University of Iowa
Iowa Research Online
Theses and Dissertations
Spring 2014
(Re)membering a Christian nation: Christian
nationalism, biblical literalism, and the politics of
public memory
Tahlia G.M.B. Fischer
University of Iowa
Copyright 2014 Tahlia GMB Fischer
This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/4629
Recommended Citation
Fischer, Tahlia G.M.B.. "(Re)membering a Christian nation: Christian nationalism, biblical literalism, and the politics of public
memory." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2014.
http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/4629.
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Part of the Communication Commons
(RE)MEMBERING A CHRISTIAN NATION: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM,
BIBLICAL LITERALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC MEMORY
by
Tahlia G.M.B. Fischer
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Communication Studies
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 2014
Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Jeffrey A. Bennett
Copyright by
TAHLIA G.M.B. FISCHER
2014
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_______________________
PH.D. THESIS
_______________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Tahlia G.M.B. Fischer
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy
degree in Communication Studies at the May 2014 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ___________________________________
Jeffrey A. Bennett, Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________
David Hingstman
___________________________________
Isaac West
___________________________________
Joy Elizabeth Hayes
___________________________________
Leslie Schwalm
To Fay
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All things are possible with the tireless love and support of my beautiful wife (and
favorite historian) Fay Botham, my most beloved friend Monik Schiller, and my amazing
mother Zoë Ann Fischer. I am indebted to every scholar I have studied with, as well as to
the institutions that have funded my academic career. I thank my advisor Jeff Bennett for
his expertise, care, and guidance, and also for knowing how to talk to me in a way that
was truly productive. I thank my committee members David Hingstman, Isaac West, Joy
Hayes, and Leslie Schwalm for providing me with an invaluable education.
iii
ABSTRACT
This dissertation explores the manner in which theological elements from a
biblical literalist perspective undergird and authorize the historical memory texts
produced by Christian nationalist advocates in support of conservative Protestant
religious establishment. Christian nationalist discourses exploit notions of divine
warrant, public remembrance, and “historical evidence” as means to read the nation and
contemporary far right ideological commitments as biblically founded, and hence, as
binding upon the nation. Focusing on the rhetoric of David Barton, Christian nationalist
par excellence and Republican Party operative, I argue that discourses of Christian
nationhood mobilize the theologies of providence, inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism
as rhetorical strategies to situate God’s law as the definitive legal standard through which
American law and cultural values are (de)authorized. Drawing upon the presumptions of
biblical literalism to present the textual “proof” of a Christian nation, the politics of this
memory work aims to influence and shape public memory, opinion, political behavior,
and policy formation in favor of far right Protestant hegemonic interests. In the process,
these memory narratives present contemporary far right political ideology (and policy
positions therein) as biblical, Constitutional, and directly reflective of God’s will for the
nation.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 (RE)MEMBERING A CHRISTIAN NATION: CHRISTIAN
NATIONALISM, BIBLICAL LITERALISM, AND THE POLITICS
OF PUBLIC MEMORY ..................................................................................1 Christian Nationalists in Contemporary American Politics..............................5 National Identity and Discourses of Nationalism ...........................................12 The Politics of Public Memory: Rhetoric, Doxa, and Nation.........................23 Methodological Considerations: Theology as Constitutive Language ...........33 What Lies Ahead ............................................................................................37 CHAPTER 2 THE ISSUES IN CONTEXT: A GODLESS CONSTITUTION AND
AMERICAN BIBLICAL LITERALISM .......................................................44 Historical Overview: The Constitution and Christianity ................................50 A Brief Tour: Inerrancy, Inspiration, Literalism, and Hermeneutic
Traditions ........................................................................................................56 Rhetorical Invention and Biblical Literalism .................................................67 Concluding Thoughts......................................................................................73 CHAPTER 3 FORGETTING GOD’S PLAN: PROVIDENCE, CHRISTIAN
NATIONHOOD, AND HISTORICAL REVISIONISM ...............................76 Theological Providence: A Brief Overview ...................................................79 Barton’s Rhetoric of Providence, Revisionism, and Legitimate Forms
of Knowledge..................................................................................................84 Divine Order: Episteme, Hierarchy, and God’s Mandate for the Nation ......94 A Theology of (dis)Accreditation .................................................................107 CHAPTER 4 STRATEGIC BIBLICAL LITERALISM: REMEMBRANCE,
TEXTUAL AUTHORITY, AND BARTON’S INSPIRED
CONSTITUTION .........................................................................................110 Treating Texts Literally: Interpretation and Its Subterfuge ..........................114 Barton’s Inspired Constitution ......................................................................126 Literalism, Primary Documents, and Textual Authority ..............................131 The Politics of Remembering An Inspired Constitution ..............................136 CHAPTER 5 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AS “THE LAWS OF
NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD” ......................................................139 The Declaration of Independence in Context ...............................................143 The Declaration’s Biblical Preamble ............................................................147 The (Conservative Evangelical) Constitution As Read Through the
(Biblical) Preamble of the Declaration .........................................................154 Conclusion: Politics, Public Memory, and God’s Law ................................169 CHAPTER 6 ONE BIBLICAL NATION UNDER OUR FAR-RIGHT
HEAVENLY FATHER: THE FOUNDERS’ BIBLE AS MEMORY
AND MANDATE .........................................................................................172 v
Rhetoric, Literalism, and the Founders’ Bible .............................................179 Projects and Projections: Reading Far Right Ideology into Scripture .........188 “A (Biblical) Republic, If You Can Keep It” ...............................................207 The Founders’ Bible, Divine Mandate, and the Politics of Public
Memory.........................................................................................................220 CONCLUSION: GOD, PUBLIC MEMORY, AND NATIONAL POLITICS ...............223 Theology as Constitutive Rhetoric in Christian Nationalist
Constructions of Nation ................................................................................224 The Politics of Public Memory, God’s Law, and Legitimate Knowledge ...230 Future Research Considerations ...................................................................233 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................239 vi
1
CHAPTER 1
(RE)MEMBERING A CHRISTIAN NATION: CHRISTIAN
NATIONALISM, BIBLICAL LITERALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF
PUBLIC MEMORY
As memory texts, Christian Americanist renderings of the nation’s “historical record”
function to shape and direct political and religious understanding, and by extension, to
influence and prompt political behavior, belief, policy commitments, and political
activism in favor of reclaiming God’s Christian nation. Chancey contends that the
“idealization of Protestant dominance and its revisionist history” within Christian
nationalist discourses attempts to influence and reshape “the collective memory of
American origins” encouraging students to understand American identity as
1
“quintessentially conservative Protestant.” According to evangelical historian John Fea,
Christian nationalists, unlike their forbears who understood America to be a Christian
nation in one capacity or another, believe in a Christian nation as if it were mandated in
founding documents and illustrative of founding intent. In particular, Fea argues that
Christian nationalists seek to convince “members of the evangelical rank and file that
such an interpretation of American history is correct” to further far right political
2
interests. Unlike the ambiguous civil religious speech of earlier generations,
contemporary mainstream Christian nationalist discourses draw directly upon Protestant
3
fundamentalist and conservative evangelical sensibilities and traditions. As Fea opines,
1
Mark A. Chancey, “A Textbook Example of the Christian Right: The National Council
on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75 (2007):
557
2
John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction,
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 58
3
Martin J. Medhurst, "Forging a Civil-Religious Construct for the 21st Century: Should
Hart's 'Contract' Be Renewed?" Journal of Communication and Religion 25 (2002): 86- 101.
2
if we examine Christian nationalist discourses closely we will discover that “God is
4
Protestant, and probably an Anglo-Saxon.” Rather than recollection, public memory, as
Stephen Browne posits, is “never given, but always managed;” meant to serve vested
5
political interests. To Browne, collective memory is not remembrance but invented,
rehearsed, and reiterated social constructions that serve political ends for collectives.
6
Publically ritualized remembrance represent not simply an act of recalling, but rather, it
constitutes the act of affirming specific values over and above other values in the process
of recollection.
Fea, Davis, and Chancey represent a growing body of scholars concerned with the
ideological and political advances of Christian nationalism within the culture at large,
noting that David Barton stands as a significant, prolific contributor to the development
and promotion of Christian nationalist historical narratives and rationales, and as an
ardent and influential Republican Party activist for the Christianization of public policy.
7
These scholars and others across disciplines tend to recognize that such discourses serve
to shape public memory, opinion, and behavior. They also note that nationalist talking
points draw upon shared theological precepts, specifically biblical literalism, inerrancy,
Medhurst astutely notes that mainstream American religio-political discourses are markedly
conservative and evangelical at this juncture in the nation’s history rather than ambiguous,
nonspecific, and nondenominational as represented in discourses of “civil religion.” Also see
Roderick P. Hart, "God, Country, and a World of Words," Journal of Communication and
Religion 25 (2002): 136-147, and Roderick P. Hart, The Political Pulpit, (West Lafayette: Purdue
University Press, 1977).
4
John Fea, 63
5
Stephen Browne, “Reading Public Memory in Daniel Webster’s Plymouth Rock
Oration,” Western Journal of Communication, 57 (Fall 1993): 465
6
Browne, “Reading Public Memory in Daniel Webster’s Plymouth Rock Oration,” 465
and Kristen Hoerl, “Selective Amnesia and Racial Transcendence in News Coverage of President
Obama’s Inauguration, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 98 (2012): 80
7
Fea, Christian Nation, 58, Chancey, “Textbook Example,” 569, and Davis and
McMearty, “America’s ‘Forsaken Roots,’” 449
3
and inspiration, to lend weight, dimension, and authority to Christian Americanist
8
arguments and historical accountings. What has yet to be explored at length is the
manner in which these theological precepts function as central meaning making
components in an overall rhetorical strategy to shape and direct public remembrance and
political behavior in favor of far right policy interests.
The discourses of a biblical nation work at the juncture of public memory,
religion, and national identity illustrating a febrile and assiduous struggle for nation: its
identity, its public policy, and cultural belief/knowledge/consensus. Christian nationalist
historical discourses, as memory text, draw upon identifiable codes of a shared
theological tradition generally identified as biblical literalism. This dissertation explores
the manner in which theological elements from a biblical literalist perspective undergird
and authorize the historical memory texts produced by Christian nationalist advocates in
support of conservative Protestant religious establishment. Christian nationalist
discourses exploit notions of divine warrant, public remembrance, and “historical
evidence” as means to read the nation and contemporary far right ideological
commitments as biblically founded, and hence, as binding upon the nation. Focusing on
the rhetoric of David Barton, Christian nationalist par excellence and Republican Party
operative, I argue that discourses of Christian nationhood mobilize the theologies of
providence, inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism as rhetorical strategies to situate God’s
law as the definitive legal standard through which American law and cultural values are
(de)authorized. Drawing upon the presumptions of biblical literalism to present the
textual “proof’ of a Christian nation, the politics of this memory work (and the many
ways these discourses presume to furnish textual proofs of a biblical nation) aims to
8
Chancey, “Textbook Example,” 565, Michael W. Apple, “God’s Educational
Reforms?” Educational Policy 14 (2000): 705. Also see Casey Ryan Kelly and Kristen E. Hoerl,
“Genesis in Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy at the Creation Museum,”
Argumentation and Advocacy 48 (2012): 123-141
4
influence and to shape public memory, opinion, political behavior, and policy formation
9
in favor of far right Protestant hegemonic interests. In the process, these memory
narratives present contemporary far right political ideology (and policy positions therein)
as biblical, Constitutional, and directly reflective of God’s will for the nation.
This dissertation hopes to contribute to the ongoing investigation and discussion
of the politics of public memory formation in conjunction with modes of nationalism.
I examine the unique contribution shared theological codes contribute to the formation of
public memory and national identity amongst Christian nationalists. In particular, I
explore how the theology of inerrancy (contemporary biblical literalism) functions as
constitutive rhetoric providing fundamental scaffolding that configures American law as
biblically based. This configuration serves to subsume American law under the
figuration of divine authority. Christian nationalist rhetoric and its reliance upon the
underlying assumptions of biblical literalism represent world-making discourses that are
not apt to disappear from the America political landscape any time soon. I take a cue
from Stephen Browne, examining how Christian nationalist constructions of nation and
scripture may be read as textual productions. As memory texts, Christian nationalist
rhetoric may be understood as a site of symbolic action and struggle, as a social text, and
as a cultural performance meant to exert real effects of power within the cultural
10
imagination and American politics. Far from being a benign expression of civil religion,
Christian nationalist discourses are foundationally conservative and evangelical
(fundamentalist) in content. They exert influence over the political and cultural
landscape and craft a unique vision of the nation. Christian nationalist rhetoric deserves
to be taken seriously and researched as contemporary political speech, and for the
9
It should be noted that the religious right stands as a thoroughly integrated constituency
within the Republican Party and has for decades.
10
Stephen H. Browne, “Reading, Rhetoric, and the Texture of Public Memory,”
Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 237.
5
political work such ideas undertake and endorse. They are discourses that aim to shape
public memory, knowledge, and political behavior. They work to read far right
Republican political ideals onto scripture and the Constitution, naturalizing and
advocating these values in the process. As such, this study concerns itself directly and
indirectly with issues of public advocacy, democratic deliberation, political and religious
rhetoric, persuasive and constitutive rhetoric, and the politics of public memory and
national identity.
Christian Nationalists in Contemporary American Politics
Christian nationalists see themselves as dedicated patriots working to restore the
country back to its “original” Christian character. They understand themselves as
resisting the secularization of America, actively fighting against the systematic
“destruction” of the nation. They imagine themselves as both “true” citizens of the
11
nation and also as a besieged and persecuted counter-public.
11
The battle over nation is
Interestingly George Marsden notes that the persecution thematic arose from Christian
Fundamentalist rhetoric. Marsden explains “Within Fundamentalism we find a striking
paradoxical tendency to identify sometimes with the ‘establishment’ and sometimes with the
‘outsiders.’” Marsden suggests that, “Fundamentalist attitudes cannot be understood in terms of a
consistent ideology. They make sense only in terms of the establishment-or-outsider paradox.”
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century
Evangelicalism, 1870-1925, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 6. Persecution rhetoric
filtered into conservative evangelical discourses as fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals
came together in political coalition during the rise of the New Right. It may also have figured
more prominently in conservative evangelical rhetoric as many former fundamentalists began
identifying themselves as evangelical to escape the negative historical connotations associated
with a fundamentalist identity. Didi Herman also documents the persecution narratives generated
by the Christian right. See Didi Herman, The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the
Christian Right, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) For primary Christian literature
decrying persecution at the hands of secular humanists see especially Janet Folger, The
Criminalization of Christianity, (Sisters: Multnomah Publishers, 2005), David Limbaugh,
Persecution: How Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity, (New York: Perennial, 2003),
American, Return to God, Thomas Wang, ed., (Sunnyvale: The Great Commission Center
International, 2006) and a special issue on “Criminalizing Christianity,” Whistleblower, 14:2
(2005). Note that Limbaugh’s book made the New York Times Bestseller list. The persecution
argument, in part, claims that LGBT rights, including hate crime measures, annihilate the First
Amendment rights of conservative evangelicals. The underlying assumption revolves around the
idea that the religious rights of conservative evangelicals are violated when the rights of their
6
framed as a Christian duty to God, commanding the faithful to brook no compromise
12
with the enemy. Christian nationalist discourses employ arguments and ideas developed
decades earlier by Christian Reconstruction activists and theologians. Both
Reconstruction and contemporary Christian nationalism share a Dominionist perspective.
Yet, while the Reconstruction movement died more than a decade ago, its hyper-patriotic
progeny, Christian nationalism, finds great enthusiasm and sustained support amongst
millions of Americans.
13
rivals are upheld. The argument presents a false dilemma. This in part includes the argument that
Christianity is under siege on every occasion where invective against LGBT individuals is
countered, publicly denounced, disciplined, or challenged. This argument also extends to
women’s reproductive rights in the United States, as well as UN efforts to protect the rights of
women and children around the world. See for example Family Research Council’s counterresearch, especially Patrick Fagan et al, “How the U.N. Conventions on Women’s and Children’s
Rights Undermine Family, Religion, and Sovereignty,” Insight, May (2009). For an important
study on Christian right politics abroad see Doris Buss and Didi Herman, Globalizing Family
Values: The Christian Right in International Politics, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota,
2003).
