Thomas Jefferson's Smackdown of David Barton and the Wingnuts on the Texas Board of Education

David Barton, the nonacademic Christian nationalist “expert” who is rewriting the social studies curriculum for Texas with the help of Don McLeroy, a right wing revisionist member of the Texas Board of Education who is a dentist and not a historian or teacher or academic, and others of his ilk, said Jefferson’s metaphor of a “wall of separation between Church & State” is a “liberal myth.”

The New York Times Magazine reports:

David Barton reads the “church and state” letter to mean that Jefferson “believed, along with the other founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal establishment of a national denomination.” Barton goes on to claim, “ ‘Separation of church and state’ currently means almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant.” That is to say, the founders were all Christian who conceived of a nation of Christians, and the purpose of the First Amendment was merely to ensure that no single Christian denomination be elevated to the role of state church.

Barton’s fundamentalist Christian views are diametrically opposed to those expressed by Thomas Jefferson. It’s almost as if Barton knows it and has embarked on a crusade to stamp out those views of the Founders that do not conform with his extremist fundamentalist religious beliefs in an act of redemptive self-righteousness. He has incessantly used the Bible to meddle in the nation's secular affairs, e.g., called for abolishing the U.S. income tax and the capital-gains tax because the Bible says, “the more profit you make the more you are rewarded.”

It is an easy exercise to cherry-pick the Bible and pluck a quotation to justify any secular or religious bias favored by religious fanatics who reject the separation of church and state or, to be biblical, rendering unto Ceasar what is Ceasar’s. But it is inherently a flawed exercise. In this case, as an example, Barton would be well advised to steer clear of Ecclesiastes:

“Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 5:10

In 2007, when the U.S. Senate invited a Hindu leader to open a session with a prayer, Barton strenuously objected: “In Hindu, you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods. And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration when they talked about Creator.”

Such intolerant views were anathema to Thomas Jefferson and would have deeply offended his sensibilities on religious freedom. Specifically, Thomas Jefferson said (this quote bears repeating) in direct repudiation of Barton’s intolerant statement about the Hindu religion: “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” [Emphasis mine.]

Furthermore, on the question of religious freedom and pluralism Thomas Jefferson specifically repudiated Barton’s false reading of his words and the fantasy perpetrated by the Texas Board of Education of the Founders’ Christian piety. In this passage from Jefferson’s Autobiography, he describes the debate over final passage of the 1786 religious freedom law he had proposed for Virginia, the Statute for Religious Freedom:

“The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination. [Emphasis mine.]

Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Modern Library 1993 edition, pp. 45 and 46. (shout-out to //Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub)

Exactly what part of

“[T]he insertion [of the word “Jesus Christ”] was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination. [Emphasis mine.]

. . .do David Barton and the Texas Board of Education not comprehend? Is it “the mantle of its protection [for] the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination.”? Is it “the Jew and the Gentile, […] the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination.”?

Because, in their censorious minds, this is what Jefferson really “meant” to say:

“[A] great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination.” [Red Text - DELETE - Texas Board of Ed. (channelling George Orwell)]