David Barton Smooths Over His Errors about Thomas Jefferson's Quran

Today on a segment of the Glenn Beck Show*, David Barton was asked if Salon was correct that Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran 16 years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence or is what Glenn Beck always heard (from Barton actually) true that Jefferson got a Quran after he became ambassador to Tripoli because he wanted to know his enemy. Here is what Barton said today (start at 3:54 for the question):

Beck asked “which is true?” Barton replied, “Some of both.” However, that is not what Barton told Beck in 2011. The reason Glenn Beck thought Jefferson got a copy of the Quran in the 178os was because David Barton told him that. I don’t feel sorry for you Mr. Beck, Jay Richards tried to warn you. Watch (see especially the segment from 8:49 on):
[youtube]http://youtu.be/bVPopT-tO70[/youtube]
Barton also told a similar story in this video:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/FE6Z2sOq44U[/youtube]
In this Glenn Beck appearance, Beck and Barton agreed Jefferson bought the Quran to see what they believed as a consequence of the war against Muslim nations. Barton said he got it in 1806.

 
Again, it was Barton who revised history.
It was nice of Beck to help Barton try to extract himself from the false narrative he told audiences in the past, including Beck’s. As you will see if you watch these clips, Barton claimed that Jefferson purchased a Quran in the 1780s to help him understand his Barbary enemies. However, Jefferson first purchased a Quran when he was studying to be a lawyer in 1765. His interest was academic most likely, in that he wanted to understand other traditions of law. Barton says he purchased it “from an apologetics standpoint,” however, I know of no evidence to that effect.
Barton in the Beck video above tap dances around the fact that Jefferson owned the Quran prior to negotiating with the Barbery nations in the 1780s. He also implies Jefferson may have had the edition in 1746. Actually he purchased the 1764 version just after it was published.
*Beck began the show discussing Barack Obama’s claim that Islam has been woven into the fabric of the nation since the founding. That claim is unfounded as well. There were Muslims here but “woven into the fabric?”  Jefferson and other founders were interested in Islam and Jefferson in particular believed that religious liberty included all religions included Islam. However to say that Islam was “woven into the fabric” is not supported anything I have seen.
By the way, I can’t find anything Barton mentioned at Islam101.com. Thanks to commenter J.J. for pointing out where Barton got his information on Muslims in U.S. History.
Another problem with this segment is Barton’s claim that the Atlantic slave trade was due to Muslim slavers. While Muslims were involved in the trans-Saharan slave trade and sold slaves to European traders, it is ridiculous to insinuate that American slavery was primarily due to Muslims. Europeans also captured slaves and there would have been no slave trade if not for the demand in North and South America.
All those who criticize President Obama for his inaccurate statements regarding Islam need to be consistent and hold David Barton and Glenn Beck to the same standard.

David Barton Again Misleads a Church About Violent Crime

Since at least mid-2013, David Barton has been telling church audiences that violent crime has gone up 694% since the Supreme Court ruled on prayer and Bible reading in public schools. I wrote first about this in 2013, and then again last year. Recently at First Baptist Church in Eastland TX, he made the same false claim. Watch:

His chart demonstrating a rise in crime from the early 1960s only goes to the mid-1990s. There was a rise in crime during that period. However, the crime rate has dropped dramatically since the mid-1990s until the present. Barton has never explained that. It is as if he still thinks it is 1995.
In June 2013, Barton showed Crossroads Church (OK) this chart (dark because it is a screen cap) and made the same claim he made to the First Baptist audience.

According to the Department of Justice, homicides were at 1963 rates in 2011.
BJSMurder19602011Violent crime has declined since the mid-1990s and continued to decline in 2013. Barton must want it to be the mid-1990s but it is not. The actual data since the 1960s doesn’t support his claim but he keeps making it to church groups all over the country.