12
See Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1981),
Gary North and Gary DeMar, Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, what It Isn’t, (Tyler: Institute
for Christian Economics, 1991). This all-encompassing battle against usurper-enemies may be
witnessed in countless organizational communiqués. For excellent examples of persecution
discourses see online literature generated by Concerned Women for America, WallBuilders,
Traditional Values Coalition, and The Family Research Counsel, to name a few. For scholarly
sources see Charles Conrad, “The Rhetoric of the Moral Majority: An Analysis of Romantic
Form,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 159-170, Bernard K. Duffy, “The Anti-Humanist
Rhetoric of the New Religious Right,” The Southern Speech Communication Journal 49
(Summer 1984): 339-360, and Ronald Fischli, “Anita Bryant’s Stand Against ‘Militant
Homosexuality’: Religious Fundamentalism and the Democratic Process,” Central States Speech
Journal 30 (Fall 1979): 262-272
13
Reconstruction theology, originally developed by R. J. Rushdoony and popularized by
his son-in-law Gary North, matured into a social movement during the 1980s. Reconstructionism
represents a type of theonomy that advocates the total application of biblical law to bring about
the redemption of the entire world. Originally, postmillennial in outlook, Reconstruction
eschewed nationalism, and therefore did not employ the language of patriotism to attract
supporters. The belief that the totality of biblical law must govern all, and that such governance
would be organized by micro-units (family, church, and government) coupled with the
commitment to total world redemption stressed an anti-nationalist stance. Over the last several
decades, the actual movement has ceased to be, while the ideas of theonomy and features of
Reconstruction theology have continued to seep into mainstream conservative evangelical
discourses blurring the line between premillennial and postmillennial identity. See Molly
Worthen, “The Chalcedon Problem: Rousas John Rushdoony and the Origins of Christian
Reconstructionism, Church History 77 (2008), 425-427. Also see Michael J. McVicar, “The
Libertarian Theocrats: The Long, Strange History of R. J. Rushdoony and Christian
7
The idea of a biblical nation stands as the foundational premise by which
adherents, allies, and opportunists endorse far right political goals in the name of God’s
will and “original intent.” The invocation of a biblical nation by Republican politicians is
commonplace. In 2013 Stephen Fincher (R-TN) cited 2 Thessalonians 3:10 as his
14
rationale to legitimate a drastic cut in food stamps for the poor. Tom DeLay stated for
the record,
I think we got off track when we allowed our government to become secular,
when we stopped realizing that God created this nation, the He wrote the
Constitution, that it’s based upon biblical principles and we allowed those that
Reconstructionism, The Public Eye Magazine, 22:3 (2007). Accessed 17 September 2011.
htpp://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v22n3/libertarian.html#n41, and Gary North and Gary
DeMar, Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, what It Isn’t, (Tyler: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1991). For Christian Reconstructionist writings see The Chalcedon Report,
publications generated by North’s Institute for Christian Economics, and the writings of
Rushdoony, North, DeMar, Greg L. Bahnsen, James Jordon, and Ray R. Sutton. For
premillennialists associated with Rushdoony, see the writings of Francis Schaeffer, Jerry Falwell,
Pat Robertson, and Tim LaHaye, to name a few. For sources that provide excellent coverage of
dominionism, premillennialism, and postmillennialism, including dispensational
premillennialism, see Mark A. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (Grand Rapids: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American
Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980), and George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and
Evangelicalism, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991). Tracing the
discourses of today’s Christian nationalists in comparison with Reconstructionist ideas illustrates
a striking confluence between the two “schools” of thought. The innovation of Christian
nationalist discourses combine many precepts and arguments found in Reconstructionist literature
with the wholesale incorporation of American patriotic language. It is this incorporation of
American symbolism and supra-patriotism that has provided Reconstructionist ideas a new
ground to flourish in, now very much circulating within mainstream political discourse. Perhaps
one of the most important and enduring contributions Rushdoony has made to conservative
Christian culture is the advent of the home schooling movement. See Molly Worthen, “The
Chalcedon Problem: Rousas John Rushdoony and the Origins of Christian Reconstructionism,
Church History 77 (2008), 425-427, Catherine A. Lugg, “Reading, Writing, and
Reconstructionism: The Christian Right and the Politics of Public Education,” Educational Policy
14 (2000): 622-637, and Francis A. Paterson, “Building a Conservative Base: Teaching History
and Civics In Voucher-Supported Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, 82, (2000): 150-155 for an in
depth explication of the movement’s success.
14
Fincher was an invited speaker at the 2013 Values Voters Summit. Note that David
Barton draws upon 2 Thessalonians 3:10 to argue that God established a “free market” economy,
and that only this economic structure is biblical and consummate with God’s will. David Barton
et al., The Founders’ Bible, (Newbury Park: Shiloh Road Publishers, 2012), 1934-1940.
8
don’t believe in those
things to keep pushing us, pushing us, and pushing us away
15
from government.
His colleague Rick Perry blamed the “great recession” on an abandonment of “biblical
principles,” a rant that demonstrated his stance against New Deal social welfare
16
policies. In October 2013, Ted Cruz (R-TX) captured the hearts of constituents at the
Values Voters Summit, a yearly conference where Republican politicians, religious right
leaders, right wing think tank and legal organizations, and everyday activist come
17
together to strategize and reaffirm political fealty.
Cruz won the Summit’s “straw poll,”
his popularity soaring due to his recent success to shut down the federal government.
Other headliners at the conference included Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rick Santorum,
Mike Huckabee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Paul Rand (R-KY), Sen. Mike Lee (RUT), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Religious leaders and TV
personalities who regularly attend this conference include but are not limited to Tony
15
Kyle Mantyla, “DeLay: Americans Have Forgotten That God Wrote The Constitution,”
Right Wing Watch. Last modified February 20, 2014.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/delay-americans-have-forgotten-god-wrote-constitution.
My transcript.
16
Marie Diamond, “Gov. Perry: Economic Crisis Is Part of God’s Plan To Return Us To
Biblical Principles,” Think Progress. Last modified June 13, 2011.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/13/234883/rick-perry-gods-plan/
17
It is important to note that these groups are not mutually exclusive. The religious right
occupies a central position within the Party and has worked tirelessly from a grass roots level up
to occupy governmental positions and drive public policy across an array of issues including but
not limited to issues from market initiatives and public education to anti-abortion and anti-samesex marriage. The face of the party is not monolithic but overlapping across a swath of political
commitments. This includes but is not limited to non-religious libertarians, religious libertarians,
neoliberals including self-identified conservative evangelicals, fundamentalists, religious right
constituents who are conservative Catholics and Jews, and business elites (corporate America).
For excellent studies on the decline of Republican moderates, the rise of the religious right within
its ranks, and the advent of the neoconservative Law and Economics Movement see Williams B.
Hixson, Search for the American Right Wing, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),
Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the
Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012),
and Steven Michael Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control
of the Law, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008) .
9
Perkins (Family Research Council), Gary Bauer (American Values, former President of
Family Research Council), Jim DeMint (President: The Heritage Foundation), Matt
Staver (President: Liberty Council), Rick Scarborough (Vision America), Glenn Beck,
Bill Bennett, the Duggar family, and Sean Hannity and Todd Starnes from Fox News.
Transcripts from The Values Voters Summit demonstrates the degree to which
Republican politicians, religious right leaders, and rank-and-file activists invoke a
18
biblical nation as the standard by which policy must be forged, judged, and enforced.
As a means of identifying and distilling the significant hallmarks of Christian
nationalist imagery within mainstream political discourse, this project focuses on the
rhetoric of David Barton. His ubiquitous presence within religious right and GOP
politics mark his work as a significant representative sample of Christian nationalist
discourses in mainstream circulation, particularly because his arguments are widely
parroted and promoted by supporters within the rank and file and top echelons of the
political elite alike. Barton calls upon Americans to “remember” history and in doing so,
to remember that we are a Christian nation. He positions himself as THE historian who
will restore public memory, and save the nation in the process. A national hero to
conservative evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and countless Republican activists, Barton is
the founder and president of WallBuilders, “a national pro-family organization that
presents America’s forgotten history and heroes,” with an emphasis on America’s
“moral, religious, and constitutional heritage.”
19
His organization serves as a consulting
firm to Republican legislators, as well as an educational outreach program. With over
400 speaking engagements a year, a regular radio program, a flurry of publications and
18
I recorded and transcribed most of the conference speeches with the exception of the
Summit’s “private” workshops, which were not streamed and made accessible to the public. For
a complete list and video coverage of Summit speakers and workshops see
http://www.frcaction.org/get.cfm?i=PG13J03
19
http:/www.wallbuilders.com/SCHbioDB.asp
10
made for DVD series produced by WallBuilders (especially airing on Trinity Broadcast
Network (TBN), plus regular appearances on Fox News programs hosted by Mike
Huckabee and Glenn Beck, Barton’s arguments enjoy far-reaching, mass mediation.
20
Indeed, his “historical” educational products factor centrally in the curricula of the
conservative evangelical home schooling movement and, most recently, he served as a
delegate and platform writer for the 2012 Republican National Convention.
21
20
See Russell Shorto, “How Christian Were the Founders?” New York Times, February
14 2010. Accessed February 14, 2010, “Meet the Religious Right Charlatan Who Teaches Tea
Party America the Totally Pretend History They Want to Hear,” People for the American Way
Foundation, posted April 20, 2011, and accessed on www.alternet.org, Erik Eckholm, “Using
History to Mold Ideas of the Right,” New York Times, May 4, 2011. Accessed May 19, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/us/politics/05barton.html. Jason Cherkis, “ David Barton
Tax Records Boast Expertise in Black History,” Huffington Post, May 18, 2011. Accessed May
19, 2011. www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/david-barton-tax-records-gophistory_n_863758.html, and www.wallbuilders.com. Also see Rob Boston’s work for Americans
United for Separation of Church and State and www.rightwingwatch.org
21
Barton served as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1997 to 2006. He
was hired by the Republican National Committee in 2004 to mobilize the Christian vote for
George W. Bush. Later in this decade, he served as an “expert” consultant for the Texas Board of
Education to “Christianize” public school social studies textbooks. Barton, by his own
admission, works with Republican legislators on a regular basis to help facilitate the
Christianization of public policy. Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachman
respectively endorsed Barton as a future consultant to the Whitehouse if elected to the executive
office. See People for the American Way Foundation, “Meet the Religious Right Charlatan Who
Teaches Tea Party America the Totally Pretend History They Want to Hear,” last modified April
20, 2011. Accessed on April 20, 2011.
http://www.alternet.org/story/150690/meet_the_religious_right_charlatan_who_teaches_tea_part
y_america_the_totally_pretend_history_they_want_to_hear. Barton sits on numerous directors’
boards including Newt Gingrich’s “Renewing American Leadership” and The Providence
Foundation, a dominionist organization committed to producing Christian leadership in
government, arts and entertainment, education, business, media, religion, and family. Governor
Sam Brownback of Kansas stated that Barton’s research “provides the philosophical
underpinnings for a lot of the Republican effort in the country today—brining God back into the
public square.” Michelle Bachmann invited Barton to educate Tea Party members of Congress on
the Constitution, calling Barton a “treasure to our nation.” Mike Huckabee called Barton one of
the greatest historians of America history, arguing that all Americans should be “forced at gun
point” to listen to Barton’s radio broadcasts. All as quoted in “Meet the Religious Right
Charlatan,” 1. In 2012, Barton served as a delegate and platform writer for the Republican Party
National Convention. Gingrich’s spokesman Rick Tyler recently gushed “I think David Barton is
one of the most knowledgeable teachers on American history.’’ Tyler goes on to say, “’When he
shares information about American history, it is more than likely that he held the actual document
from (which) he got his research.” See Jason Cherkis, “David Barton Tax Records,” Huffington
Post, May 18, 2011. Accessed May 19, 2011. http://www.
huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/david-barton-tax-records-gop-history_n_863758.html. Time
Magazine hailed Barton as a “hero to millions – including some powerful politicians,”
11
I analyze a variety of materials generated by Barton from approximately 2000 to
2013, which include his seminal publication Original Intent: The Courts, the
Constitution, and Religion and his wildly popular American Heritage Series to illustrate
key rhetorical strategies in his public memory work. I also draw upon the annotated
material in his most recently published Founders’ Bible (2012), examine a wide selection
of video tapings of various public presentations spanning the last decade, and
transcriptions from his regular radio show which is broadcast and produced by his
organization WallBuilders. In addition, I interrogate his self-penned online WallBuilders
articles, which include but are not limited to his 2008 Voters’ Guide, which offers
instructions for how to vote “biblically.” These materials provide ample opportunities to
trace Barton’s “reading” practices in my effort to explicate the manner in which his
rhetorical inventions of nation are informed by the theological doctrines of inerrancy,
literalism, inspiration, and providence and wrapped in narratives of factual
remembrance. As one of the most lauded and trusted Christian nationalists in the
contemporary neoconservative scene, Barton’s interpretations supply simple yet valuable
intellectual scaffolding for supporters of Christian nationalization, squarely situated
within a “biblical worldview” that resonates with conservative evangelicals and
fundamentalists. In addition to these materials, I incorporate, where warranted, primary
materials generated by Christian right organizations such as Concerned Women for
American, Focus on the Family, the American Family Association and like, as well as
seminal works from Christian right luminaries like Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Francis
pronouncing him as on of the top 25 most influential Evangelicals in the United States. The 25
Most Influential Evangelicals in America, “David Barton,” Time, February 7, 2005. Accessed
April 12, 2012
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1993235_1993243_1993261,00.htm
l. “David Barton Biography,” WallBuilders, accessed February 14, 2012,
http://www.wallbuilders/com/SCHbioDB.asp
http://www.alternet.org/story/150690/meet_the_religious_right_charlatan_who_teaches_tea_part
y_america_the_totally_pretend_history_they_want_to_hear.
12
Schaeffer, Phyllis Schlafly, and Gary North. Such materials offer deep contextualization
of the New Right movement over the last four decades, including the various
developments, overlap, and circulations of lines of argumentation and policy initiatives
that continue to shape the movement and contemporary politics.
National Identity and Discourses of Nationalism
Stephen Browne wisely urged rhetorical scholars to look for the basis upon which
we may speak of discourses of public memory rather than attempt to compile the many
ways in which memory can be signified.
22
Methodologically, Browne prompts us to
consider the political work such discourses undertake in the struggle over nation, national
identity, and cultural values. Scholarly research on public memory and nationalism
respectively illustrate a tremendous overlap between both areas of study. Public memory
scholarship traces the ways that such narratives serve political ends, while research on
nationalism underscore the importance of public memory work in fashioning national
23
identity.
This dissertation proposes to investigate a lesser researched but nonetheless
critical, symbiotic relationship between public memory narratives, conservative
evangelical discourse, and figurations of nation as they work in tandem to influence
public opinion and shape political behavior. These two types of discourses (memory and
religion) offer novel spaces for inquiry, particularly in their mutually enforcing capacity
22
Stephen H. Browne, “Reading, Rhetoric, and the Texture of Public Memory,”
Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 245
23
See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 2006), John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory,
Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1992), Michael G. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition
in America, (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race,
Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, (New York: Routledge, 1995), James E. Young,
The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993), and Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli
National Tradition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
13
to authorize rhetorics of national destiny and identity meant to shape public opinion.
Contemporary American Christian nationalist discourses allow for such a case study, one
of significant import since Christian nationalist strategies to resist “secular” culture and
government continue to show great resilience, dogged determination, and markedly
successful influence in matters of public policy. Specifically, working at this intersection,
we can tease out the manner in which the theologies of, inerrancy, literalism, inspiration
and providence public remembrance work conjointly with practices of public
remembrance to buttress and or contest notions of nation and national identity. Such
discourses and the politics they advance circulate within mainstream political discourse
and influence national self-understanding.
Though conventional notions of nation and national identity configure “the
people” as a unified, materially factual entity, contemporary research across disciplines
suggests that identity and nation are first and foremost figurations, born of rhetoric and
human imagination.
24
These common assumptions about national identity take for
granted the idea that a unified people exist by ties that extend genetically, spatially, and
25
temporally.
We speak of nationalities as ethnic categories of belonging, imagining that
they have a material existence outside of rhetorical inventions and ritualized practices of
cultural belonging. Significant scholarly research argues that identity and nation are
discursive constructs predicated upon symbolic action and repetition. The social
constructionist perspective argues that we invent nations and identity through acts of
24
These disciplines include but are not limited to anthropology, rhetorical studies,
history, literary studies, religious studies, and sociology.
25
Anthony D. Smith, National Identity, (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1993),
Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1999),
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 2006).
14
26
signification.
We are born into systems of signification, and find ourselves socially
constructed outside of our own choosing. The constitution of national identity is but one
marker, yet, it is a critical one. The fiction of nation, and national identity by extension,
rely upon linguistic recapitulation working in tandem with the creation and observance of
cultural traditions, ritualized behavior, and quotidian practices to sustain identity within
the social imaginary.
27
Our social constructions exert material effects and such material edifices
28
condition, along with our perceptions, the possibilities of our existence. Borrowing from
Foucault, we might think of the force of these subject constitutions as circuits that are
29
both the articulation and effect of discursive power. National identity as a social
construction of reality structures human relations and self-understanding (relations of
power), which become institutionalized and naturalized over time through the
26
Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québéqois.”
