Check out Dr. John Fea's reaction to David Barton's appearance on the Mike Huckabee show. Dr. Fea writes:
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3). I have no idea where Barton gets the idea that 29 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence held "seminary" and "Bible school" degrees. How does he define "seminary" and "Bible school?" These kinds of institutions did not exist in the eighteenth-century.
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5). One would be hard-pressed to call John Witherspoon the "best known gospel evangelist of his generation." It sounds like Barton wants to turn Witherspoon into some kind of southern revivalist preacher when in fact Witherspoon tended to downplay evangelism and even tried to squash a revival among the student body at Princeton in 1772....
6). Barton fails to mention that Benjamin Rush spent a portion of his adult life as a universalist.
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8). Barton is wrong about the so-called "prayer meetings" at the Constitution. Franklin did call for prayer at the Constitutional Convention, but his proposal was rejected.
9). Barton is wrong when he claims that the 1782 Aitken Bible was printed by the Continental Congress. The Congress actually turned down a proposal to publish Aitken's Bible, but it did endorse it once it was published. It was not funded by Congress.
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If you are interested in this kind of stuff, you might be interested in my forthcoming (probably January 2011) book: "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Primer."
1 comment:
Glad to know about the book, Jon! I know it'll be good.
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