As some of my readers know, I have a particular interest in the debate going on in Texas over what kind of content should be included in the state social studies standards. You can read my extensive commentary on this topic here.
I was recently contacted by a reporter from the Austin Statesman-American to comment on the situation in Texas. She asked me a bunch of questions about David Barton and Peter Marshall–two of the curriculum reviewers chosen by the more conservative members of the Texas Board of Education. The reporter was writing a feature article on this week’s meeting to revise the social studies curriculum in light of the reports presented by outside reviewers (6 in total, including Barton and Marshall).
The article appeared in yesterday (Sunday’s) Austin Statesman-American. I am not sure how long it will be posted on the Statesman-American website, so I pasted the entire thing into my last post.
I am quoted twice in the article. Here is the first and more extensive of the two:
I’m an evangelical Christian, and I think David Barton and Peter Marshall are completely out to lunch,” said John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, a Christian institution. “They are not experts on social studies and history. Neither of them are trained in history. They are preachers who use the past and history as a means of promoting a political agenda in the present.
Let me say up front that I have some major disagreements with the way Barton and Marshall think and write about American history. Anyone who reads this blog or some of my other popular writings will be aware of this. But Barton and Marshall also make a few good points about the place of religion in the American Founding–points that are often overlooked by secularists. In fact, in my forthcoming book on Christian America I try to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever it is possible to do so.
My major gripe with Barton and Marshall and their connection to the Texas social studies standards is that they are not historians. Yet they have been chosen to help decide what school children in Texas will learn about the past. On this point, I stand by my quote.
What bothers me about this quote, however, is that I do not remember telling the reporter that Barton and Marshall were “completely out to lunch.” Frankly, I do not think I have ever uttered the phrase “out to lunch” before in my life.
I could, however, be wrong about this. So if I did actually say this, I apologize to Barton and Marshall. While I disagree with much of their work, I feel uncomfortable with the tone of this phrase. The phrase “out to lunch” does not represent my commitment to civil dialogue about these kinds of questions and only encourages the kind of hostility that has long characterized our culture wars. While I do not think I said this in the course of my interview, if I did, I am sorry.
The piece actually has a few more errors in it. The reporter writes:
Barton, a Texas-based GOP activist and nationally known speaker, and Marshall, a traveling evangelist whose father was a U.S. Senate chaplain in the 1940s, are aligned with American University law and history professor Daniel Dreisbach — one of four academics on the review panel — in the belief that America was intended to be a “Christian nation” with no separation between church and state.
As far as I know, I have never read anything by Daniel Dreisbach promoting the idea that the United States was “intended to be a Christian nation.” While he has made scholarly arguments that question a more secular view of the relationship between church and state, his views are not propagandist in nature. I made it abundantly clear to this reporter that Dreisbach was a legitimate scholar, fully qualified to discuss what students should learn in a social studies curriculum, but, alas, I was apparently misunderstood.
I also think it is incorrect to portray Barton, Marshall, and Driesbach as opponents of the idea of “separation of church and state.” While Barton and Marshall do not seem to care for the term, and Driesbach has argued that the supposed “wall” between church and state does not apply to the individual states, none of them are actually promoting a theocracy.
Now back to finishing up my manuscript: “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Primer.”
Hi, John:
Someone posted the link to your thoughts on the story. When we spoke, you did say exactly those words — “out to lunch.”
You did talk to me about Daniel Dreisbach, and I spoke to Dr. Dreisbach myself. I did not attribute any of my reporting on the theoretical alignment of the three to you; so if that's in the article, please point it out to me so I can correct it. Marshall and Barton in their comments on the curriculum aligned themselves with Dreisbach, not the other way around.
I'm not in the office today (I work Saturdays) but I'm happy to address the separation of church and state issue with you tomorrow when I'm back at work.
Joshunda
Joshunda: Thanks for responding. Fair enough. If I did use that phrase, then it was a bad choice of words. I regret it.
Did you guys read what Marshall and Barton actually wrote in their briefs to the Texas board?
Marshall writes
http://petermarshallministries.com/commentary.cfm?commentary=232
One tiny but important quibble: Neither I nor David Barton “call for teaching the biblical foundations of a 'Christian America.'” Neither of us uses that phrase because it is confusing and misleading. In my books and talks I simply call for schools and textbooks to teach the Biblical foundations of America.”
I'm not a great fan of these guys either, but I seldom see their actual words put on trial, only caricatures of them.
Neither I nor David Barton “call for teaching the biblical foundations of a 'Christian America.'” Neither of us uses that phrase because it is confusing and misleading. In my books and talks I simply call for schools and textbooks to teach the Biblical foundations of America.”