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73 (1987): 133-150. Also see Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the
People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1988). Anthropologist Ernest Gellner observed that we “invent nations where they do
not exist,” and, as such, we do not undergo a “mystical process of self-conscious awakening to a
national sense of self.” Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1974), 169
27
For an extended discussion of invented traditions see Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For
Hobsbawm and Ranger, invented tradition means “a set of practices, normally governed by
overtly or tacitly accepted rules of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain
values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the
past.” (1) For an excellent discussion on linguistic repetition and historicity see Judith Butler,
Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, (New York: Routledge Press, 1997). For
nationalism and quotidian social practices see Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism, (Thousand
Oaks: SAGE publications, 1995)
28
See Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, (New York, Routledge, 2004), particularly her
introduction “Acting in Concert” and chapter one, entitled “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of
Sexual Autonomy.”
29
See both Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,
1972-1977, trans. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) and Michel Foucault, The
History of Sexuality, trans. by Robert Hurley, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990).
15
conventions of law, tradition, and everyday cultural behavior.
30
The interplay between
the two realms shape our very gestures and bodily expressions, though this influence is
not totalizing in its effects.
31
When speaking of the nation, literary theorist Anne
McClintock provocatively argues, “Nations are not simply phantasmagoria of the mind
but are historical practices through which social difference is invented and performed.”
32
She writes, “Nations are contested systems of representation that limit and legitimize
33
peoples’ access to the resources of the nation-state.”
The State, in this sense,
controlling the resources by governmental apparatuses, draws upon cultural fictions of
identity and belonging to institute and regulate hierarchical relations of power through
34
rhetorical demarcations of difference and technologies of violence.
Regardless of the rise of modern nation-states or the influence of Enlightenment
thinking in Western history, religious identity remains one critical element within this
“contested system of representation” that forms the possibilities and limitations of
existence for human beings.
35
For instance, only recently have atheists and agnostics in
the United States felt encouraged to declare their views (and disclose their selfproclaimed identities) publically within mainstream discourse. Religious discourses of
State constitute a critical area for researchers, particularly for those interested in rhetoric
30
Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, (New York: Anchor Books, 1990)
31
Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. by Gino Raymond and
Matthew Adamson, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991) and Foucault,
“Power/Knowledge,” Judith Butler, “Excitable Speech,” Michel de Certeau, The Practice of
Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) and Judith
Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
32
33
34
35
McClintock, Imperial Leather, 353
Ibid.
McClintock, Imperial Leather, 352
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, (New York, Routledge, 2004), 4
16
36
and the politics of public memory formation.
Specifically, the formation of Protestant
identity arose in tandem with the advent of an “American people.” In this case, religious
identity has been and continues to be inextricably bound to notions of American
character.
37
Anthony Smith urged scholars to pay close attention to the language and
ideology of nationalists, particularly the moral, ritual, and emotional elements within
discursive economies that influence activism in the name of nation. Smith argued that
“The ubiquity of nationalism, the hold it exerts over millions of people in every continent
today, attests to its ability to inspire and resonate among ‘the people’ in ways that only
38
religions had previously been able to encompass.” Indeed, religious discourses and
ideas of nation find each other allied very closely, if not often conflated, each giving
authoritative strength to the other.
Typically, when human beings speak of a national entity, we speak in terms of
personification, and such terms imagine this entity as an embodied projection of human
character and agency. Categories of divisive demarcation (e.g. citizen, alien, antiAmerican, socialist) function as “technologies of violence,” which direct the allocation of
national resources and discipline subjects in the name of “nature” and nation. Gender,
race, and class serve as fundamental categories of division within the national
39
imaginary. McClintock notes, “All nations are gendered, all are invented, and all are
36
When I refer to state discourses, I am simply referring to discourses of nation in
general. These may or may not be state sponsored. We all have access to discourses of nation
and use them to further our particular interests. Moreover, I use the qualifier “attempt” to suggest
that such discourses are not always felicitous in such endeavors.
37
Mark Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1995), 69-72
38
39
Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism, (Malden: Polity Press, 2010), 2
For provocative studies on race, class, sexuality, and nation see Etienne Balibar and
Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class Ambiguous Identities, (London: Verso, 1992),
Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois
World, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge
and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, (Berkeley: University of California
17
40
dangerous.”
Accordingly, “race, gender, and class are not distinct realms of experience,
existing in splendid isolation from each other” but rather “come into existence in and
41
through relation to each other.” These discursive conventions naturalize, order, and
maintain hierarchical relations of power within a polis. If categorizations of gender,
class, and race serve as “technologies of violence” that influence, justify, and dictate the
unequal allocation of national resources, the question remains, how might theologically
based constructions of reality facilitate the naturalization and perpetuation of social
hierarchal relations? This question constitutes a critical inquiry in light of Christian
nationalist rhetoric--its promotion of biblical headship as a cultural standard, its Anglocentrism, and its preoccupation with identifying and indicting Americans deemed traitors
of God and the nation.
Rhetorics of race, class, sexuality, and gender color our perception and depictions
of national ethos. For instance, in the United States today virulent anti-immigration and
neoliberal pro-market discourses function to demarcate desirable citizens from
undesirable ones, situating “authentic” national subjects apart from imagined interlopers.
Concerning gender, as McClintock brilliantly observes, the “male role in the nationalist
scenario is typically ‘metonymic’” in nature, whereby men are imagined as “contiguous
with each other and the national whole” and women are “subsumed symbolically into the
42
national body politic as its boundary or metaphoric limit.” Such configurations readily
appear in Christian nationalist rhetoric, where “feminists” are characterized as
emasculators of the (masculinized) nation, overriding men’s authority and displacing
them in the workplace, academy, and political arena.
Press, 2002) and George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal
Sexuality in Modern Europe, (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985).
40
41
42
McClintock, Imperial Leather, 352
McClintock, Imperial Leather, 5.
McClintock, Imperial Leather, 354-5
18
Raced and gendered national entities are personified as capable of incurring
various forms of contamination. American anti-miscegenation laws demonstrate a vivid
example whereby interracial sexual relations where regulated and disciplined in the name
of national/racial purity and Christian morality.
43
In this case national purity worked in
concert with notions of racial purity to keep the white race and its nation free from
imagined degradation. Hitler’s schema of national purity revolved around (religiously
based) race, gender, and sexuality where the imagined masculine, racially pure ethos of
the personified nation found itself haunted by the feminine, including male
homosexuality imagined as a form of demasculinization.
44
In the United States,
contemporary Christian nationalist discourses illustrates anxiety concerning imagined
sexual taint at the hands of queers and feminists bent on destroying the nation and
45
Christianity alike.
LGBT subjects and feminists stand as dual emasculating forces
43
See in particular, Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the
Making of Race in America, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Peter Wallenstein, Tell the
Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law—An American History, (New York: Palgrave,
McMillan, 2004), and Fay Botham, Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial
Marriage, and American Law, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
Botham’s work offers a critical investigation into how religious theology influenced the
formation of anti-miscegenation laws, as well as how counter-theological perspectives came to
the aid of racial justice to overturn such laws. Her research contributes to the study of how
religious beliefs shape race relations, public policy, law, and national self-image in American
culture.
44
See George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal
Sexuality in Modern Europe, (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985)
45
See Charles Conrad, “The Rhetoric of the Moral Majority: An Analysis of Romantic
Form,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 159-170, Rebecca Dingo, “Securing the Nation:
Neoliberalism’s U.S Family Values in a Transnational Gendered Economy,” Journal of Women’s
History 16 (2004): 173-186, David Douglass, "Taking the Initiative: Anti-Homosexual
Propaganda of the Oregon Citizen's Alliance," in Anti-Gay Rights: Assessing Voter Initiative, eds.
Stephanie L Witt and Suzanne McCorkle, (Westport: Praeger, 1997), Bernard K. Duffy, “The
Anti-Humanist Rhetoric of the New Religious Right,” The Southern Speech Communication
Journal 49 (Summer 1984): 339-360, Ronald Fischli, “Anita Bryant’s Stand Against ‘Militant
Homosexuality’: Religious Fundamentalism and the Democratic Process,” Central States Speech
Journal 30 (Fall 1979): 262-272, Didi Herman, Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the
Christian Right, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), Didi Herman, “The Gay Agenda
Is the Devil’s Agenda: The Christian Right’s Vision and the Role of the State,” in The Politics of
Gay Rights, eds., Craig A. Rimmerman, Kenneth D. Wald, and Clyde Wilcox, (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2000) Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender:
19
within the Christian nationalist imagination.
46
Such anxieties revolve around the fear of
female hegemonic power, including the specter of homoerotic desire. Male headship
marks the proper relation between genders for Christian nationalists who continue to fight
to discipline gender comportment through government apparatuses. The theology of
47
headship mandates female submission to male authority in all realms of life. The
religious imaginary arises in and through these conventions of race, class, nationality, and
gender, facilitating prerogatives of nation and division simultaneously. All nations
(government apparatus) exercise legal prerogatives over sexual relations and gender
comportment in one fashion or another. Preoccupations with sexual regulation and
1875 to the Present, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), Margaret Lamberts Bendroth,
"Fundamentalism and the Family: Gender, Culture, and the American Pro-Family Movement,"
Journal of Women's History 1 (Winter 1999): 35 – 54, Mark A. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical
Mind, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), Sean Patrick O’Rourke
and Laura K. Lee Dellinger, “Romer v. Evans: The Centerpiece of American Gay-Rights
Debate,” in Stephanie L Witt and Suzanne McCorkle, ed., Anti-Gay Rights: Assessing Voter
Initiatives, (Westport: Praeger, 1997), Ralph R. Smith, “Secular Anti-Gay Advocacy in the
Springfield, Missouri, Bias Crime Ordinance Debate,” in Anti-Gay Rights: Assessing Voter
Initiatives, eds., Stephanie L Witt and Suzanne McCorkle, (Westport, Praeger, 1997), and David
Snowball, Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of the Moral Majority, (New York: Praeger,
1991).
46
For ample web resources see focusonthefamily.com, wallbuilders.com,
traditionalvalues.org, [Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood] cbmw.org, [Concerned
Women for America) cwfa.org, [Family Research Council] frc.org. For secondary sources see
Clyde Wilcox and Carin Larson, Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American
Politics, (Boulder: Westview Press, 2006), Janet R. Jakobsen, and Ann Pellegrini, Love the Sin:
Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), Janet R.
Jakobsen, ”Sex + Freedom = Regulation: Why?” Social Text, 84-85 (Winter 2005): 285-308,
Janet R. Jakobsen, “Can Homosexuals End Western Civilization As We Know It? Family Values
in a Global Economy,” in Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialization,
Arnaldo Cruz-Malve and Martin F. Manlansan IV, ed., (New York: New York University Press,
2002), and Doris Buss and Didi Herman, Globalizing Family Values: The Christian Right in
International Politics, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
47
The theology of headship is derived from the household codes in Ephesians 5:21-6:9.
For a superb investigation of headship theology see Susan Friend Harding’s chapter entitled “The
Moral Majority Jeremiad,” in her publication The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist
Language and Politics, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 153-181.
20
national purity in America often import the language of religion conflated with morality
48
to produce the aura of transcendental authority.
The construct of citizenship functions as a technology of signification that
delimits belonging and structures social relations hierarchically. Enlightenment
philosophy crafted the notion of citizenship as a subject of state who is deemed an
“authenticated,” rights bearing entity. Yet the structuring of “citizenship” through
Western history illustrates great variation in ideation and implementation. Jeff Bennett
writes that citizenship constitutes an “essentially contested concept” whereby there exists
“no universal agreement about its social utility, political expediency, or ethical merits.”
49
In terms of everyday practices, citizenship can offer a performative space of agency open
to restaging due to its “radical indeterminacy.”
50
Rhetorics of “enemyship” constitute a
strategic practice deployed to discredit and mark specific collections of people for
exclusion from State recognition by branding them internal enemies of the nation.
51
Jeremy Engels argues that the rhetoric of “enemyship” calls subjects to take up an all out
battle against those who have been named internal enemies of the United States. Such
rhetoric, according to Engels, legitimizes the total destruction of one group of citizens in
48
49
See all of the secondary references in footnotes 46 and 47 for sources.
Ibid.
50
Isaac West, “Legal Transcripts: Transgender Rhetorics of Law and Everyday Life,”
(Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 2008), 19 and Jeffrey A. Bennett, Banning Queer Blood:
Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,
2009), 7.
51
See David Brion Davis, Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from
the Revolution to the Present, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1971), Richard
Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1996), Jeremy Engles, Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the
Early Republic, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), and Jeremy Engels,
“Uncivil Speech: Invective and the Rhetorics of Democracy in the Early Republic,” Quarterly
Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 311-334.
21
the name of saving the nation.
52
Judith Butler notes that even the designation “human
being” in classic political liberalism functions as a field of exclusions, particularly for
53
those people who need the shelter of legal protection most.
Religious belief, identity,
and theological tradition equally form a significant marker by which boundaries and
conceptualizations of citizenship may be expanded or restricted. Not surprisingly,
contemporary Christian left discourses tend toward expanded conceptualization of
citizenship, and are deeply critical of jingoistic rhetorics of national belonging, especially
neoliberal Christian nationalism. Whereby, Christian nationalist discourses, drawing
upon the authorizing figuration of the divine, foreclose upon and greatly reduce the scope
of enfranchisement.
The annals of history affirm the human creative capacity to devise conventions of
reality meant to authorize systematic exclusion, including methods of removal by
genocide. The joint configuration of nation and categories of “subhumanity” continue to
underwrite our worst political convictions and actions. Terms such as “uncivilized,”
“barbarian,” “primitive,” and “savage” have proven particularly useful justifications for
the prerogatives of domination, warfare, and extermination. In American westward
expansion alone, the use of these designations by colonizing Protestants served to justify
the systematic destruction of Native cultures and operated as a ready made rationale that
54
credited Providence as the guiding force underwriting their removal.
Our Western
52
Engels makes the case that the rhetoric of “enemyship” became a common sense
strategy within American political discourse, beginning in the founding era of the nation.
53
54
Butler, Undoing Gender, 37
See Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant
Mission and American Indian Response, 1787-1862, (Atheneum: University of Kentucky Press,
1976), Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from
Columbus to the Present, (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), Ned Blackhawk, Violence Over the
Land: Indians and Empire in the Early American West, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2006), Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building,
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest
Destiny: The Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981),
22
tradition took this cue from Aristotle long ago. He argued that, per nature’s design, men
rule over women, masters over slaves, men over children and beasts, whereby “nature
55
would like to distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves.”
Aristotle states,
“some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from
the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” For Aristotle,
56
rule by “inferiors” is always “hurtful.”
Rhetorical constructs have varied through
historical location and culture, yet, all appear to at the least function as representative
markers that divide and rank individuals within a polis.
If the nation illustrates a symbolic system of representation that legitimizes access
to resources based on the invention of difference, then discourses of religiously based
national identity comprise part of the technologies of violence that establish, maintain,
contest and or disrupt such naturalized hierarchical relations. The authorizing power of
religious discourse, in particular, figurations of national ethos and belonging, still exert
influence in a world of “secularized” nation-states. The above research provides a
foundation for understanding the overlapping relationship between rhetorical inventions
of nation, citizenship, and identity, as well as their material effects. And we have an
inkling of the importance of religion to this general equation. Yet, bringing the element of
religious rhetoric into conversation with research on nationalism, public memory, and
rhetorical theory remains invitingly open for further in-depth study, particularly in the
manner that these elements work conjointly in the ongoing struggle over nation,
knowledge, and memory. This study endeavors to fill this gap in small measure by
focusing on the manner in which shared theological codes (biblical literalism) work in
Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West,
(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1987),
55
Aristotle, “The Politics,” in Great Political Thinkers: Plato to the Present, William
Ebenstein and Alan O. Ebenstein, ed., (Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1990), 95.
56
Ibid.
23
concert with public memory narratives to craft the visage of an American Christian
nation. The formation of public remembrance of a Christian nation undertakes
significant political work in the everyday fight to resist “secular” culture and erect a
Christianized nation in its stead.
With this in mind, I turn to the literature on public memory. National identity is
significantly shaped, maintained, and contested through discourses of public
remembrance. The social construction of national identity relies in large part upon the
stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we have been over the course of
history. These narratives arise from and in conjunction with cultural memory work.
The Politics of Public Memory: Rhetoric, Doxa, and Nation
Though commonplace conceptions of memory lean toward envisioning
recollection as literal recall--as if events are preserved against time--many scholars argue
that memory work is contingent upon rhetorical invention and discursive dissemination.
Kendall Phillips asserts, “The ways memories attain meaning, compel others to accept
them, and are themselves contested, subverted, and supplanted by other memories are
57
essentially rhetorical.” Accordingly, acts of remembrance, crafted through narrative,
both recall and reformulate the past simultaneously.
imaginative, and processional in nature.
