David Barton: Falling from Grace?

This has been the summer of discontent with David Barton. First, in a poll taken by History News Network, Barton’s newest work, The Jefferson Lies, topped the list of “least credible history works in print.” The same work met a unanimous chorus of refutations from Jefferson public humanities scholar and radio personality Clay Jenkinson, from religious historians ranging from Martin Marty to John Fea, and (in the full length work Getting Jefferson Right) from Grove City College professors Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter.

Barton himself ascribes the motivations of his critics to either jealousy (because his books sell so well, especially in the homeschooler market), or “liberalism,” a term that evidently takes in everyone who dares take issue with him, from evangelical historians to “deconstructionists.”

I weighed in here on Barton both last year and more recently here—in the latter, expressing my skepticism of whether refutations would have any effect on someone whose work was basically part of an entrepreneurial rather than a scholarly enterprise.

On that latter point, it appears (to my delight) that I was wrong, at least in part. The tide has turned, evidently, because of a pileup of criticisms from within Barton’s own cocoon.

Most recently, conservative scholars have begun to pile on. Thomas Kidd, the well-respected Baylor historian known for his excellent works in early American history as well as his contributions to conservative intellectual periodicals, reported in World Magazine (“Today’s News, Christian Views”) on a growing chorus from conservative evangelicals and Catholics who agreed generally with Barton’s emphasis on the importance of religion in the founding, but felt that Barton’s work, both in books as well as in his widely used video series, was replete with “embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes, and highly misleading claims.”
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