Honestly Tom, I'm not sure if we want to go down this road. Both Barton and Marshall have provided more than enough rope to hang themselves if we scour their books for “Christian America” quotes.
Quite frankly it's a weasel like distinction to try to invoke “biblical foundations of America” instead of “the biblical foundations of a 'Christian America.'”
What is the Bible if not “Christian”?
The article says
in the belief that America was intended to be a “Christian nation” with no separation between church and state.
but then
The conservative reviewers don't explicitly say they promote the “Christian nation,” idea, but their recommendations lay the foundation for creating a legal basis for the concept, according to Derek Davis, a dean at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton . America has always been predominately Christian, he added, but “there is this sense that the Founding Fathers were all Christians who desired a Christian nation in a formal and legal” way.
Whatever. There's a lot of straw man stuff here. Marshall and Barton shouldn't be hard to beat fair and square. Why put words in their mouths?
The issue is the Texas debate. Write what happened there.
I hope you are addressing that to Joshunda because I didn't write the article, invoking Dr. Davis, she did.
It's addressed to whomever the shoe fits.
It shouldn't be hard to quote, refute, quote, refute. Lather. Rince. repeat.
Instead the attacks of these guys always seem to come down to scorched earth, a total nuking, like Joshunda Davis' first quote after 4 paragraphs of BG is, and I quote, that they're “out to lunch.”
Not that they're wrong on this or that, but that they are to be waved away, nuked.
Not one direct quote from either of them appears in the story, yet their briefs have been available for months, as has Marshall's rebuttal to the attacks on him.
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/experts.html
Have at them, fair and square. Marquess de Queensbury. No nukes.
Tom: I agree. Even though I sometimes give into the temptation to make these kind of sweeping generalizations, I do not think they get us anywhere.
Hey, John, I think they're kinda out to lunch too, but as you see, the reporter used you as a pawn in the culture war—even this evangelical Fea thinks they should be nuked.
I certainly don't like defending them because they err a lot, and tellya the truth, I think Dreisbach overplayed the Calvinist depravity angle.
But on the other side, two “liberals” said the status quo curriculum was dandy, and the third, Jesús Francisco de la Teja, seemed solely concerned with getting more figures with Hispanic surnames into the mix. I didn't like much of any of what the “experts” had to say.
But all I get from news reports like this is B & M are uncredentialed religionists who are trying to rewrite history. But the fact is they're at least half-correct often enough against 20th-21st century secular revisionism.
The Presence of the Lord was quite a real thing to the Founding generation, even the unorthodox ones. But the current narrative peers through modern eyes, filing religion in with irrelevant but quarrelsome preference, like for sports teams.
And of course the modern view looks for only where B & M err, and is completely unaware of when they don't. History by polemic. Feh, a pox on all of 'em.
Tom: I would hesitate to say that I was used as a pawn in the culture wars. I made it clear to Joshunda that I held evangelical sympathies because I wanted to debunk the notion popular on the secular left that all evangelicals must believe that America was founded as a Christian nation. I guess it all depends how you look at it.
John, I'm sorry, but I think you were clearly used as “authority” to dismiss B & M summarily. Like the quickest way for a Republican to get on TV is to criticize Republicans.
It was completely ad hom, and I saw little evidence that anybody quoted in the article actually read what they wrote.
And according to Marshall, they didn't claim “America was Founded to be a Christian Nation.” [As your recent research suggests by looking at the individual states, perhaps it already was one.]
The article's slant is clear: since these guys are “out to lunch,” so is what they have to say. Religious cranks, liars for Jesus. Done by paragraph 5 and your quote, which is probably as far as most people read and then went over to the feature on Tony Romo.
The article's author owes an apology to the truth. Note that the 3 “liberals” came under zero scrutiny, except one noted that history should have an “ideological neutrality.”
The question is whether the current curriculum is indeed “neutral,” or if it's been purged of necessary facts about religion and the Founding.
Which is the secular academy's manipulation of the concept of “neutral.” Form meets function.
Sorry if this sounds like a harangue, John. It's not intended that way. I strenuously object to revisionism regardless of its ideology. I think the “religious” case is strong; the “biblical” of Rev. Marshall, not so much; secular “neutrality's,” not at all.
Everything Barton says should be taken with a grain of salt. As revealed by Chris Rodda's meticulous analysis, zealotry more than fact shapes his work, which is riddled with shoddy scholarship and downright dishonesty. See Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History (2006) and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/glenn-becks-new-bff—-da_b_458515.html