59
58
Remembrance is fragmented,
Bradford Vivian argues that memory functions
nomadically. He writes,
57
Kendall R. Phillips, ed., Framing Public Memory, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 2004), 2-3
58
Kendall R. Phillips and G. Mitchel Reyes, “Surveying Global Memoryscapes: The
Shifting Terrain of Public Memory Studies,” in Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance
in a Transnational Age, eds., Kendal R. Phillips and G. Mitchel Reyes, 1-26, (Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 2011), 1.
59
See John Kotre, White Gloves: How We Create Ourselves through Memory, (New
York: Free Press, 1995), and Barbie Zelizer, “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of
Memory Studies,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1995): 213-239
24
Acts of recollection invariably transform the nature of memory because memory’s
changing incitements and purposes ensure that we remember in different ways,
even if we remember the same event. Rather than preserving an identical
meaning of truth, the modes of repetition by which memory emerges and endures
in the service of diverse social interests imbue it with inevitable mutations.
Collective memory is inherently nomadic because it encompasses a mnemonic
landscape comprised
not of stability but ongoing redistribution, or, better still, re60
membering.
Vivian’s emphasis on “re-membering” is instructive, for it suggests that each ritual
performance or iteration of memory constitutes a novel instance of assemblage--a
restructuring that creates a new composite whole. The process is dynamic and fluid
61
whereby narratives experience drift and mutation in their unfolding.
Narratives of
memory and acts of recollection may or may not be consciously orchestrated, but change
and difference nonetheless mark inventions of remembrance.
Commemoration and rituals of public remembrance involve acts of conjuring.
That is to say, we make memory appear in the ways that we rehearse it and affirm its
existential and historical validity. Remembrance makes memory “appear” to us as an
ontological fact. Charles Scott argues, “When something happens in memory, it is
62
presented in the absence of its original presence.”
He suggests that memory is an event
63
of appearing, an act of “presencing with a loss of original presence.”
The mythos of the
historical becomes part of the conjuring process in the appearance of memory. The
historical record can be exploited for commemorative purposes but it cannot be literally
60
Bradford Vivian, “‘A Timeless Now’ Memory and Repetition,” in Framing Public
Memory, Kendall R. Phillips, ed., (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 190
61
Pierre Nora makes the argument that memory is living while history is static and dead.
He imagined these two processes as antithetical. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History:
Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, 26 (Spring 1989), 8.
62
Charles E. Scott, “The Appearance of Public Memory,” in Kendall R. Phillips, ed.
Framing Public Memory, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004): 150
63
Ibid.
25
64
“reconstructed.”
John Bodnar suggests that “at the level of appearance, imposed
memory is armed with a history that is itself ‘authorized,’ the official history, the history
publically learned and celebrated.”
65
Through processes of inculcation, our sense of
remembrance takes on the hue of “factual” recall. The visage of literal recall supports
public narratives of remembrance in significant ways. In particular, the presumptions of
literalism form an indispensable structuring element in Christian Americanist narratives.
It is thus the narrative structure and the illusion of the historical that create the
appearance of authentic remembrance and national selfhood.
National identity is bound up with and contingent upon discourses of public
remembrance. Whether produced by a State or some other entity, narratives of national
belonging create “a sense of shared values and ideals” where this “shared” memory
66
implies a “unified polis.” Yet, various scholars recognize that no one group commands
67
control over commemorative narratives and they remain open to restaging. Memory
work is said to be “ideologically important because it shapes a nation’s ethos and sense of
68
identity.” If, as Michael Kammen suspects, formal history plays little part in the
historical mythologizing process of collective memory formation, then its invocation
must be examined for the cultural and political work it performs as perspective,
engendered belief, collective ritualization, and affirmation of identity.
64
65
Schwartz, “Social Context of Commemoration,” 376.
Bodnar, Remaking America, 14
66
Young, Texture of Memory, 6 and John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory,
Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1992), 245
67
See Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli
National Tradition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), Michael G. Kammen, Mystic
Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in America, (New York: Vintage Books,
1993), and John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism
in the Twentieth Century, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)
68
Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 38
26
Therefore, the visage of historical realism lends an aura of authenticity to
discourses of memory and national selfhood. Stated another way, the notion of the
historical provides an air of authority to memory narratives, even while public
remembrance holds a tenuous relationship to the “historical record.” The historical record
is exploited for the purpose of collective memory emplotment, but it need not be verified
69
or rendered with rigor or attention to detail.
For Yael Zerubavel “collective memory
continuously negotiates between available historical records and current social and
70
political agendas.” The commemorative narrative both omits and embellishes,
71
manipulating historical data toward particular political ends. According to Kammen,
“We have highly selective memories of what we have been taught about the past” and
72
“history is an essential ingredient in defining national, group, and personal identity.”
The historical facilitates the process of narrative emplotment, giving it a sense of realism
and providing a grounding embellishment to the story. Moreover, it serves as the
foundation upon which national identity is establishes, maintained, and affirmed.
Zerubeval suggests that these narratives mold the past, creating symbolic texts for public
consumption where the “conformity of a commemorative narrative to a myth plot
structure contributes to its textual integrity and makes it easier to ignore its selective
73
representation of available historical data.”
Though these narratives may relate only
distantly to the historical record, she contends that they are nonetheless tightly
constructed stories “meant to convince that their representation is reliable and complete,
69
70
71
72
73
Young, The Texture of Memory, 6
Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, 5
Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, 6
Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 10
Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, 216.
27
leaving no pertinent historical information out of the story.” The narratives function as an
important mechanism by which national identity is crafted and maintained.
74
Rituals of public remembrance mobilize political attitudes and behavior. As
Vivian bluntly argues, “public memory is political memory.”
75
Browne concurs,
suggesting, “texts are never given, but always produced,” and hence, “to read these texts,
these patriotic tokens, is thus to read controversy, to situate a particular performance
within a broader terrain of contest and competition.”
76
Conflicts over nation and
remembrance represent ongoing struggles for “supremacy between advocates of various
political ideas and sentiments.”
77
Bodnar contends, “public memory speaks primarily
about the structure of power in society because the power is always in question in a world
of polarities and contradictions and because cultural understandings is always grounded
in the material structure of society itself. Memory adds perspective and authenticity to
78
the view articulated in this exchange.”
Such battles, he suggests, concern not merely
moral or economic problems, but rather are concerned with “fundamental issues about
the entire existence of a society; its organization, structure of power, and the very
meaning of its past and present.”
79
Indeed, they revolve around the “interpretation of
reality” authorizing some to speak in the name of truth while discrediting other
80
interpretive schema. Browne states, the task of the rhetorical scholar lies in “identifying
74
Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, 222, 214 and Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 84-85
75
76
Vivian, “‘A Timeless Now,’” 190
Browne, “Reading Public Memory,” 465, and Browne, “Texture of Public Memory,”
245
77
78
79
80
Bodnar, Remaking America, 13
Bodnar, Remaking America, 15
Bodnar, Remaking America, 14
Ibid.
28
a basis upon which we can speak of a discourse of public memory. As a form of cultural
practice, public memorializing outsteps established genres, eludes intent and improvises
81
on both material and symbolic resources.”
Significantly, he stresses that “such
memorializing is a textual practice; to speak of it at all is to put into play interpretive
procedures. However varied those procedures, they collectively stress a sense of the text
as a site of symbolic action, place of cultural performance, the meaning of which is
82
defined by its public and persuasive functions.”
He points to the “politics of public
83
memory” suggesting that such a politics “may be read as a textual practice.”
And
hence, according to Browne, textual performance does not reflect public memory but
84
rather its constitution.
Rhetorical scholars are prompted to think through the
“conditions of production, placement, form, function,” public consumption and textual
85
appropriation when considering the politics of public memory in its endless inventions.
According to Paul Ricoeur, memory narratives function on the level of political
ideology. In his estimation, ideological narratives offer productive resources that dictate,
naturalize, govern, and promote specific relations of power. Like Foucault, he recognizes
that relations of power arise not simply from “physical constraint” but also through the
medium of language.
86
Pointing to the phenomenon of public forgetting, he asserts that
“it is on the level were ideology operates as a discourse justifying power, domination,
that the resources of manipulation provided by narrative are mobilized.”
81
87
Even though
Stephen L. Browne, “Reading, Rhetoric, and the Texture of Public Memory,”
Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 237
82
83
84
85
86
87
Ibid.
Ibid.
Browne, “Texture of Public Memory,” 248
Browne, “Texture of Public Memory,” 248
Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 85
Ibid.
29
the presumption of ideology as false consciousness has been thoroughly discredited and
reworked within postmodernist critiques of Marx’s conceptualization of the idea, Ricoeur
prompts us to understand the manner in which such memory narratives represent
discourses of flattery or fear. Discourses of national identity, fealty, “stories of founding
88
events, of glory and humiliation, feed the discourse of flattery and or fear.” He stresses
that an “imposed memory is armed with a history that is itself ‘authorized,’” and warns
that a “trained memory” is an “instructed memory.”
89
While contemporary Christian
nationalist memory narratives are not “imposed” in the sense of the term that Ricouer
intimates, they are nonetheless trained and instructed memory meant to advocate and
facilitate conservative Protestant hegemonic prerogatives. Such trained and instructed
remembrance is all the more powerful for the manner in which it is actively and
enthusiastically absorbed and circulated by its millions of ardent sympathizers.
The process of remembrance is one of “retained perception” rather than the
recollection of facts.
90
Yet human beings simultaneously insist on the veracity of their
acts of remembrance as if remembrance were literal recall. Significantly, public memory
scholars suggest that “What people believe to be true about their past is usually more
91
important in determining their behavior and responses than truth itself.” Since belief
factors centrally into the manner in which remembrance and social identity resonate
amongst adherents, how much more thoroughly persuasive are such constructions when
aided by deeply held religious convictions? National identity and public memory texts
88
89
Ibid.
Ibid.
90
Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres,
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 114.
91
See Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 38-9, and Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots,
3. Also see Barry Schwartz, “Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective
Memory, Social Forces 61 (1982): 374-402.
30
amplify each other, yet, I contend, such mutually enforcing discourses rarely function
92
completely outside the realm of religious belief, identity, and everyday practices.
Belief
affirms religious conviction and bolsters the confidence of remembrance. Ricoeur
observes that memory discourses often entail elements of flattery or fear. Such overtures
strengthen our attachment to the fictions of memory that sustain and affirm our everyday
sense of self and reality.
Accordingly, the process of public remembrance represents contestations that
involve axiological, ontological and epistemological belief structures. That is, the
struggles to shape social remembrance and cultural consensus entail battles concerning
values, epistemological paradigms, and arguments over the nature of being. For instance,
rituals of public remembrance in the form of the Creation Museum serve to affirm
creation science by adopting the aesthetic trappings of the modern museum. The fight to
establish the veracity of this alternative epistemological paradigm relies upon the
presumptions of remembrance, scientific and historical realism, biblical literalism, and
the rhetorical strategy of disingenuous controversy.
93
Participants inhabit a space where
they glimpse into the existence of an “historical” Adam and Eve existing along side
94
dinosaurs.
These kinds of hyperreal evangelical attractions draw millions each year,
92
For Christian nationalists, national identity and religious identity are understood as
consubstantial. Their sense of what constitutes the nation’s ethos is derived directly by their
religious convictions and “biblical” worldview. See Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and
John Fea, Was American Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction, (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).
93
See Casey Ryan Kelly and Kristen E. Hoerl, “Genesis in Hyperreality: Legitimizing
Disingenuous Controversy at the Creation Museum,” Argumentation and Advocacy 48 (Winter
2012): 123-141.
94
Casey Ryan Kelly and Kristen E. Hoerl make an important contribution to the politics
of “knowledge denial” as a critical strategy in Christian right counter-resistance to the wider
culture. The strategy of knowledge denial is aimed at discrediting non-conservative Christian
expertise in the professional realms of history, law and the sciences. Kelly and Hoerl tackle
science denial, F. Allan Hudson explores Christian right legal realism, and this dissertation
investigates uses of the historical as Christian strategies of resistance in the struggle for nation.
Foucault points to the battle over the (de)legitimization of knowledge is central to understanding
how “truth discourses” exert real effects of power. In this sense, the so-called “culture wars” are,
31
and serve as educating centers for the next generation of those committed to maintaining
a “biblical worldview.”
95
In this sense, rituals of remembrance may instigate a trained
and rehearsed form of forgetting, enacting what Hoerl terms “selective amnesia.” Ritual
enactments of selective amnesia serve to occlude, erase, deny, or “disregard prevailing
social inequities and unjust power relations.”
96
This kind of communal rehearsal operates
to affirm or de-authorize sets of knowledge and ways of knowing, shaping our ongoing
sense of “reality” and “truth.”
This dissertation attempts to augment the conversation concerning the politics of
public memory by adding the element of religion into the conversation. Specifically, I
analyze how Christian nationalist memory texts draw upon the doctrines of inerrancy,
97
inspiration, literalism, and providence as “interpretive procedures” that produce the
plausible edifice of a Christian nation underwritten by God’s law. Scholars have long
recognized the interrelationship between narratives of public memory, discourses of
nationalism, and the construction of national identity, which function to accomplish
political ends in the ongoing struggle over nation. Notions of historical realism and
memory as literal recall lend a sense of authenticity to narratives of national identity,
in part, a battle over epistemological ascendency and regimes of “truth.” The Christian right
operates in an epistemological paradigm counter to postmodern and secular epistemological
sensibilities. This paradigm is characterized by legal realism, hermeneutical realism, Baconian
realism, and historical realism. Also see F. Allan Hanson, “The Jurisprudence of the Christian
Right: Teachings from Regent and Liberty University Law Schools,” Journal of Church and
State 51 (2009): 265-288 and Steven Michael Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal
Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
95
The Holy Land Experience Theme Park is another “hyperreal” theme park that attracts
millions of Americans a year. The park is billed as the “living, biblical museum.” The website
for the park promotes itself as educational, historical, theatrical, and inspirational. The Park
boasts that visitors will be ushered into ancient Jerusalem as it “existed in the Holy Land 2000
years ago.” http://www.holylandexperience.com/about/about.html
96
Kristen E. Hoerl, “Selective Amnesia and Racial Transcendence in News Coverage of
President Obama’s Inaugural,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98 (2012), 180
97
Browne, “Texture of Public Memory,” 237
32
political creed, and national destiny. They authorize such rhetorical inventions as
factually and metaphysically “true,” obfuscating the process of emplotment authored by
human beings that produce the appearance of identity and memory from the outset.
Anthony Smith notes how the creation of patriotic fealty through the mythos of national
identity exerts a religious-like attachment and conviction amongst adherents. What
remains to be more fully considered is the manner in which religious belief, ideation,
theological convictions, and identity function to lend authority to narratives of national
identity and public memory. The authorizing power within religious discourses, in
conjunction with historical realism, literal recall, relations of power, and discourses of
nation provide important terrain for further research. I propose to bring the element of
Protestant theology into the study of nation and the politics of public memory by
exploring the unique construction of Christian nationalist arguments as popularly
expressed through David Barton’s assiduous rhetorical efforts. In particular, I explore
how shared theological codes play a seminal part in the authorization of intertextual
readings Barton offers his fellow adherents as proof of a Christian nation. And thus, in
doing so, I hope to “situate a particular performance within a broader terrain of contest
and competition” exploring Christian nationalists memory texts (patriotic tokens) and the
98
productive work they aim to accomplish. Barton’s popularized instructions in “reading“
the nation, and instituting Christian sovereignty as the logical conclusion of such
“readings,” offers a critical investigation of discourses that perform political work under
the auspices of remembrance and historical evidence.
98
Browne, “Public Memory,” 245
33
Methodological Considerations: Theology as Constitutive Language
This study extends the theoretical insights and developments of Kathleen Boone’s
work on biblical literalism as literary strategy. Boone argues that the theology of
inerrancy and its subspecies biblical literalism precondition scriptural expectations and
comprehension prior to the reading process.
99
She notes that instructing readers “to
consult the Bible to check a pastor’s doctrine is to send them to the text with an
interpretive model already in hand, one furnished to them by fundamentalist
authorities.”
100
Boone’s work takes the basic assumptions of biblical literalism as belief
structure (theological truth) and demonstrates how these assumptions form the basis upon
which adherents derive meaning from scripture and come to understand the ostensible
nature of its textuality. Boone’s work recognizes the fundamentally rhetorical nature of
theological belief, and how theological inerrancy, in particular, performs constitutive
work and offers reading instructions prior to reading. She aptly observes that the
presupposition of plain reading within the literalist perspective functions to mask
interpretive procedures altogether since biblicists believe they are simply reading the selfevident expression of the text without modification, embellishment, or mediation.
101
Biblical literalism and the theology of inerrancy presume that scripture represents
the direct unerring and infallible Word of God. As such scripture is believed to be a
“total representation” of God’s will for humanity across time, self-evident and selfsufficient in meaning, democratically accessible to all, internally consistent, and
99
Kathleen Boone, The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant
Fundamentalism, (London: SCM Press, 1989), 61
100
101
Boone, The Bible Tells Them, 88
Boone, The Bible Tells Them, 95
34
universally applicable.
