Chris Pinto is a conservative evangelical who disbelieves in David Barton's Christian Nation historical mythology. Conservative evangelicals (Barton, Pinto, et al.) tend to believe Sola Scriptura unquestionably teaches orthodox Trinitarian doctrine and they fairly strictly interpret the term "Christian" accordingly.
So it shouldn't surprise given the unitarianism in which many "key Founders" and their intellectual influences believed, orthodox Christians, especially of the evangelical bent, would doubt America's "Christian heritage" once they discovered the facts David Barton doesn't give them.
David Barton attempts to respond to Pinto in this article. Barton admits there that he usually ignores his critics; but, what Barton doesn't note, he may have a thing for Pinto given Worldview Weekend used to promote Barton's work, but now promotes Pinto's.
At issue is whether, in this letter, John Adams is mocking or praising the Christian concept of the "Holy Spirit." I am convinced by Chris Rodda's analysis that Adams didn't mean what Barton thinks he does. Granted John Adams' context can be difficult to understand.
I'm not going to dissect Barton's latest response, just offer some observations. Yes, John Adams 1. was a devoutly religious "Protestant"; 2. disbelieved in the doctrine of divine right of kings; and 3. was quite suspicious of, indeed downright bigoted towards Roman Catholicism. Barton more or less raises these points to try to put Adams' letter in context.
1-3 are areas that Barton and J. Adams have in common (though Barton is not bigoted towards Roman Catholics, rather just disagrees with them). (And I don't think "biblical Christianity" sees the doctrine of divine right of Kings as a "heresy" as Barton claims; at least it's no more heretical than the notion that the Bible teaches the concept of a "republic." No. A Kingdom might not be the government the Bible demands; but a "Kingdom" is clearly a more biblically discussed and endorsed form of government than a "republic." The Bible speaks of a "Kingdom" not a "republic" of Heaven.) This is done to mislead Barton's Christian reader into thinking J. Adams believed in the same kind of "Christianity" that they do. And of course such a "Christianity" would not mock the Holy Spirit, the 3rd Person in the Trinity.
Barton as I read this article doesn't squarely address Chris Pinto's claims, but rather tries to overwhelm the reader with logically fallacious irrelevancies. First he tries to poison the well by grouping Pinto with "liberals and atheists." And then Barton engages in a long discussion of five strawmen that he accuses Pinto of making: "Modernism, Minimalism, and Deconstructionism (the other two of the five are Poststructuralism and Academic Collectivism...)."
Let me solidify my case for the notion that Barton's article confuses and deceives his evangelical Christian readers into thinking J. Adams was a "Christian" according to their standards:
Chris Pinto, in his analysis of Adams letter, has managed to ignore more than a millennia of church and world history in his unreasonable attempt to brand John Adams a heretic and blasphemer of the Holy Spirit. And adding insult to his malpractice injury, he also ignored more than thirty volumes of Adams’ published writings, containing hundreds of positive letters and repeated favorable references to religion and Christianity. Thus, Pinto’s claim about Adams’ irreligion is directly refuted not only by the context of the letter itself but also by the powerful evidence of the lifelong proven faith and character of John Adams.
But, whatever we conclude of the letter in question, John Adams was a heretic and a blasphemer according to Barton's professed creed. Barton then cites "scores of other quotes by John Adams," to "contrast them with the anti-religious image that Pinto wrongly attempts to draw of Adams." (Bold mine.) Well yes, let's look at some of Adams' other "quotes" to see how wrong Pinto's assessment of John Adams' faith is:
"If I understand the Doctrine, it is, that if God the first second or third or all three together are united with or in a Man, the whole Animal becomes a God and his Mother is the Mother of God.
"It grieves me: it shocks me to write in this stile upon a subject the most adorable that any finite Intelligence can contemplate or embrace: but if ever Mankind are to be superior to the Brutes, sacerdotal Impostures must be exposed."
-- John Adams to Francis van der Kemp, October 23, 1816.
"The Trinity was carried in a general council by one vote against a quaternity; the Virgin Mary lost an equality with the Father, Son, and Spirit only by a single suffrage."
-- John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812.
And:
"An incarnate God!!! An eternal, self-existent, omnipresent omniscient Author of this stupendous Universe, suffering on a Cross!!! My Soul starts with horror, at the Idea, and it has stupified the Christian World. It has been the Source of almost all of the Corruptions of Christianity."
-- John Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816.
There John Adams -- a unitarian his entire adult life -- bitterly mocks the Trinity and the Incarnation. This is the "proven faith" of John Adams. How does Barton deal with this for his readers? He doesn't. He's deceptive.
1 comment:
Thank you,
I appreciate the additional sources on John Adams that Barton may have overlooked or had not comprehended the implications. When people prove a point, such as in this case that John Adams held Christian views; Barton proceeds to publish what he sees or knows to be Christian views of one form or another. He is also aware of the anti-sectarian and trans-denominational movement of the colonial American era and may very well view anything that appears to be anti-orthodoxy Trinitarian as being simply a anti-secularization view of what his article denotes of Rev. Wise accounting of church history as Epoc II: Secularization / Corruption of the Church where the governments took control of the churches.
In these present times, the modern Secularization movement in America seeks to keep religion entirely out of government functions, which is not what the founder's original intent was. Modern day Secularists miscontrue the Founder's anti-sectarian and trans-denominational sentiments that were anti-secularization in purpose to keep the government from secularizing the church known in European-speak as "establishment of religion". So the modern day Secularists take that movement's intents to desecularize the church as license to secularize the state by way of not only removing any and all church influence from the state; but to even making the civil moral code relative and subject to democratic rage. By implication, secularization of the state means passing judgement on what is and what is not religion: not just an establishment of a religious institution falsely constured today as an "endorsement of religion" criteria. So by implication, and by proxy of a "secularized government", the state returns once again in dictating what churches can or cannot do by virtue of a doctrine of secularization in the public square, and by extension tax code, education accredation and licensing code, environmental code, and even civil rights code.
Freedom of religion in the founding era was that of the trans-denominational, anti-sectarian public square where the civil moral code continued to be based on the Bible. The US Constitution by no means was meant or designed to supercede tenets of the Common Law it was based on and subject the civil moral code to it. Rather, it is the Constitution that is subject to the civil moral code under that old time philosophy of "natural rights" given by "Nature's God". There, freedom of religion was that of freedom of mode of worship, liturgical rites and ordered oblation prayers, of church denomination establishment. The Bible; however, is not a church establishment of relgion. The Bible is not an ordered dogma of some liturgical rites or prayers. The Bible is not a religious creed. It is certainly a religious book among other things but frankkly, the Bible itself is not a church therefore it is not an establishment of religion in a constitutional, historical sense. This is where the "Lemon Test" of the court system gets it wrong. The courts have successfully misconstrued the Bible, which is the basis of the American law and civil moral code, as a church establishment and therefore has barred it from the public square not only in federal jurisdiction; but state jurisdiction as well. The courts seem to gloss over the tradition and history of American jurisprudence here where the states ran their own state church institutions up until the 1840s, that state buildings were used for worship services, that the Government Printing Office printed Bibles for freshman Congressman, prayer is made in open session in Congress, and missionaries and civil servants continued to be funded by the government for religious services. This is the kind of thing Barton is combating in the public square where modern Secularists seek to oust relgion completely from the public square, putting religious prejudices aside.
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