge. Men whose scientific "facts" were predetermined by their theology and political leanings. Men who were more willing to deceive than to consider evidence that would challenge their biases.

Dr. Francis Collins

I started to ask new questions. I heard an NPR interview with a scientist who was a Christian, yet accepted evolution as scientifically proven. My curiosity piqued, I started reading about the history of physics and geology and the age of the earth. I read books about social issues by left-leaning Christians and by atheists. We found a more liberal church. I read about sexuality and private schools and American history and how we got the Bible. I enrolled in community college. I began to teach my children about creation myths and how stars are born, and how Judeo-Christian beliefs about Satan and hell "evolved" slowly.

I no longer listen to men who insist the universe is merely thousands of years old, that women were divinely designed to be their husbands' submissive assistants, and that the Creator killed his own son to save the world but is glorified when believers of other faiths are punished forever. I don't laugh when they scoff at liberals, atheists, or gays. I want my children to recognize frauds, and to follow truth wherever it leads.