102
Biblical literalists regard scripture to be an historically accurate
record of human events. As a belief structure that arose as an apologetic in the nineteenth
century, biblical literalism assumes an air of scientific rigor predicated upon
commonsense hermeneutics.
103
Taken as rhetorical elements, precepts of theological
inerrancy and literalism perform constitutive work, structuring social reality under the
guise of plain reading and internal textual authority.
I build upon Boone’s theoretical work and apply it as a rhetorical criticism of
Christian nationalist constructions of a Christian nation. I treat the theological
components of inerrancy, literalism, inspiration, and providence as constitutive elements
that perform significant rhetorical work. Boone established the basis of identifying
biblical literalism as a rhetorical strategy that structures interpretive practices. Like
Boone, I draw from a substantial body of research on American Protestantism and
Fundamentalism to aid the process of theorizing about inerrancy and literalism as
constitutive discursive elements. The works of George Marsden, Mark Noll, Ernest
Sandeen, Nathan Hatch, Christian Smith, and John Fea (to name a few) have facilitated
this task immeasurably. Tracing the components of doctrinal declarations contributed
greatly to my thinking. These documents include but are not limited to Charles Hodge’s
Systematic Theology and B.B. Warfield’s modification to Princeton Theology, the
Danvers Statement, The Doctrinal Statement of the World Conference of Christian
Fundamentals (1919), and the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy (1978). The
writings of Christian Reconstructionist like Gary North, Gary DeMar, R.J. Rushdoony
and religious right luminaries such as Francis Schaeffer and Jerry Falwell enabled my
thinking process and contextual knowledge as well.
102
Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly
Evangelical Reading of Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012), 4-5
103
Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American
Millenarianism 1800-1930, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 106-118. I discuss the
development of theological inerrancy in detail in chapter two.
35
As an extension of Boone’s work and my contribution to rhetorical studies, I
apply this theorization of biblical literalism and inerrancy to undertake a rhetorical
criticism of David Barton’s constitutions of public remembrance and nation. Barton’s
memory work purports to proffer historical research and accurate (truthful) depictions of
scripture. I conduct a textual analysis of an array of his writings and public speeches to
illustrate the manner in which the plausibility and veracity of his claims fundamentally
rely upon the rhetorical constitutive elements of inerrancy, inspiration, literalism, and
providence. These memory texts aim to influence and shape contemporary political
understanding, behavior, and attitudes in favor of far right Republican political interests
in the contemporary moment. As such, I consider the centrality that these religious
doctrines play in the formation of contemporary American conservative evangelical
public memory, as well as explicate the political work these memory texts attempt to
enact within the culture at large.
This study attempts to strike a balance between contextualization and textual
analysis with the understanding that texts do not exist as discrete objects in an historical
vacuum, but neither does historical contextualization provide the means to “unlock” the
definitive meaning within a text. I undertake a textual analysis of Christian nationalist
“memory texts” paying close attention to rhetorical invention, strategies of
argumentation, and intertextual reading practices, particularly as they are informed and
shaped by shared theological codes (Conservative evangelical). I take a social
constructionist perspective. At the same time, I am mindful of the interplay between the
realm of the material/institutional and discursive invention. In this sense, I take a cue
from Foucault and think of the realms of material actualization and rhetorical invention
as circuits, both the articulation and effect that arise in and through each other. Though I
perform a close reading of my selected texts, this in no way assumes that there is a
singular way to understand and decode these texts. I undertake my analysis relying
centrally upon the vast theoretical literature on public memory and rhetorical theory,
36
though I also incorporate key sociological, literary, and cultural theoretical perspective to
aid my endeavor.
Though this project concerns itself with contemporary Christian nationalist
rhetoric, the discourse of remembrance (i.e. remembering a Christian nation) calls for a
reasonable historical contextualization of pertinent eras, documents, figures, events, and
ideas surrounding the case at hand. In the case of Christian nationalists, especially David
Barton’s rhetoric, I undertake the historical contextualization of “founding” documents
central to or omitted from his discourse. Thus, I concentrate on furnishing a historical
contextualization of the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of
Independence in their production, cultural circulations, and public interpretations. In
addition, I focus on the contextualization of historical periods that are central to
contemporary Christian nationalist rhetoric. This includes, but is not limited to, the
revolutionary, early republic and antebellum periods, and mid-nineteenth century
America with the rise of inerrancy apologetics in the face of a changing cultural,
educational, and industrial landscape. Since this study investigates the rhetorical
deployment of the theologies of inerrancy, inspiration, providence, and literalism within
Christian nationalist public memory rhetoric, I endeavor to provide a sufficient
accounting of the development of these theological ideas over time including
instrumental biblical hermeneutical traditions that remain central to the Christian
nationalist “biblical worldview.” For these reasons, I discuss the Protestant Reformation
when important to this discovery, consider the distinct development of American
Protestant intellectual and cultural traditions especially in relation to republican idealism
and national identity, and attempt to highlight the changes in hermeneutical
understandings that have produced the quality and character of modern conservative
Protestant beliefs of inerrancy, literalism, providence, and inspiration.
The guiding assumption here is not that such contextualizations offer “truthful,”
“objective” or definitive facts that foreclose on alternative historical interpretations.
37
Instead, I assume that such contextualizations serve as a basis upon which we can began
to think about production, circulation, and public reception of “founding” documents,
theological and political schools of thought, and the historical as each relates to the study
at hand. Such contextualizations are not meant to foreclose understanding, but rather to
offer important, yet contingent and tentative, framing to facilitate a critical analysis of
Christian nationalist rhetoric and its usage of the historical in its claim to nation.
What Lies Ahead
I begin this study with a chapter entitled Historical and Theological
Contextualization. I first discuss the religious atmosphere and sensibilities of the nascent
nation during the revolutionary era. Such sensibilities factored significantly in the
decision to refrain from including any religious references within the Constitution of the
United States, unlike the Articles of Confederation drafted eleven years earlier and the
Declaration of Independence before that first aborted charter. I turn next to an overview
of the doctrines of inerrancy and inspiration, literalism, particularly as they developed
104
within nineteenth century Christian apologetics.
Generally speaking, the Protestant
Reformation transformed the nature of textual understandings and lay practices since
Protestantism vested all authority in scripture rather than the authority of the church. I
provide an overview of hermeneutical practices that have come to shape modern
conservative evangelical understandings of scriptural and textual authority. Finally, I
discuss why such contextualizations are important to this study in particular and
rhetorical studies in general.
104
Note that chapter three of this dissertation explores the concept of Providence.
38
Forgetting God’s Plan: Providence, Christian Nationhood, and Historical
Revisionism explores Barton’s strategic deployment of theological providence as an a
priori framing which operates to condition and authorize sets of knowledge predicated
upon biblical fidelity. Providence functions as both a formal title for the Divine and as a
presupposition that God actively directs the events of human history. I explicate the
manner in which Barton mobilizes this theological construct as a standard bearer by
which sets of knowledge and voices of expertise are summarily authorized and or
discredited. I argue that Providence not only marks the boundary of acceptable
knowledge from sets of knowledge deemed illegitimate, but more significantly,
establishes the basis upon which public opinion, political behavior, and remembrance are
directed and shaped in support of far right policy initiatives. Stated another way, within
Barton’s rhetoric of revisionism, the figuration of God as Divine Providence functions as
the definitive standard by which “truthfulness” in discursive formations is measured,
accessed, affirmed, or dismissed by Christian nationalists.
I begin with a brief overview of the concept of theological providence,
particularly how it was used and generally understood in the era of the nation’s founding
and antebellum years. I turn to reflect upon the concept’s resurgence within conservative
evangelical thought and literature in the twentieth century, as well as its importance
within the Christian nationalist worldview today. Next I turn to various materials
generated by Barton from roughly 2000 to the present which include his seminal
publication entitled Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion, various
essays within The Founders’ Bible (2012), Barton’s voluminous public speaking
engagements as documented on video by Right Wing Watch (transcribed by me), his 780
minute, 10 Volume DVD series entitled The American Heritage Series, and articles and
radio broadcasts produced by WallBuilders. In the first analytical section, I demonstrate
how providence is employed to legitimate and discredit sets of knowledge and voices of
expertise. Barton’s narrative of historical revisionism and political conspiracy form two
39
critical elements within his discourse on providence that facilitate the operation of
(de)authorization of statements. In the final section I trace the many ways in which
providence –invoked as divine warrant and offered as historical remembrance—serves to
scripturalize and, therefore, authorize far right political ambitions as divinely mandated.
Strategic Biblical Literalism: Remembrance, Textual Authority, and Barton’s
Inspired Constitution explores the rhetorical strategies Barton employs to overcome the
lack of religious language within the Constitution. Barton draws upon the theologies of
inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism as framing devices in order to make the Constitution
read as a document that explicitly (“literally”) mandates a Christian nation. Specifically,
Barton characterizes Constitutional meaning (original intent) as linguistically fixed in
nature, treating this edifice of a stable text as an inspired manuscript from God. I argue
that the characterization of an inspired text aims to anchor the figuration of God as the
definitive rationale behind American law, a rhetorical gesture that shifts the authority
(and interpretation) of Constitutional law into the discursive circumference of the divine.
As a memory text for public consumption, Barton encourages his ideal audience to take
up the political cause of restoring the nation to its “original” form based upon an
ostensible inspired Constitution said to represent God’s will.
The chapter begins an investigation of the supporting edifice Barton constructs to
affirm his case for fixed textuality and meaning. The underlying assumptions of biblical
literalism furnish the ground by which textual stability is established and understood by
like-minded audiences. I briefly discuss the historical context of the Constitution’s
creation, and its multi-vocal character. I trace two arguments in particular that labor to
establish the fixed nature of Constitutional meaning. The first leans upon the
conservative legal hermeneutic known as originalism and the second argument makes a
case for an immutable and “enduring” Constitution. To facilitate this analysis, I examine
Barton’s treatment of the issue in his American Heritage Series, in The Bible, Voters, and
the 2008 Election, and in an essay entitled “What is Constitutional?” published in his
40
(2012) Founders’ Bible. Last, I explore Barton’s elaborate rendering of an inspired
Constitution in his American Heritage Series and Original Intent, highlighting the
political implications of this rhetorical invention and the manner in which he draws upon
shared theological codes to frame constitutional meaning.
Chapter 5, The Declaration of Independence As “The Laws of Nature and
Nature’s God,” analyzes Barton’s rhetorical restaging of the Declaration of
Independence. Barton treats the preamble of the Declaration as a repository for biblical
principles. From this rhetorical maneuver, he argues that the Constitution is a
subordinate text of the Declaration, and that it must be read as the bylaws to the
Declaration’s “articles of incorporation.” He offers this construct in the spirit of factual
remembrance, inviting his audience to construe the preamble as biblical and binding on
the Constitution. Once again the plausibility of this contention draws its authority from
the presuppositions of biblical literalism and inspiration. I demonstrate how this twotiered strategy enables Barton to infuse the non-religiously toned Constitution with
“biblical principles” by way of reading it through the Declaration’s restaged preamble. I
argue that this convention aims to establish “God’s law” as the legal standard by which
the Constitution’s provisions are authorized or annulled. This substitution of authority-from the Constitution to God--provides a rational for the justifiable suspension of
Constitutional law in circumstances deemed “unbiblical” and against God’s will.
To demonstrate these maneuvers, I turn to Barton’s extended treatment of
“Identifying the Spirit of the Constitution” in Original Intent: The Courts, the
Constitution, and Religion which offers a detailed reconfiguration of the preamble’s
philosophical material into that representing “transcendent Biblical natural law
principles.” I trace his bylaws argument to illustrate the manner in which he subordinates
the Constitution to the Declaration while simultaneously affirming both the Declaration
and Constitution as inspired documents. Barton substantiates his claim by offering a
series of proofs (graphs and quotes by founding figures) meant to verify the factual basis
41
of the inspired Declaration as the nation’s actual charter, of which the Constitution is
secondary. A detailed analysis of these proofs and the word play Barton uses to enforce
his assertions create the picture of a nation dependent upon God’s law--embodied in the
Declaration, which represents the true standard by which American law is authorized.
In the final chapter entitled One Biblical Nation Under Our Far Right Heavenly
Father: The Founders’ Bible As Memory and Mandate I examine the rhetorical means by
which Barton codes and affirms far right political interests as both scriptural and
constitutional in nature. The artifact, 2200 pages in length, contains the New Standard
American Bible in its entirety paired with extra-biblical commentaries throughout meant
to illustrates the biblical nature of founding documents and American history.
105
I argue
that the commentaries, rather than explicating scripture or describing American history,
shape, interpret, instruct, and condition the material they are supposed to merely augment
and describe. The commentaries offer reading instructions geared toward shaping
political understanding and behavior. These commentaries and other extra-biblical matter
write far right political ideological commitments into scripture, American history, and
founding documents. Moreover, the meaning-making process fundamentally relies upon
the structural edifice of biblical literalism to support its realist style and “factual”
contentions. As such, these elaborate constructions argue that contemporary far right
political ideals are both biblically and constitutionally based. I extend my analysis to
consider the political implications and potential consequences of this rhetorical
construction, demonstrating that Barton’s rhetoric both claims the nation’s legal
instruments for Christian nationalism and provides a justificatory scheme by which they
may be suspended according to God’s law.
105
Other significant framing material paired throughout with scripture includes lavish
patriotic illustrations, biographical sidebars, introductions to all 66 books of the Bible penned by
Barton, and quasi-historical articles.
42
The enormous collection covers extensive political-ideological territory dealing
with a comprehensive array of political issues important to and expressive of Republican
Party policy concerns. This includes but is not limited to commentaries that biblicalize
and constitutionalize anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-union, and pro-gun stances. Chapter 6
begins with a discussion of the rhetorical nature of biblical literalism. I briefly examine
how scripture denotes a practice of treating texts as sacred. It is a rhetorical and cultural
practice rather than a term that identifies an inherent metaphysical truth about the nature
of specific manuscripts. As a nineteenth century Christian apologetic, theological
inerrancy and its subspecies were offered as discursive solutions to shore up threats to
biblical authority. I examine the various discursive elements of these theological
constructs and consider the manner in which they constitute social reality. From here I
turn to an analysis of pro-neoliberal commentaries. The materials on neoliberalism
enable an exploration into how Barton’s reading practices and intertextual productions
enable him to frame market fundamentalism as consummate with conservative
evangelicalism. As memory texts, “Free Market Enterprise,” “How Are We to Treat the
Poor?” “Socialism Versus the Free Market System,” and “Tax Wars” offer detailed
instructions for adopting the proper political attitude and stance toward social welfare
policies, deregulation, privatization, fiscal policy, and socialism.
In the final section I analyze Barton’s scripturalization of American government
and founding documents, as dual means by which he claim the nation for the Christian
nationalist cause while equally establishing the justification for the suspension of
Constitutional law. I examine “America’s Political Form of Government,” the
introduction to Ezekiel, and its paired commentaries entitled “When Law Violates
Scripture” and “Inseparable: The Declaration and the Constitution” to trace Barton’s
argumentative developments. Barton makes a critical distinction between God’s law and
“man’s law” which enables him to construct a tripartite hierarchy. Barton situates God’s
law as the standard by which American law is authorized. His tripartite configuration
43
situates Constitutional law as subordinate to the Declaration of Independence, and the
Declaration as secondary to God’s law. As documents meant to shape and inform public
memory, Barton’s rhetorical constitutions of nation and scripture offer adherents talking
points for claiming American law as biblical, and more importantly, for overriding its
provisions in the name of God’s law.
44
CHAPTER 2
THE ISSUES IN CONTEXT: A GODLESS CONSTITUTION AND
AMERICAN BIBLICAL LITERALISM
During the height of the Civil War, a group of distinguished judges, professors,
college presidents, and ministers formally petitioned Abraham Lincoln to stand behind
amending the Constitution to pay homage to God.
106
Many amongst these men looked
upon the calamity of the Civil War as positive proof that the omission of God from the
national charter had provoked divine retribution. Though they were not successful in
gaining Lincoln’s explicit support in 1864, these men remained steadfast to the cause of
amending the Constitution, and, under the banner of the National Reform Association
(NRA), continued to petition for the “Religious Amendment” well after the Civil War’s
107
conclusion.
Even before the war, men of distinction worried aloud about the complete
omission of religion in general, and Protestant Christianity in particular, from the
Constitution. In 1845 Rev. D. X. Junkin railed against this “defect” in the Constitution,
stating, “The oath of the President of the United States could as well be taken by a pagan
or a Mohammedan as by the Chief Magistrate of a Christian people: it excludes the name
of the Supreme Being. Indeed, it is negatively atheistical, for no God is appealed to at
all.”
