Christian Publisher Stops Publication of David Barton's Revisionist History Book

As a history major in college and a firm believer that only by knowing true and accurate history can we avoid mistakes and horrors of the past, I have long been appalled by the work of supposed historian David Barton who would have fit right in with the Goebbels propaganda machine for the Nazi Party.  The man constantly spews deliberate lies and has been a leading advocate of the myth that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation."  It's a total lie and the real truth about the Founding Fathers reveals that they were extremely suspicious of religion and that virtually none of them were of a mindset like today's evangelical Christians who live in some kind of deranged alternate universe from objective reality.  And not surprisingly, Barton is a huge proponent of Bible based civil laws that would make homosexuality a crime worthy of severe punishment.   Barton's latest book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, sought to rewrite the history of Jefferson into some kind of fantasy that turned the truth about the man upside down.   Fortunately, the books publisher has ceased distribution of the book in the face of blistering condemnation.  Here are highlights from NPR:

Citing a loss of confidence in the book's details, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson is ending the publication and distribution of the bestseller, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson. 


The controversial book was written by Texas evangelical David Barton, who NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty profiled on All Things Considered Wednesday. The publishing company says it's ceasing publication because it found that "basic truths just were not there."

Since its initial publication, historians have debunked and raised concerns about numerous claims in Barton's book. In it, Barton calls Jefferson a "conventional Christian," claims the founding father started church services at the Capitol, and even though he owned more than 200 slaves, says Jefferson was a civil rights visionary.

"Mr. Barton is presenting a Jefferson that modern-day evangelicals could love and identify with," Warren Throckmorton, a professor at the evangelical Grove City College, told Hagerty. "The problem with that is, it's not a whole Jefferson; it's not getting him right."

Warren Throckmorton and I have dueled over the years on reparative therapy - he has since changed his positions supporting the "therapy" -  but he believes in honesty.  That's something unknown to Barton.  Bob Felton has some commentary on Barton's lies about Jefferson:

In order of the provocative ‘truths’ Barton proposes to set the record straight about:

• Did Thomas Jefferson really have a child by his young slave girl, Sally Hemings? Almost certainly. DNA tests performed in the late 90s established that the descendants of Sally Hemings have DNA that matches Jefferson’s descendants. Most historians think that settles the question, but others point out that the common DNA may have entered the family line through the Randolphs, Jefferson’s wife’s family. The Randolph descendents have refused to submit to DNA testing and so, strictly, the matter is unresolved. Rumors of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings were a commonplace during his lifetime, however, and it is undisputed that there were a lot of red-headed slave children running around Monticello, and that Hemings and her children received privileged treatment in Jefferson’s will.
  
• Did he write his own Bible, excluding the parts of Christianity with which he disagreed? The truth is more complicated than the question implies. Jefferson was an admirer of Jesus, but skeptical of the magic-man persona and the miracles. Jefferson cut-and-pasted the gospel narratives into an order he thought more coherent than in the traditional Bible, and omitted the miracles. Jefferson was carefully ambiguous about his religious beliefs, which, given his Enlightenment temperament, probably signifies agnosticism or deism.
  
• Was he a racist who opposed civil rights and equality for black Americans? Jefferson wanted to send the slaves back to Africa, and intimated toward the end of his life that he thought slavery might someday lead to exactly the civil war we got. It’s not clear whether he was a racist per se, so much as that he believed the race problem was irreconcilable and dangerous to the union. He was instrumental in the colonization movement that culminated in the founding of Liberia.
  
• Did he, in his pursuit of separation of church and state, advocate the secularizing of public life? Yes, emphatically so. Though his public pronouncements on religion were few and ambiguous, his private letters speak plainly and often of his contempt for the clergy.

There is much to admire in Jefferson, and even his flaws are not so bad when we consider his time and place. To recreate him as some sort of American saint is dishonest, though, and it is gratifying that Barton’s revisionism has fallen with such a clunk.

I know I comment on this repeatedly, but no one lies as much or as often as the "godly Christian" crowd.  It's ironic that the "godless liberals" do a much better job at being honest and avoiding constant outright lies.