David Barton's Insurgency Against American History (2)

I appreciate your getting to me about Levin. This is the only way I know to reply.I want to look at your website when I'm not so tired at the end of the day.

A book you could be interested in is George Nash's History of American Conservatism up to 1945. It's better than Kirk.There's also an updated edition which I haven't seen.

I think you are missing the point of Barton and Bancroft, but will not trouble you unless you are open to hearing me. Regards.

Your use of insidious to describe Barton may as well been used by him to describe the secularization of history or what you call the ‘advent of professional academic history’. This is the only thing in your articles I find particularly objectionable. But this is OK since I am usually less gracious than Mr. Barton in my views of secular history.

There is much here to cover. My intent is to give you a Christian response to your objections to Barton and Bancroft from a Reformed perspective. In this I my more aligned with Mr. Bancroft. Mr. Barton is very good in keeping his theology to himself, yet we share the same philosophy of history. You can end this discussion at any time

Definitions are a good place to start: What is history?

You say that ‘history is more than biography’. With this I can agree. But don’t we need a ‘grand theory’ or philosophy of history? I submit that each of us does indeed have a philosophy of history. We each have a ‘big picture’ in which the details fit together.

Do you think history is moving toward a goal or is it something else? Will you answer this in more detail? Then I will give you my view in detail.

Just a couple of comments on Barton,postive and negative, to provide a more complete understanding of my views on him. This may prevent unnecessary labors in areas in which we may in fact not disagree.

He focuses on the role Christians in the founding of our republic. Nothing wrong with that. And if he uses this evidence to argue that AMERICAN WAS A CHRISTIAN NATION WHEN FOUNDED, he is correct. As on outpost of Western civilization, what other religious culture would our country have? And he really would be hard pressed to find any historian who would disagree.

Now if the claim is, AMERICA WAS FOUNDED AS A CHRISTIAN NATION, that is difficult to establish. Recognizing the religious diversity of the new nation, the writers of the US constitution did not create a government establish religious denomination.And they did not dedicate the nation to God or his kingdom.

A second problem is he portrays some of the most prominent founders as Christians when they were not. For example, he calls John Adams a Christian because Adams calls himself a Christian. The problem is that Adams was a unitarian but believed that unitarianism was a branch of Christianity. Most orthodox Christians-esp. reformed like yourself- would probably disagree. He has made the similar claims about Jefferson and Washington.

A third disagreement is the substance of the two pieces upon which you commented. First, God may be missing from American history because without divine revelation, who can ascribe specific divine purposes to historical events? How can Barton take historians to task for leaving God out when God has not revealed his role? Without revelation, it would all be speculation. Second, I think his real concern is with the condition of our country. As a conservative I share his concerns. I just am skeptical that society is the way it is today because history books and teachers did not include God in their explanation of history.

History is either: the events of the past OR the study of the events of the past. In the latter sense, it differs from sciences in that historians conduct no experiments.It is more like detective work. Just as a detective uses available evidence to reconstruct the crime, historians use evidence to recontruct events (which I guess sometimes are crimes too!)

As to a philosophy of history,Ill have to think about that one. I am not sure what you mean. In one sense, philosophy of history concerns purposes or ends in history. I have not spent much time considering philosophies of history in that sense since I read a book many years ago called "The Open Society and Its Enemies." The author warns of the dangers when groups hold views that history is moving inexorably to some end according to some sort of laws of history that they have discovered.He calls it historicism. These views usually are held by groups like communists or fascists (or Islamists today)and they use historical laws to justify their horrific crimes. And philosophy of history in this sense really isnt about the past is it? It is about the future.

Philosophy of history could mean an overarching interpretive scheme of the past. maybe a paradigm or interpretive model fpr examoining evidence.

Ill look for your response.

Valiant, you mention things like the 'secularization' of history or the 'advent of professional academic history.' You seem to imply that these are somehow more flawed than a 'Christian history.' But the truth is they're all flawed in the sense that they selectively interpret the facts to support their agenda. Christians have done it just as much as non-believers. Some say America is a Christian nation. Others say it is a nation of non-believers.

But again, they're both wrong. If we're going to call this a Christian nation or an atheist nation, we might as well call it a white, educated, man's nation because that's where much of the founding principles of America come from. But nobody makes that argument. It has the same flaws as the Christian or Atheist perspective.

This is where the importance of objectivism comes in. To selectively interpret facts is to inject one's own personal preferences and that cannot and should not be held up as truth. The advantage of history interpreted by the academic community is that their discoveries have to go through peer review and have to be verified before they can be accepted. That's part of the scientific method and the laws of reason. To cast that aside as another agenda is to miss the point of objectivism in the search for truth. It really is the only reasonable way. To rely on subjective interpretations is to relent to pure narcissism.

Excellent point, Jack, on peer review. Objective truth or reality exists. Each person has their subjective viewpoint, but this does not change the structure of objective reality (present or past). The challenge for all those involved seeking understanding of any adiscipline is to reach a consensus on the truth. This task is easier in experimental sciences than in history, where researchers try to reconstruct the past. And as you say, peer review assists in this task.

This, of course, is a little different problem than that proposed by Barton. He views academic history as more than just bias or subjectivity. He sees it as part of a movement to secularize the country.

In a post on his own blog, Valiant has raised a larger issue. He argues that because I do not accept that the bible is revealed propositional truth, my whole world view is subjective. I tried to find common ground on notions of reality and our ability to obtain some knowledge of it. But he disagreed on that point as well. At that point, we could not longer engage.

Valiant is a thoughtful person who seems well-read in the presuppositional apologetics of Van Til, Clark, and Bahnsen. They appear to deny that common ground exists between Christian theories of knowledge and any other theories based on different world views.

Because he sees the bible as foundational to truth and I follow Aristotelian tradition, or 20th century Critical Realism, we found no common ground to continued debate.