108
Arguing that there existed an unwritten Christian Constitution undergirding the
founding document, Rev. D. McAllister took to the floor at the National Convention to
Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution (New York, 1873) and emphatically
106
All petitioners were northerners.
107
The National Association to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of
the United States, Proceedings of the National Convention to Secure the Religious Amendment of
the Constitution of the United States, (New York: John Polhemus, Printer, 1873), iv,
http://archive.org/details/proceedingsofn00nati
108
Proceedings of the National Convention, iv
45
declared “Christianity has evolved and maintained the fact, in the unwritten Constitution
of the nation, of prayer in the name of Christ in the nation’s halls: but the written
Constitution has no clause to correspond to this fact. Christianity has placed the Bible, as
a fact, in the nation’s courts of justice, and in the common schools; but the written
109
Constitution does not authenticate this essential fact of our national life.”
For
delegates such as McAllister, one solution existed: amend the Constitution to include an
explicit declaration of Protestant Christianity’s foundational relationship to national
identity and law.
110
The fears these men shared, and the concerns they expressed at formal gatherings,
revolved around the ever-widening public call to remove religious influence from
government operations, including government sponsored institutions such as public
education. The enemies to Christianity, as they were called, sought to end Sabbath laws
and to remove the Bible from public school curricula. Dr. A. A. Miner, President of Tufts
College, enumerated best the many results caused by the omission of God in the
Constitution. Miner recounted the “infidel’s” efforts to halt all religious services
conducted by government, their demands to cease paying chaplains from public coffers,
to end the tax exempt status of churches, and, most importantly, to level Christianity to a
status no more distinct in the nation than any other religion.
111
Miner decried,
In the first place, then, we may notice among the results of this silence, an entire
perversion of its meaning. It was originally intended quietly to dispose of the
difficulty presented in the great diversity of religious opinions in the country; to
bridge them over, and give every sect of Christians an equal position before the
law. It is now being interpreted as a rejection of them all. Intended
as a toleration
112
of error, it has come to be transformed into a rejection of the truth.
109
110
111
112
Proceedings of the National Convention, 8
Ibid.
Proceedings of the National Convention, 29
Proceedings of the National Convention, 28
46
To this Dr. Miner proclaimed, “Recognize Christianity as our fundamental law and we
113
change this vantage ground.”
He continued “It would legitimate the influence of
Christian morality in modifying criminal law; it would legitimate the spirit of Christianity
in all law.”
114
McAllister concurred, conceding, “Their complaint is that in the actual
administration of our Government all religions are not put upon a level, and their demand
is now reiterated—and they are organizing to carry it into effect—that our whole political
system shall be administered on a purely secular basis, in accordance with a written
Constitution which, they boast, is untainted with any acknowledgment of Christianity.”
115
He warned, “The nation must now declare itself. For, if it remain silent now, its written
law will be made the potent weapon for enforcing the demands against our Christian civil
institutions.”
116
Failure to adopt this amendment, it was agreed, would lead to
“immorality and anarchy.”
117
Tirelessly proclaiming that such an amendment could oppress no one, that such an
endeavor did not represent an interest in establishing a theocracy, the portrait drawn by
the delegates of the infidel tells a different story. Dr. Rev. Jonathan Edwards, Professor
of Didactic and Polemic Theology and first President of Washington and Jefferson
College, warned against atheists, deists, Jews, and Seventh-Day Adventists, suggesting
they are all the same class, “who use the same tactics against us.”
113
114
115
116
117
118
118
Edwards stated, all
Proceedings of the National Convention, 32
Ibid.
Proceedings of the National Convention, 9
Ibid.
Proceedings of the National Convention, 41
Proceedings of the National Convention, 62. For details of his various professional
posts see Jonathan Edwards, D.D. (1817-1891), U. Grant Miller Digital Archives.
http://washjeff.cdmhost.com/cdm/ref/collection/p4019coll8/id/31 for details of his various posts
professional posts.
47
of these groups, like the atheist, “shall be tolerated” like a “poor lunatic.”
119
Edwards
went on to say, “ He may live and go free, hold his lands and enjoy his home, he may
even vote, but for any higher, more advanced citizenship, he is, as I hold, utterly
disqualified.”
120
Rev. H. H. George, president of Geneva Collegiate Institute worried
about Catholics, arguing, “It is not a Bible the Catholic opposes so much in the schools as
it is the Bible. It is not religion he opposes, but it is Protestantism; and so deep is his
hatred to that, he will join with infidel and atheist in their opposition to all religion, in
order to put it down.”
121
Still others gravely worried about Muslims and Mormons
infiltrating government. The list of adversaries illustrates a deep panic among these men,
concerned as they were with an ever-increasing plural cultural milieu that stretched the
limits of Protestant religious toleration and their commitment to political liberalism. As
the nineteenth century drew to a close, those in support of secularizing public education,
taxing churches, and nullifying Sabbath laws stood as vocal opponents to mainstream
Protestant hegemony. Thus, conversely, mainstream Protestant leaders found themselves
defending a kingdom they imagined was theirs to control in perpetuity. That is to say,
they found themselves in a position that necessitated active political intervention to
prevent policy changes aimed at removing Protestant Bible study from public school
curricula, the termination of tax exempt status for religious organizations, and opening
civic offices up to non-Protestants, to name a few. Their concerns were not unfounded,
and have, significantly, come to pass over the last century. Indeed, today Christian
nationalists fight to place the Protestant Bible back at the center of secondary education
and continue to battle over the issue of school prayer. Though the nation still maintains
119
120
121
Ibid.
Proceedings of the National Convention, 63
Proceedings of the National Convention, 54. George is most likely referring to the
King James Bible.
48
its stance on non-taxation of religious organizations, Sabbath laws and blasphemy laws
have died on the vine, and men and women with various ethnic backgrounds, sexual
orientations, and religious affiliations occupy a variety of civic offices.
122
The above vignette vividly illustrates an extended moment in time when various
Christian individuals came together to address a pressing need to infuse the Constitution
with religious language that explicitly marked the nation as Protestant. Though the NRA
failed to accomplish its goal, its efforts remind us that the Constitution of the United
States is indeed a rare political manifest in its complete indifference to religious
proclamations and in its utter lack of offering a supplicating nod to a divine being. The
NRA labored to rectify this absence of religious language in hopes of establishing an
explicitly Protestant nation. Today, Christian nationalists such as David Barton aim to
establish the validity of a Christian mandate within the Constitution, but they do so by
denying that the Constitution is devoid of religious language. It is not that nationalist do
not recognize the absence of religious language within the document, but rather that they
argue that the national charter is not a discrete unit unto itself and must be read in
conjunction with the Bible and the Declaration of Independence to be properly
understood. As such, the absence of religious language in the Constitution is solved by
the presence of religious language in these other documents. In addition, nationalists
insist that the Constitution was founded upon biblical writ and therefore mandates a
123
Christian nation.
122
Transgendered people have yet to be openly represented in this increasing diversity of
public servants. Office holders are still disproportionately white, male, and heterosexual.
Nonetheless, taking the current complexion of Congress post 2012 elections, the infiltration of
women, people of color, and non-Protestants is historically significant, and deemed undesirable
by Christian nationalists and their conservative Republican cohorts, generally speaking.
123
See F. Allan Hanson, “The Jurisprudence of the Christian Right: Teachings from
Regent and Liberty University Law Schools,” Journal of Church and State 51 (2009): 265-288
and Steven Michael Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control
of the Law, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)
49
This study aims to provide a detailed analysis of the rhetorical features and
strategies Christian nationalist David Barton promotes in the effort to shape public
opinion (and memory), and, as such, to motivate Christian activists to continue the fight
to reclaim the American Christian nation. Barton enacts strategies that exploit the notion
of the historical drawing upon communally shared theological commitments--the
doctrines of inerrancy, inspiration, literalism, and providence--to bolster his claim of a
Christian nation. For this reason, I have thought it prudent to contextualize the historical
documents and events central to Barton’s arguments. Moreover, I provide an overview
of the general theological developments and historical trajectory of American Protestant
doctrines of inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism so that we might better understand the
manner in which they potentially condition and amplify claims in support of a Christian
America. Within this contextualization, I operate under the assumption that it provides a
useful and necessary starting point in which we can begin to think about Barton’s use of
historical realism and theology as constitutive rhetoric. This overview should not be
taken as an attempt to provide a definitive rendition of history or as an attempt to
foreclose understanding.
I begin this chapter by briefly discussing the religious temperament and
complexion of the nascent nation. I trace the pointed decision of Constitutional framers
to refrain from including any religious language within the new national charter. This
contextualization offers an important foundation for this study since it is this issue--the
lack of religious language within the Constitution--that Christian nationalists grapple with
in their argumentative attempts to prove that the nation’s founders instituted a Christian
nation. In the next section I provide an operational definition of inerrancy and inspiration
as theological doctrines. I trace the many ways changes within Christianity itself, notably
the Protestant Reformation, created new understandings of biblical textuality.
Specifically, the notion of scriptura sola removed the church as intermediary between
scripture and supplicant. Protestant belief in scriptural authority faced a critical challenge
50
in the eighteenth century with the advent of biblical and literary criticism in higher
education. These new techniques and scholarly pursuits unintentionally exposed the
material and textual productions of scripture in a manner that documented its fallibility
and imperfections. I explicate the manner in which the doctrine of inerrancy (coupled
with literalism and inspiration) arose as a means to stabilize the “reliability” of God’s
revelation as revealed within scripture. Finally, I review commonplace conservative
evangelical understandings of these doctrines to consider the ways contextualization is
important to the rhetorical study of strategic biblical literalism within discourses of
nation, public memory, and constitutional law.
Historical Overview: The Constitution and Christianity
The idea of a Christian America is not an unjustified claim if placed within a
historically broad context. That is to say, we may trace the records of antebellum
America and recognize the verifiable existence of Protestant cultural and political
hegemony. Historians such as Mark Noll and George Marsden provide critical
accounting of the ways in which American politics and Protestant culture grew in
conjunction with each other throughout the antebellum period. Imbricated and
intertwined as such, the cultural ethos of the nascent Republic became increasing
evangelical in character and in intellectual habits generally speaking, particularly in the
wake of the Second Great Awakening.
124
From itinerant preaching and revivalist fervor
to higher institutions of learning, America was awash in Protestant sensibilities. Early
124
For a general discussion of the Second Great Awakening and Protestant culture in the
antebellum see Peter W. Williams, America’s Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-First
Century, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in
the United States and Canada, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1992), and Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1980).
51
American culture represented an unusual case for the adoption of a republican style of
125
government, as de Tocqueville noted in his now famous Democracy in America.
In
this anomalous case, Christianity and republicanism developed in concert with one
another rather than in opposition, as did its European counterparts.
126
As many
evangelical scholars note, America, in its early years, illustrates a thoroughly Christian
nation in worldview and everyday practices.
127
This is not to say that Protestants agreed
with each other across denominations, for inter-denominational fighting was commonplace amongst groups prior to the revolution and well after the adoption of the
Constitution.
128
By the time the nation was merely a decade old, political and religious
factions were at each other’s throats. One of the most notable acrimonious frays raged
between Orthodox establishment Federalists such as Timothy Dwight who battled against
Baptist dissenters, Jeffersonian Republicans, and itinerant preachers -- the latter of whom,
125
See Mark A. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995) for an excellent overview of the adoption of republican
ideals within Protestant thought and everyday life. Conservative evangelical leaders often
misquote de Tocqueville as textual support for the idea of American “exceptionalism.”
126
Noll suggests that the adoption of Enlightenment political ideals by antebellum
Protestants developed in an enthusiastic but uncritical manner. Noll argues that this uncritical
adoption of Protestantism and republicanism began to unravel in the nineteenth century. Noll,
Scandal, 59-108
127
See David Sehat, The Myth of American Religious Freedom, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and
Canada, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992) and George M.
Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century
Evangelicalism, 1870-1925, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
128
For a discussion of disputes over establishment and Protestant dissent see Noll, “The
Revolution in the Churches,” in History, 143-162. Philip Hamburger aptly traces the struggle
between New England Federalists, who favored state establishment, and Jeffersonian
Republicans. See Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State, (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2002), 156. The Constitution prohibited the federal establishment of religion,
whereby states were free to establish and protect religion as each deemed fit. John Witte, Religion
and the American Constitutional Experiment, (Westview Press, 2005), 57
52
129
Dwight surmised, undermined the authority of learned religious leaders.
As the
budding nation progressed into the first decades of the nineteenth century, new
theological ideas and practices abounded, destabilizing tradition and authority at every
turn. Coupled with the “deregulation of religion,” churches found themselves in heated
competition with each other to secure adherents.
130
Although various denominations
struggled over issues of church and state, as well as theology, Protestantism comprised
the face of the new nation.
Despite the religiosity that characterized the Western world at the time of the
Constitution’s drafting, the framers decided to exclude religious language from the
Constitution. This decision marked an unprecedented move in the history of national
charters, especially impressive in light of the acrimonious struggles between
establishment and non-establishment Protestant denominations that began rising in pitch
by John Adams’s presidency.
131
Even more intrepid and unorthodox, for the first time in
the drafting of a national constitution, religious oaths of office were banned altogether.
Curiously, they crafted this “secularly” toned charter for a collection of peoples who
were, in general, particularly pious and enthusiastic about the Christian faith. The
religious diversity already firmly established by the time of the ratification of the Articles
of Confederation, and the conflicts over religious establishment which pitted Protestant
against Protestant, weighed upon the minds of the framers as they set to draft the federal
charter. Hence, Catholic, Quaker, Mennonite, Amish, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist,
129
Larry E. Tise, “Launching the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1795-1816,” in A
History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701 – 1840, (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1987), 204-237.
130
131
Noll, Scandal, 66.
The establishment of religion was only prohibited at the federal level at the time. See
in particular Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2002), 1-20 and David Sehat, The Myth of American Religious Freedom, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), Part I.
53
Baptist, Episcopalian, Congregationalist, in order to form a more perfect union, were
joined together in an unprecedented experiment that would test convictions and
conceptualizations of religious freedom initially conceived as a liberty enjoyed by
Protestants only. The framers made a disciplined choice, ever mindful of the bloody
religious wars in the not so distant past. The tyranny of the papacy also loomed in their
minds. They chose to make no reference to Christianity or pay homage to a divine being
within the Constitutional text. As historian Mark Noll writes, “If they were going to have
a Constitution for all of the people, they somehow were going to have to get the
government out of the religion business.”
132
Scholars like Noll, Sehat, Davis, and
Marsden argue that framers, particularly individuals like James Madison, purposely chose
to avoid all references to Christianity and a divine being in the content of the
Constitution. As Noll states,
The idea that the national government should simply not address the question of
religion seemed more and more necessary if there was to be a national
government at all. At both the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the first
Congress in 1789, which was responsible for the First Amendment, such leaders
as James Madison realized how explosive and how complicated the question of
religion was throughout the nation…any effort to establish one particular faith
would have drawn violent protests from adherents of other faiths. Any effort to
deny the importance of religion would have deeply offended the substantial
numbers133who still believed that the security of a nation depended on the health of
its faith.
Whereby the Declaration of Independence included four Unitarian (non-denominational)
references to the divine and the Articles of Confederation’s preamble paid homage to the
“Great Governor of the World,” the Constitution mentions religion only in the First
Amendment. The Federalist Papers illustrate this same stance, using the language of law
132
Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), 145
133
Ibid.
54
and political philosophy to appeal to would-be supporters for its adoption, and not the
134
language of theology or divine authority.
The secular tone of the Constitution caused significant distress for American
Christians who wished for an explicit declaration of Christianity as the national face.
Some Anti-Federalists disapproved of the document’s tone. Within the next century, the
NRA’s bid to amend the Constitution attempted to remedy this “defect” in the
Constitution, though it failed to accomplish this goal. The omission of religious
declarations in the national charter does not proffer evidence of atheism on the part of
Constitutional framers, but rather, it illustrates a concerted effort to construct a
government unencumbered by religious establishment at the federal level. The men of
the NRA acknowledged as much, pointing first to the fact that only the U.S. Constitution,
of all of the like kind instruments known to posterity, consciously omitted all references
to God. NRA adherents were quick to point to the Articles of Confederation, the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, and
135
State Constitutions as evidence of this assertion.
They were correct. As imperfectly as
they imagine the framers were in choosing not to pay homage to a divine being, NRA
members nonetheless conceded that such a “defect” was created on purpose.
136
Today, modern Christian nationalist grapple with this absence of religious
language within the Constitution in inventive ways. Where their nineteenth century
counterparts readily acknowledged the absence of god terms in the Constitution with
great lament, modern nationalists deny this absence of religious language altogether.