Wait, What? Moments from the Right and Left

Earlier today I saw this tweet:


Wait, what?
I replied that it was unbelievable and that I would like to see evidence. So far, community organizer Zach Green hasn’t provided anything on his twitter feed. It sounds too good to be true. Thus, evidence is needed.
Just a bit ago, Right Wing Watch posted David Barton’s newest claim: President Obama has “publicly leaked” Israeli intelligence to the Muslim Brotherhood seven times. Watch:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/RYDMGsnyHco[/youtube]
Huh?
As Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla points out, there is no evidence, nor does Barton take into account evidence which would argue against his conclusion.

As usual, Barton did not actually provide any evidence to support this claim other than his own “research,” so it is impossible to know what he is even referencing or how he would explain the millions of dollars in U.S. aid to the al-Sisi government in Egypt, which has vowed to destroy the Muslim Brotherhood.

I suspect such leaks would be illegal and the charges are reckless. I want proof of that. Probably Brian Williams has the story but he is on break right now. So Barton is going to have to step up and provide the proof.
Wait, what?

David Barton on Real Life with Jack Hibbs: Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?

David Barton was on Calvary Chapel pastor Jack Hibbs’ show Real Life with Jack Hibbs last night. Part one is available on You Tube with apparently more to come. They didn’t get into much until near the end of this segment. At about 22 minutes into the video, Barton accuses others of using history to support an agenda. Then he illustrates how he revises the work of PhDs in history with original sources by citing his involvement in a 2011 book with Daryl Cornett, William Henard, and John Sassi titled, Christian America? Perspectives on our Religious Heritage. In that book, Daryl Cornett said about the University of Virginia:

At the University of Virginia there was no Christian curriculum and the school had no chaplain.

Barton cited that claim to Jack Hibbs. Watch:

Barton claims to have refuted Cornett by going to an original source. While it is true that the University of Virginia eventually created a chaplain position, this was not the case from the beginning of the school. Originally, UVA did not employ chaplains. Barton doesn’t tell you that scholars are concerned with the founding of the school and no academic historian I am aware of disputes that the school eventually added chaplains.
Barton tells Jack Hibbs that the claim about chaplains and the UVA is made in connection to Jefferson (who died in 1826). In addition, Barton says he has a newspaper from “that era” which contains an ad by the chaplain of UVA. However, what Barton does not tell Jack Hibbs is that Jefferson was long dead before that newspaper article was published in 1837. By not placing the events in proper context, Barton misleads the audience to think the existence of chaplains at UVA came when Thomas Jefferson was alive. Not so.
The claim about chaplains at UVA is also in Barton’s pulled-from-print book The Jefferson Lies and was one Michael Coulter and I addressed in our book Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President. To fully address Barton’s claim and our response to it, I have taken that section from our work on the 2nd edition of the book and made it into a pdf file for review.
Barton’s claim to correct academic historians is stunning. From the pdf, let me take just a bit of what Barton does to James Madison. From Getting Jefferson Right:

Another aspect of the chaplain story bears comment. Barton takes portions of a letter written by James Madison and selectively portrays the quote as an announcement about chaplains. Here again is what Barton quotes [from The Jefferson Lies] from Madison:

By 1829, when the nondenominational reputation of the university had been fully established, James Madison (who became rector of the university after Jefferson’s death in 1826) announced “that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by…services of clergymen.”

Rather than a public announcement or a policy change, Madison wrote those words in a May 1, 1828 letter to Chapman Johnson, one of the members of the university Board of Visitors. The actual quote depicts a completely different meaning than Barton implies. Here is the entire section of the letter, from which Barton lifts his quote. Barton leaves out the words from Madison which are required to understand the meaning. Another unwarranted change Barton makes is to add the word “permanent.” What Barton omitted is in italics below:

I have indulged more particularly the hope, that provision for religious instruction and observances among the Students, would be made by themselves or their Parents & Guardians, each contributing to a fund to be applied, in remunerating the services of Clergymen, of denominations, corresponding with the preference of the contributors. Small contributions would suffice, and the arrangement would become more & more efficient & adequate, as the Students become more numerous; whilst being altogether voluntary, it would interfere neither with the characteristic peculiarity of the University, the consecrated principle of the law, nor the spirit of the Country.

