Leading American Historians Concur with David Barton
The suggestion was raised in another thread to start this.
IMO, he is an unreliable source. He proved himself so with his own website which used to include a page of "Unconfirmed Quotations"--quotations that he had used in The Myth of Separation that turned out to have no reliable source. I happen to agree with him on "church/state separation" and the First Amendment's establishment clause but will never refer to him as an authority again.
The real issue is whether David Barton's quotes and his conclusions are accurate. First, those quotes in
Myth were valid secondary source quotes, that is, quotes found in other published works and attributed to various founding fathers. But as Barton explains, he had determined not to rely on secondary sources because they can be, and sometimes do, prove to be inaccurate. As of the time of this posting the Unconfirmed Quotations is on his WallBuilders site, by the way.
In my own search to check him out I started by Googling "religion founding fathers" or something like that. One of the first hits was the Library of Congress own Web Exhibit "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic," which has a number of pages that read almost like David Barton had written them. Many of the exact same quotes are used the the conclusions are nearly identical. And these are professional historians in the LOC reacting to the documents they have on hand. Here is just one small excerpt from their excellent, brief Exhibit:
“"The Continental-Confederation Congress, a legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, contained an extraordinary number of deeply religious men. The amount of energy that Congress invested in encouraging the practice of religion in the new nation exceeded that expended by any subsequent American national government. Although the Articles of Confederation did not officially authorize Congress to concern itself with religion, the citizenry did not object to such activities. This lack of objection suggests that both the legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, non-polemical Christianity."
You find examples from the decades to follow as well.
But, assuming that David Barton hadn't hacked into the Library of Congress Web, I knew there had to be more to this. So I decided to search published books by leading American historians who were not part of a movement one way or the other. You can do a similar search by going to Google Scholar and searching printed books. What you find is that in fact most leading American historians in large part concur with David Barton, that Christianity had a major influence in the settlement, Revolution and founding of our nation. And these are professors from places like Yale, Cornell, University of Chicago, Berkley, etc.
Below excerpts from published writings of leading historians regarding America's religious roots.
Sydney Ahlstrom is without a doubt one of the leading American historians, esp. in the field of religion in America: "The years of mounting crisis found the churches implicated on both sides of every issue under debate, but in general they became increasingly identified with the Patriot tide of opinion and contributed powerfully to its rise." (A Religious History of the American People, Sydney E Ahlstrom, David D. Hall, Yale University Press, 1992 p. 361.) And Ahlstrom adds, "Enlightenment motifs continued to prevail [after the military phase of the Revolution] but more than ever these motifs were modified by a realistic hardheartedness and absence of illusion about the sinfulness of men. The Federalist Papers, published in 1787-88, as well as John Adam's defenses of the American constitutions, can be read as Puritan contributions to Enlightenment political theory" (Ahlstrom, p. 363).
An example of how Christianity influenced John Adams and guided those Enlightenment theories, according to Ahlstrom and Hall (p. 366), can be found in John Adam's Diary, 14 August, 1796: "One great Advantage of the Christian Religion is that it brings the great Principle of the Law of Nature and Nations, Love you Neighbor as yourself, and do to others as you would that others should do to you,--to the Knowledge, Belief and Veneration of the whole People. Children, Servants, Women and Men are all Professors in the science of public as well as private Morality. No other Institution for Education, no kind of political Discipline, could diffuse this kind of necessary Information, so universally among all Ranks and Descriptions of Citizens."
Henry F May, another leading American historian (professor emeritus of history, UC Berkley) is cited in Critical Issues in American Religious History, by Robert R. Mathisen (Baylor University Press; 2nd edition, November 2001):
"'For the study and understanding of American culture, the recover of the American religious history may well be the most important achievement of the last thirty years.' Writing these words in 1964, the eminent historian Henry F. May recognized that 'even for those students of American culture who do not find religious thought and practice intrinsically interesting, knowledge of religious history has become a necessity.' May asserted that 'the recovery of American religious history has restored a knowledge of the mode, even the language, in which most Americans, during most of American history, did their thinking about human nature and destiny.'" (Mathisen, p. 1)
May is saying that Americans during most of their history thought and spoke about everything in religious terms! And he is lamenting the early 20th century bent of historians to omit it from their history books. That wasn’t David Barton writing this in 1964, it was Henry May of Berkley—not exactly a Bible college.
David Ross Williams, Wilderness Lost: The Religious Origins of the American Mind, David Ross Williams, 1987, Associated University Press, Inc., Cranbury, NJ) "American hostility towards Great Britain had existed long before the imperial administrators began to tighten their control over their colonial subjects. The roots of that hostility were cultural, and because the roots of American culture were religious, this cultural animosity was at heart religious" (Ross, p. 128).
"The populace of New England was not about to allow an unconverted ministry and a mercantile elite to lead them away from the "popular culture" of "Puritanism." Instead, they struggled in the face of vast historical changes to preserve the vision that had first inspired the saints. They fought invisible forces...but they believed that one central sinister force was responsible for all the changes that threatened them. They believed that theirs was a struggle between Satan and Christ" (Ross, p. 128).
"The enlightened John Adams may have articulated the grievances of the lawyers and merchants, but it was the Calvinist Samuel Adams, converted in the Great Awakening in 1741, who stirred the people to rebellion" (Ross, p. 129).
"Evidence of motivations is difficult to obtain," Williams explains. "It is far easier to figure the cash value of a trading route than the psychological value of a beleaguered identity. But evidence does exist that Americans at the time of the Revolution did view their struggle as a defense of Canaan against the encroachments of Egypt. Both Evangelicals and rationalists carried in their heads images of themselves as warriors defending Israel from the Satan hordes" (Ross, p. 129).
Ross cites a quote of historian, Joel T. Headly (writing in 1861) , that religion was 'the deep, solid substratum that underlaid the Revolution...Popular participation in the Revolution owed more to the example of the Old Testament that to John Locke"'" (p. 130).
Ross cites Williams on the popular use of the Exodus imagery during the Revolution:
"Such references to America as Israel abound in the literature of the Revolution. To try to dismiss them as 'mere rhetoric' is to overlook the importance of 'mere rhetoric' as a historical force. It is by just such rhetoric, repeated until it becomes an unquestionable part of consciousness, that collective identity is created and reinforced....the people by their language revealed just how important their religious identity was" (Ross, p. 130).
Moses Coit Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution 1763-1783, (Tyler was professor of American History, Cornell University), Vol. II, 1776-1783, New York, GP Putnam's Sons, copyright 1897, notes, "'In America, as in the Grand Rebellion in England,' said a Loyalist writer of our Revolutionary time, 'much execution was done by sermons'" Had it been otherwise, there would now be cause for wonder. Indeed, the preachers were then in full possession of that immense leadership, intellectual and moral, which had belonged to their order in America ever since its settlement, in England ever since the middle of the sixteenth century" (Coit, p. 278).
Referring to the Congress first official act that involved the entire incipient Nation was calling for a day of “humiliation, prayer, and fasting” July 20, 1775-: "On that day, therefore, from new Hampshire to Georgia, the pulpit became the organ of this new national consciousness--of this universal alarm and pain and hate and aspiration; it then spoke out in every tone natural to Englishmen, to freemen, and to Christians" (p. 284).
Dozens of additional historians and works could be cited with similar findings.