134
See Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, (New
York: A Mentor Book, 1961). The three references searchable by index are “an ejaculation to
Heaven” (137), “Almighty hand” (230), and “transcendental law of nature and nature’s God”
(279). Also see Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case
Against Religious Correctness, (New York: W.W Norton and Company, 1996), 31
135
136
Proceedings of the National Convention, 14
Proceedings of the National Convention, 12, 16, 25
55
That is to say, key leaders such as David Barton have crafted arguments that enable and
encourage adherents to read a Christian mandate as if it were in the Constitution. This is
accomplished by way of intertextual techniques that draw upon the authority of the Bible,
religious language found within the Declaration of Independence, and various personal
and professional correspondence of select founding fathers. Ultimately, Barton and
groups such as the Values Voters Caucus, a joint caucus of Republican politicians and
religious right leaders, continue to pursue policy initiatives meant to Christianize public
policy which are fundamentally predicated upon the argument that the Constitution
mandates the establishment of a Christian nation. At the same time, such endeavors call
for various revisions of law to explicitly establish various claims and provisions they
wish to insert into the Constitution. Hence, the push is not for an amendment to the
Constitution like that advocated by the NRA of the nineteenth century, but rather to
advance various public policies that might establish the same ends.
137
Contextualization of the Constitution as a document devoid of religious language
illustrates the significant problem various Christian nationalist movements have sought to
solve over the nation’s history. The NRA attempted to amend the Constitution such that
it would explicitly favor Christianity as the national character and identity of the Union.
Modern Christian nationalists illustrate a similar concern with the secular tone of the
Constitution, and as a result, have enacted critical rhetorical strategies that present the
Constitution as a Protestant document. While modern Christian nationalists invent new
137
For instance, the “Values Voters’ Contract with Congress” endorses various House
and Senate Bills that are meant to Christianize public policy. The contract has a lengthy list of
suggested bills which include but are not limited to The Pledge Protection Act (H.R. 2389, S
1046), The Constitutional Restoration Act (H.R. 1070, S. 520), The Unborn Child Pain
Awareness Act ((S. 51, H.R. 356), The Marriage Protection Act (H.R 1100), The Workplace
Religious Freedom Act (H.R. 1445, S. 677), and the Public Expression of Religion Act (H.R.
2679). See Values Voters, Values Voters’ Contract with Congress, 2006.
http://www1.valuesvoter.org/preamble.cfm?host_id=JCC, and “‘Values Voters’ call for
Congressional Action,” The Washington Times, March 27, 2006.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/mar/27/20060327-101943-9837r/?page=all
56
arguments supporting the Christian nation thesis, it is evident that the secular tone of the
Constitution is treated as a problematic condition to be solved. These solutions are first
and foremost rhetorical in nature.
A Brief Tour: Inerrancy, Inspiration, Literalism, and
Hermeneutic Traditions
In this next section, I operationally define and contextualize the theological
138
constellation of inerrancy, inspiration, and (Millenarian) biblical literalism.
This
constellation, which Ernest Sandeen argued constitutes an apologetic rather than new
theological insight into biblical exegesis, arose as a defense of biblical authority in “the
139
midst of a nineteenth century controversy.”
140
existed before 1850.”
As Sandeen documents, “no such theology
I briefly outline seminal shifts in the history of biblical
hermeneutics, which have lead to the contemporary state of American biblical literalism.
I also touch upon significant changes in perceptions of textuality that occurred as a direct
result of the Protestant Reformation, whereby Christianity and religious authority
underwent radical transformation. Last, I discuss Princeton Seminary’s lasting
contribution to modern pietistic literalism, illustrating how the systematic theology of
inerrancy functioned as a rhetorical strategy to defend scriptural authority in the face of
138
I borrow the term “Millenarian literalism” from Ernest R. Sandeen who uses the term
to denote biblical literalists. See especially his chapter on biblical literalism in his seminal work
The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800-1930, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970), 103-131 and Ernest R. Sandeen, “Fundamentalism and
American Identity,” Annuls of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 387 (1970):
56-65
139
Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism
1800-1930, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 106
140
Ibid.
57
mounting challenges. The development of inerrancy into contemporary biblical
literalism continues to operate as a critical strategy by which conservative evangelicals
defend biblical authority, and by extension, Christian nationalists validate far right
political interests as biblical, constitutional, and literally factual.
In order to flesh out Barton’s reading practices, including the manner in which he
exploits theological codes to produce the “factual” evidence he needs for his case (i.e. an
inspired Constitution), we must first contextualize the doctrines of inerrancy and
inspiration, especially as they relate to various biblical hermeneutical traditions and
practices over time, most especially literal interpretive traditions. Inerrancy, the
theological premise that scripture is the Word of God, infallible and without error, arose
141
as a consequence of the Protestant Reformation, generally speaking.
The claim of
biblical inerrancy postulates that scripture is “supernaturally protected from error” and
therefore must be regarded as “entirely trustworthy and uniquely authoritative.”
142
The
doctrine of inspiration, a necessary condition of inerrancy, affirms that “human authors
and editors of canonical scripture were led or influenced by the Deity, with the result that
their writings may be considered the Word of God.”
143
Whereby theological
commitments to the doctrine of inspiration may be historically traced to apostolic writers,
the theology of inerrancy arose in response to the development of biblical criticism in the
141
William H. Barnes notes that inerrancy, as a concept concerned with the truthfulness
of scripture, existed in Christian and Jewish tradition before the modern developments of the
doctrine that represent conservative evangelical and fundamentalist belief. The Oxford
Companion to the Bible, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 303. Barnes observes that
the term itself dates back to the nineteenth century. Modern developments, as Marsden contends,
produced what came to be a fully systematized doctrine of inerrancy. The systematic theology
coming out of Princeton Seminary, especially in the writing of Charles Hodge, facilitated this
process, as did the rise of dispensationalism, particularly within the Scofield Bible.
142
The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, ed.,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 302-303
143
Ibid.
58
eighteenth century, which radically placed the reliability of scriptural texts in question.
144
Theologies of inspiration existed in antiquity, and are notably traceable in the work of
post-apostolic writers such as Origen. The Middle Ages were no exception in this sense,
and we can see doctrines of inspiration in the writings of early modern luminaries like
Calvin. Inspiration serves as a foundational doctrine in modern Protestant belief,
particularly in the “habits of mind” within conservative and fundamentalist thinking, as
Mark Noll suggests.
145
Today, Steve Lemke writes, “simple biblicalism, more formally
referred to as pietistic inerrancy” characterizes the approach most common to evangelical
churches. Such an approach “simply assumes that all statements in the Bible are true,”
146
overlooking any apparent contradictions by trusting in faith alone.
The Protestant Reformation transformed perceptions concerning biblical
textuality, affirming the precept that all authority resides within scripture alone. Whereby
the Catholic tradition vested authority in the Universal Church granting it sole
jurisdiction over scriptural interpretation, Protestantism removed this intermediation
between God and the faithful. George Marsden writes, “If, as the Protestants argued
against the Catholics, neither the church nor tradition was essential to understanding
biblical messages, then it was necessary to claim that even simple Christians could
147
understand the essential message of the Bible on their own.”
The Protestant
Reformation denounced the authority of the Church in favor of the idea of scriptura
144
See in particular Anthony C. Thiselton, “Reform, the Enlightenment, and the Rise of
Biblical Criticism,” in Hermeneutics: An Introduction, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2009), 124-147
145
Thiselton, Hermeneutics, 104, 132
146
Steve W. Lemke, “The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture,” in Biblical
Hermeneutics: A Comprehensive Introduction to Interpreting Scripture, eds., Bruce Corley, Steve
W. Lemke, and Grant I. Lovejoy, (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 2002), 185
147
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of
Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 110
59
sola.
148
The location and nature of divine authority shifted from a church-mediated
model to a model that vested all authority within the text itself. Such a transformation
ushered a new textual relationship to scripture over time. In essence, the shift placed
theologians such as Martin Luther in the position of affirming that all people, regardless
of training, could read scripture for themselves and apprehend God’s truth within its
pages.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries posed severe challenges to the
authoritative “nature” of scripture. German biblical criticism, which initially began to
flower in the eighteenth century, prompted some of the most significant apologetics in
favor of the doctrine of inerrancy a century later, notably from Princeton’s finest
theologians, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and Benjamin Warfield. The threat, as Hans
149
Frei states, reflected a problem with and concern for scriptural reliability.
Thus, this
“crisis of authority” arose, in large part, relative to the advent of academic biblical
criticism (higher criticism, as it was dubbed), the rise of modern theology, the
proliferation of liberal theological seminaries across the country, and the rise of
Darwinism and the German model of education in the new universities.
150
Earnest R.
Sandeen argues that “the growing influence of biblical criticism after the Civil War ended
this period of edenic innocence and compelled the churches to theologize about the
151
nature of biblical authority.”
148
As Marsden suggests:
Williams, America’s Religions, 77-85
149
Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century Hermeneutics, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 17
150
Noll, Scandal, 112. Also see Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism, 9-61, and
Betty DeBerg, Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism.
(Macon: Mercer University Press, 2000), 7, John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian
Nation: A Historical Introduction, (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 22.
151
Earnest R. Sandeen, “The Princeton Theology: One Source of Biblical Literalism in
American Protestantism,” Church History 31 (1962): 307
60
If the Bible were not true, then on what did Protestantism, the religion of
scriptura sola, rest? And, what if there were scientific and historical errors in
Scripture? Would not such flaws call into question other biblical claims? With
both Darwinians and highly sophisticated higher critics suggesting that there were
serious errors in Scripture, many of the152faithful of the turn of the century
generation had to be deeply disturbed.
Marsden notes that new threats to the authority of the Bible moved some Protestants to
affirm biblical inerrancy as a central doctrine, invoking it as a test of faith. Accordingly,
such actions illustrate “the degree to which the new scientific and historical threats to the
Bible were forcing everyone to shore up whatever he or she considered the most critical
153
line of defense.”
The defense of biblical authority prompted theologians to devise
strategies that would affirm and protect the implications of the religion based upon
scriptura sola.
Arguably one of the most influential defenses in support of biblical authority
came from Princeton Theological Seminary’s Charles Hodge, Archibald Hodge, and
154
Benjamin Warfield.
As a development predicated upon the Westminster Confession,
the doctrine of inspiration, according to Sandeen, established the errorless nature of
scripture and its absolute authority. The idea specified that the Bible constitutes God’s
Word as given by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit stands as the force that enables rightminded individuals to apprehend God’s revelations without the aid of a trained religious
authority. In his now seminal Systematic Theology Hodge proclaimed, “The infallibility
and divine authority of the Scripture are due to the fact that they are the word of God; and
152
George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 37
153
154
Ibid, 38
Sandeen, “The Princeton Theology,” 307
61
they are the word of God because they were given by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
155
Hodge writes,
The Bible is a plain book. It is intelligible by the people. And they have the right,
and are bound to read and interpret it for themselves; so that their faith may rest
on the testimony of the Scriptures, and not on that of the Church. Such is the
doctrine of Protestants on this subject. It is not denied that the Scriptures contain
many things hard to be understood; that they require diligent study; that all men
need the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to right knowledge and true faith.
But it is maintained that in all things necessary
to salvation they are sufficiently
156
plain to be understood even by the unlearned.
Hodge aimed to affirm that all human beings could understand biblical revelation for
themselves. Yet, as he must insist on this, he is mindful of the trouble such a stance may
bring. He offers the supernatural hermeneutical guidance of the Holy Spirit as the
essential element necessary for human beings to arrive at right judgment in their reading
of scripture. Thus, as Hans Frei explains, “the reader, not the text, is to be illumined by
the internal or inspiring testimony of the Spirit so that he may discern the written biblical
157
word to be God’s own Word”
The text is said to clearly express God’s truth due to the
“Spirit’s internal testimony and the resultant religious attitude by which alone the reader
learns the right use of the text, God himself speaking in it.”
158
The theological concept of “inspiration,” as a necessary condition of inerrancy
within Hodge’s Protestant Rule of Faith, attempted to solve critical problems concerning
the issue of reliability. The reconfiguration of the concept of inspiration within the new
doctrine of inerrancy demonstrates a concern to affirm textual certainty. Hodge’s
155
Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, I,
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.vi.ii.html
156
Hodge, Systematic Theology, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.vi.v.html.
Accessed on October 26, 2011
157
158
Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 21
Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 21-22
62
Systematic Theology illustrates an arduous rhetorical effort to “stabilize” textual meaning,
shoring up God’s authority as embodied in His Word. The notion of human fallibility,
especially in matters of translation, transliteration, and interpretation that arose in the Age
of Enlightenment, coupled with concerns over the trustworthiness of the written word
required urgent theological (rhetorical) solutions. Various theologians had contended
with the issue of scriptural authority prior to this early modern “crisis in authority.” For
instance, Philo (20 B.C.E – 50 C.E) defended the mantic theory, which imagined biblical
writers as possessed by God. Others, notably Origen (183 C.E – 254 C.E.), maintained
159
human agency against the notion of possession.
The dictation theory held biblical
writers as mere scribes of God. In his Systematic Theology, Hodge affirms, “The
Scriptural view of inspiration; that inspired men were the organs of God in such a sense
that their words are to be received not as words of men, but as they are in truth, as the
160
words of God, is proved.”
Moreover, Hodge’s doctrine of inerrancy attempted to solve the grave concern of
proper readership; that is to say, the problem that arises from individual freedom to read
the texts any particular way. Therefore, despite scribal errors, issues with translation, lack
of education, or any other problem that might place the texts at issues, the reader, with
the aid of the Holy Spirit, could apprehend biblical truths with absolute felicity. As
Hodge states, “This again is included in the infallibility which our Lord ascribes to the
Scripture. A mere human report or record of a divine revelation must necessarily be not
only fallible, but more or less erroneous.” And thus, “The Scriptures are to be interpreted
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which guidance is to be humbly and earnestly
161
sought.”
159
160
161
The concept of the Holy Spirit as hermeneutical method/guide offers Hodge a
The Oxford Companion to the Bible, 304
Hodge, “Proof of Doctrine,” http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.vi.v.html
Ibid
63
remarkable rhetorical tool by which he may judge the erroneous readings of others while
affirming the authority of his own position.
Though literalist practices seem markedly unscientific by today’s standards,
theological inerrancy and literalism presupposed a scientific rigor predicated on Common
162
Sense philosophy and Baconian empiricism.
Such Christian apologetics arose in the
Age of Enlightenment, making use especially of the notion of human reason as a God
given faculty.
163
As Peter Williams observes, Common Sense philosophy “declared that
God had created humans with the ability to perceive reality accurately through the senses;
further he had endowed them with an innate sense that enable them to make accurate
164
moral judgments.”
Marsden suggests, “Common Sense philosophy, in contrast to
philosophy since Descartes and Locke, held that the immediate objects of our perceptions
were not ideas of the external world, but (as the Princeton Review put it) ‘we are directly
conscious of the external objects themselves.’”
165
Evangelicals of every strain,
Unitarians, and Puritans before them, gravitated to and incorporated this legacy of the
Scottish Enlightenment into American Protestant theology above and over the other
schools of thought that developed out of the Enlightenment (i.e. English, French, and
166
German).
American Protestant thought, steeped as it was in Scottish Common Sense
philosophy and Baconian science, came to “encourage enormous reverence for Scripture
as a source of hard facts” that were said to be discernable to the educated and uneducated
162
Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism,” 114
163
See Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Puritan Political Ideas 1558-1794, (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, 2003) for an invaluable, edited collection of Puritan political
writings.
164
165
166
Williams, America’s Religions, 200, and Noll, Scandal, 85
Marsden, Fundamentalism, 113.
Williams, America’s Religions, 200. Noll, History, 156. Also see the development of
Enlightenment thinking within Puritan thought as documented in Edmund S. Morgan, Puritan
Political Ideas, 1558-1794, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003)
64
167
reader alike.
American theologians, according to Noll, “worked diligently constructing
appeals to neutral reason, grounded in universal moral sense and in science, in order to
prove the existence of God, the need for public morality, and the divine character of
Scripture.”
168
Baconian science presumed that objective data could be ordered and
169
systematized in a manner that would reveal the true nature of reality.
As Charles
Hodge famously stated, the Bible is God’s “store-house of facts.” The Bible is to the
theologian, he said, “what nature is to the man of science.”
170
Baconian thinking, Noll
observes, “with its trust in objectivity, its devotion to a principle of privileged scientific
inquiry” became a deeply ingrained habit of mind for American evangelicals.
171
Yet, this
habit of mind, persisting into the twentieth century, found itself discredited in the face of
new scientific and scholarly developments. By the end of the century, the “common sense
consensus” and faith in “doxological baconianism” had become outmoded for the culture
172
at large.
Such seismic shifts placed Common Sense intuitionism and the validity of
simple empiricism on the defensive to this day. It remains the hallmark of contemporary
conservative evangelical and fundamentalist thinking.
167
168
173
Marsden, Fundamentalism, 104-5
Noll, History, 157
169
Alexander S. Jensen, “Word of God or Witness? Issues in Christian Biblical
Hermeneutics,” Islam and Christian Relations 20 (2009), 222
170
171
172
173
Hodge, Systematic Theology, <http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.i.v.html
Noll, Scandal, 88
Marsden, Fundamentalism, 114, and Noll, Scandal, 100.