Contrary to Barton’s claim, Madison did not make an announcement in 1828 that permanent provision for religious worship would be made by clergymen. Instead, he told one of the university board members his hope that parents and students would voluntarily secure clergymen to provide religious services if so desired by the parents and students. Indeed, reading the entire letter, Madison’s view was that such instruction should come in this voluntary manner rather than having it come via the hiring of members of the clergy to teach.vii Such an arrangement would preserve the independence of the school from religious entanglements and disputes while respecting the free exercise of religion. Barton’s selective quotation of a primary source obscures Madison’s meaning and adds a revised one he apparently prefers.

Obviously, Barton is the one doing the revising. Barton said Madison wrote this:

 “that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by…services of clergymen.”

However, James Madison actually wrote this:

I have indulged more particularly the hope, that provision for religious instruction and observances among the Students, would be made by themselves or their Parents & Guardians, each contributing to a fund to be applied, in remunerating the services of Clergymen, of denominations, corresponding with the preference of the contributors. Small contributions would suffice, and the arrangement would become more & more efficient & adequate, as the Students become more numerous; whilst being altogether voluntary, it would interfere neither with the characteristic peculiarity of the University, the consecrated principle of the law, nor the spirit of the Country.

I hope it is obvious that the import of this is not about when UVA had chaplains. It is about credibility and what appears to be an intent to mislead people.
I have images of the Globe newspaper Barton referred to. Barton touts his original documents but I haven’t found anything yet that I can’t get via an historical data base. The letter was in an 1837 edition but wasn’t an ad to get students to come to UVA.
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To read the segment on chaplains at UVA, click Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?

Simon & Schuster Has No Plans to Publish David Barton's The Jefferson Lies

Yesterday, I wrote about how Thomas Nelson removed David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies from publication in late July, 2012. According to philosopher Jay Richards, Barton’s book was investigated by Thomas Nelson and then removed from their catalog several days before anyone reported it publicly. Richards led an effort to gather information to inform Glenn Beck about the historical problems in Barton’s work. Beck, along with other religious conservatives, eventually chose to ignore the evaluations of academic historians in order to preserve Barton’s reputation and influence.
For his part, Barton minimized the devastating critique from various historians. He also said publisher Simon and Schuster was prepared to publish The Jefferson Lies.

After Thomas Nelson dropped the book, The Jefferson Lies was subsequently reviewed and then picked up by Simon & Schuster.
Clearly, Thomas Nelson’s public statements about the reason for pulling the book are incongruous with the above facts, so was there perhaps some other reason behind their announcement? Quite possibly, for only two weeks prior to suddenly dropping The Jefferson Lies, Thomas Nelson had been taken over in an acquisition by Rupert Murdoch and HarperCollins Publishers.6
Thanks to Throckmorton and other critics, The Jefferson Lies will reach a far larger audience through Simon & Schuster than it would have with the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson.

To my knowledge, this claim has never been withdrawn. The rumor that Simon and Schuster was about to publish Barton’s book has been going around since The Jefferson Lies was pulled. Today, I can announce that Simon and Schuster has no plans to publish the book. According to Jennifer Robinson, Vice President and Director of Publicity with Threshold Editions at Simon and Schuster:

There are no plans for Threshold to publish The Jefferson Lies.

Threshold is an imprint of Simon and Schuster which has published books jointly with Mercury Ink, Glenn Beck’s publishing imprint. I wrote Ms. Robinson again to ask if Mercury Ink was going to publish the book and she referred me to Kevin Balfe at Mercury Ink. Balfe has not responded as yet. According to Mercury Ink’s website, Simon and Schuster is a partner in some manner (probably distribution) which led me to ask Ms. Robinson if publication by Mercury Ink could be construed as publication by Simon and Schuster. In her reply, Robinson said I needed to hear from Mercury Ink and added:

S&S is not publishing the book.

If Mercury Ink provides an update, I will add it to this post. For now, according to Simon and Schuster’s representative, there are no plans for them to publish The Jefferson Lies.