Noll, Scandal, 100. This kind of thinking is particularly evident in conservative
evangelical legal curricula, which adheres to legal and moral absolutism, asserting that universal
truths are God-given and unchanging, objective, and meant to be discerned by human beings. See
F. Allan Hanson, “The Jurisprudence of the Christian Right: Teachings from Regent and Liberty
University Law Schools,” Journal of Church and State 51 (2009): 265-288
65
Literal and spiritual (allegorical) strategies are evident in various Christian
traditions up until the Protestant Reformation, whereby, Hans Frei argues, the advent of
taking scripture in its historical contexts produced two vastly different approaches to
biblical hermeneutics. One the one hand, it produced what has become known as the
historical-critical tradition, or the academic study of scripture. Academic biblical
scholarship rests upon methodologies, which do not invoke divine sanction as the
authoritative principle underlying the texts; an incredible radical development, beginning
174
in the eighteenth century.
On the other hand, it produced biblical literalism where the
Bible was assumed to be an accurate historical record and the direct Word of God.
Literalism, as applied by communities of faith, continued its drift over time into more
dogmatic territory by the twentieth century. Early Protestant reformers, such as Luther
and Calvin, “had said that the Bible is self-interpreting, the literal sense of its words
being true meaning, its more obscure passages to be read in light of those that are
clear.”
175
In the twentieth century, figures like Francis Schaeffer insisted on reading
Genesis historically while others backed themselves into a corner attempting to treat the
Book of Revelation as an historically factual descriptive rendering of end-times.
176
At the
Creationist Museum, a literal reading of the biblical flood has lead to the conviction that
dinosaurs existed alongside human beings. The exhibit at this museum postulates that
there must have been at least fifty kinds of dinosaurs on Noah’s ark based on Genesis
6:19, “From all living creatures, from all living things, you must take two of each kind
aboard the ark.” Today, dogmatic literalism creates unforeseen problems. Unlike their
liberal counterparts who need not insist on the historicity of Adam and Eve in order to
174
175
176
Thiselton, Hermeneutics, 124-147
Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 18.
Boone undertakes an extended analysis of literal readings in The Bible Tells Them So:
The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism.
66
affirm the reliability of God’s authority in scripture, bible believing literalists often create
problems for themselves in their interpretive ventures. The narrative of dinosaurs on
Noah’s ark illustrates one such egregious interpretation that has developed as a result of
taking the text too literally.
Hence, literalist tendencies in the twentieth century have, according to scholars
such as Noll and Kathleen Boone, deteriorated into an uncritical, dogmatic, overly selfconfident stance toward biblical truth, and textuality more generally. Citing
methodological weaknesses in dispensation theology, Noll quotes Craig Blaising,
Hermeneutical deficiency was structured into the very meaning of dispensational
thought and practice in its advocacy of clear, plain, normal, or literal
interpretation…We have, then, a generation of theologians who find identity in a
self-conscious hermeneutic that lacks methodological awareness of the historical
nature of interpretation—a situation that under the pressure of apologetical
177
exigencies seems particularly vulnerable to the danger of anachronism.
Noll argues that the conservative evangelical intellectual inheritance displays some of the
“worst features of the nineteenth-century intellectual situation that have become
keystones for mental activity in the twentieth century,” features that he suggests are
178
defined by naïveté and a lack of mental rigor.
These features, according to Noll,
“undercut the possibility for a responsible intellectual life” and include “a weakness for
treating the verses of the Bible as pieces of a jigsaw that needed only to be sorted and
then fit together to possess a finished picture of divine truth; an overwhelming tendency
to ‘essentialism,’ or the conviction that a specific formula could capture for all times and
places the essence of biblical truth for any specific issue concerning God,” as well as a
“self-confidence bordering on hubris.”
177
178
179
Noll, Scandal, 129.
Noll, Scandal, 130
Noll, Scandal, 127.
179
For modern literalists linguistic ambiguity
67
comes with textual instability, and such textual instability produces what Noll calls a
“crisis” in authority within scripture. Such a crisis marks the deconstruction of God’s
authority, placing in question whether the texts are reliable sources for God’s truths.
Higher criticism first and then post-modern philosophy later have both created substantial
challenges to those whose faith is reliant upon the “truth” of an inerrant Bible.
180
Rhetorical Invention and Biblical Literalism
Literalism, as an object of study for rhetoric, turns our attention to questions
concerning rhetorical invention, interpretive practices, hermeneutics, and agency.
Theology concerns itself with the discovery and explication of “transcendental truths.”
Yet we recognize that theology is dependent upon language, and language, according to
poststructuralist and social constructionist perspectives, is not neutral, plainly
apprehended, “ordinary,” or stable. Rhetorically speaking, theology, by means of
language, aims at establishing ontological and epistemological truths, but can only do so
through a medium that is in itself subject to critical interrogation. Foucault notes that
“truth” arises not as an ontic manifestation, but rather as a function of truth discourses
that make a field of knowledge possible.
181
Such notions form a central concern in the
interrogation of literalism, inerrancy, and inspiration as rhetorical strategies useful toward
accomplishing political aims. Discursively, doctrines of inerrancy, inspiration, and
literalism function as intertexts and procedures of interpretation that shape human
conceptions of reality and condition textual understanding.
180
See David Barton, “Deconstructionism and the Left,” WallBuilders, July 28, 2011.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=95644. Accessed on August 10, 2012.
181
See Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,
1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) and Michel Foucault, The
History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990)
68
Literalism, as a hermeneutic, falls into the category of hermeneutical realism.
Such a position, Stephen Mailloux observes, “argues that meaning-full texts exist
independent of interpretation.
182
From this perspective, meanings are discovered, not
created. The facts of the text exist objectively, prior to any hermeneutic work by readers
or critics, and therefore correct interpretations are those corresponding to the autonomous
facts of the test.” Mailloux notes how “Realism often views the interpreter’s mind as
passive, simply acted upon by the words on the page. Though the text must be read, in
correct interpretation it speaks for itself.”
183
Such realism, and its tendency to regard the
reader as passive, permeates modern conceptions of literalism, inerrancy, and inspiration.
By virtue of the Holy Spirit, God’s agency produces biblical understanding within
adherents, where the human mind is under the “control” of God.
184
Evangelical literalists
approach textual material with two governing assumptions. First, that the Holy Spirit
directs proper apprehension of the texts. Second, that the text is, as Hodge said, plain and
discernable by all. For those who take the Bible literally, the belief in the felicity of
textual address serves as a necessary condition for the existence of textual veracity.
Without a stable, enduring text, there can be no faith in divine revelation.
Hermeneutical idealism presumes that textual meanings are not found but rather
made.
185
This perspective assumes “textual facts are never prior to or independent of the
hermeneutic activity of readers and critics.”
186
From such a perspective, literary scholar
182
Generally defined here hermeneutics is the methodological underpinnings that guide
the practice of (biblical) interpretation.
183
Steven Mailloux, “Rhetorical Hermeneutics,” Critical Inquiry 11 (1985): 622
184
Hodge, “Proof of Doctrine,” Systematic Theology,
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.vi.v.html.
185
186
Mailloux, Rhetorical Hermeneutics, 622
Ibid.
69
187
Kathleen Boone argues, inerrancy illustrates a “strategy for interpretation.”
To Boone,
inerrancy and literalism offer strategies for interpretation vested upon basic assumptions
about “ordinary language” and felicitous textuality. Accordingly she suggests that “when
Fundamentalists call our attention to the plain teaching of the Word of God, when they
claim that their own views are merely paraphrases of the sacred text,” we should
recognize how “their hermeneutics do indeed create textual support for their views.”
188
While biblical literalists insist that they are merely reading the text as a self-evident, selfsufficient expression of God’s will, scholars like Boone and Christian Smith explicate
how these presuppositions occlude the novel interpretations biblical literalists bring to
bare on the text. Boone suggests that suppositions of biblical literalism attempt to “guard
against the vagaries of those perverse interpreters who would persist in making a text
mean ‘a hundred other things’” by insisting on the inherent stability of meaning and
textual felicity within inspired documents. Readers come to scripture with a firm belief
in the inerrant, infallible, and self-sufficient nature of its textuality. At the same time,
Boone and Smith agree that biblical literalists “‘write’ the text” according to learned
codes of biblicism within the structural confines of an interpretive
community/tradition.
189
Where literalism is the primer, the interpretive community
functions as the conduit by which meanings are crafted, mobilized, memorized, affirmed,
rehearsed, circulated, and delimited. Nonetheless, the underlining problem of interpretive
pluralism remains at issue and precludes any possibility for a consensus across
190
interpretive communities and denominations,
187
188
189
190
even as religious leaders from Hodge to
Boone, The Bible Tells Them So, 61
Ibid.
Boone, The Bible Tells Them So, 61
Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly
Evangelical Reading of Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012), x
70
Barton hope “to ensure orthodoxy by appealing to ‘the literal truth of an inerrant
191
bible.’”
As a discursive strategy to “ensure orthodoxy” while affirming biblical literalism,
Hodge’s theology offers a preemptive strike against interpretive pluralism. Hodge
labored to shore up scriptural reliability, offering the Holy Spirit as a kind of
hermeneutical safeguard. Hence, his doctrine proffered a plausible explanation for
interpretive variations and error, stipulating, as he did, that correct apprehension of the
text is contingent on adopting the “proper religious attitude” to garner the assistance of
the Holy Spirit. Yet Hodge’s writings seem to suggest that even with this explanation at
hand, plural readings might persist. Drawing upon the influence of his station as an
authority figure, Hodge writes,
If the Scriptures be a plain book, and the Spirit performs the functions of a teacher
to all the children of God, it follows inevitably that they must agree in all essential
matters in their interpretation of the Bible. And from that fact it follows that for an
individual Christian to dissent from the faith of the universal Church (i.e., the
body of true192believers), is tantamount to dissenting from the Scriptures
themselves.
While he stresses the necessity of agreement, his rhetoric places error at the feet of
human fallibility rather than textual relativity. Those who fail to “agree in all essential
matters” act contrary to God’s will, and thus cannot be “true believers.” The subtext of
blasphemy and punishment serve as a disciplinary warning. His preemptive rhetorical
strike conditions his theological text as infallibly true under the same auspices as his
theology treats the Bible.
His Theology offers a brilliant example of language
constructing reality by use of declarative speech. Tautologically, Hodge insists on the
191
192
Boone, For the Bible Tells Them So, 40
Hodge, “Perspicuity of the Scripture. The Right Private Judgment,” Systematic
Theology, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.vi.i.html
71
veracity of his statements simply by virtue of having stated his claims. Accordingly, as
the infallible Word of God, Hodge states emphatically that there can only be one truth
193
that “All Protestants agree” upon.
By this gesture he validates his own authority in
deciphering God’s truth, reserving the power to dismiss alternative interpretations as acts
against God.
Whereas the theology of inerrancy arose as a strategy of interpretation, we may
also observe that the discourses of inerrancy, literalism, and inspiration, enable specific
relations of power. The theology of inspiration/inerrancy accomplishes various tasks
rhetorically speaking. First, the concept marks scripture as inerrant and infallible as it
stands. Given this assumption, the fallible reader accounts for variations in textual
interpretations, not the texts themselves. The reader, then, stands as the potential source
of error and is chastened, by Hodge in this case, to approach textual understanding with
the proper religious attitude in order to receive the aid of the Holy Spirit in the correct
“use” and understanding of God’s revelation. As a rhetorical tactic, such a belief offers
those in positions of power the authority to override competing or contrary biblical
interpretations upon the basis that such variations arise from uninspired readings of
scripture. Within this equation, God’s agency is always felicitous, but the human heart,
so to speak, must be properly attuned to receive God’s guidance. Second, the
significance of this rhetorical advantage for religious leaders lies in the ability to veto and
disavow the variations in interpretive practices that necessarily arise out of the multitudes
reading scripture for themselves. Biblical truth, in this sense, illustrates a process of
rhetorical invention and agreement that is negotiated within interpretive communities
under the leadership of a religious authority (e.g. pastor, reverend, televangelist). Within
conservative religious interpretive communities, meaning-making occurs under the
193
Hodge, “Statement of the Doctrine,” Systematic Theology,
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.vi.i.html
72
institutional structure of hierarchy. Textual agreement, rather than being a function of an
inerrant text, in our case at hand, arises within group relations that are not egalitarian or
fully open to ongoing scrutiny and debate. Stanley Fish observes,
This account of agreement has the additional advantage of providing what the
objectivist argument cannot support, a coherent account of disagreement. To
someone who believes in determinate meaning, disagreement can only be
theological error. The truth lies plainly in view, available to anyone who has the
eyes to see; but some readers choose not to see it and perversely
substitute their
194
own meanings for the meanings that the texts obviously bear.
Fish’s insights are particularly important when we consider the disciplining power
afforded those in positions of religious authority, not to mention the general selfregulatory and self-disciplining tendencies that arise from the necessity to remain
orthodox in thought and action for the faithful at large.
Finally, literalism, inerrancy, and inspiration attribute interpretive action to divine
agency. Such a designation serves to occlude human rhetorical invention by disavowing
human agency in the social construction of reality. With such a belief in place prior to
textual reading, as reinforced by an interpretive community, who imagine they are
apprehending the text literally, the presumption of contemporary literalism hides its own
operations of interpretation. In this sense, it also hides the will-to-power within various
interpretive traditions or schools of thought. We are reminded of Foucault, who
stipulated that power is that much more effective by hiding the better part of its
operations from itself.
195
Hence, the general rhetorical advantage for adherents in “taking
the Bible literally” allows individuals to project ethical and political culpability in beliefs,
actions, or policies deemed anti-democratic and discriminatory onto the figuration of the
194
Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 338
195
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 86
73
divine. As Boon argues, such a discourse allows adherents to defer to scripture in
existential “bad faith,” decrying “Not my words, but God’s words,” effectively shirking
196
responsibility for their beliefs and actions in this simple gesture.
Indeed, such a defense
is commonplace within Christian Right rhetoric, as adherents defend their views and
actions as merely following the dictates of the Lord.
Concluding Thoughts
The historical contextualization provides an initial framing by which we can
begin to think about Christian nationalist discourses that seek to authenticate the claim of
a Christian mandate within American founding documents. Most significantly, the
absence of religious language within the Constitution continues to vex those who desire
an explicit declaration of the primacy of Protestantism within the national charter. This
concern echoes in Anti-Federalist writings, and, then a century later, sounds again in the
petitions from the National Reform Association to amend this great “defect” in the
Constitution. Today, Christian nationalists grapple with this absence of religious
declarations by denying this absence altogether. Christian universities and law schools,
religious right organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family and Family Research Council),
Republican politicians, and conservative media pundits (e.g. Glenn Beck, Mike
Huckabee) regard the idea of a Christian Constitution as matter of undisputed fact.
197
Yet, historians, most especially evangelical historians, disagree vehemently with such
196
I invoke the Sartrean sense of “bad faith” here to suggest the operation of
disingenuous behavior on the part of an agent. However, while Sartre treated the idea of “bad
faith” as behavior agents were more or less consciously aware of, Foucault argues that rationales
hide the “better part” of operations of power from agents in action.
197
See especially F. Allan Hanson, “The Jurisprudence of the Christian Right: Teachings
from Regent and Liberty University Law Schools,” Journal of Church and State 51 (2009): 265288 and Richard K. Popp, “Visual Culture, Public Space, and Piety in Focus on the Family’s
Citizen Magazine,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27 (2010): 498-518.
74
assertions, documenting in great detail both the religious sensibilities of founding fathers
and their remarkably decision to forsake religious oaths and declarations within the
national charter.
198
In the following chapters I will analyze a few key rhetorical strategies
that attempt to contend with the secular tone of the Constitution in a febrile struggle over
national identity, policy formation, epistemological “truth,” and public remembrance.
This brief overview of the theologies of inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism
offers an entry point into the rhetorical analysis of contemporary Christian nationalist
discourses of nation and remembrance. Given the focus of this study, such an overview
cannot and is not meant to be an exhaustive accounting of the developments and cultural
interpretations of these doctrines over time. Such coverage is beyond the scope and
purview of this study. Neither can this contextualization account for quotidian practices
and understandings of these doctrines in the present moment across conservative and
199
fundamentalist communities active in Christian nationalist politics.
198
Derek H. Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774 – 1789, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), Derek H. Davis and Matthew McMearty, “America’s ‘Forsaken
Roots’: the Use and Abuse of Founders’ Quotations,” Journal of Church and State 47 (2005):
449-472, John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction,
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, and George
M. Marsden, The Search for Christian America, (Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1989),
Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), Mark A. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical
Mind, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), George M. Marsden,
Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism,
1870-1925, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), George M. Marsden, Understanding
Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1991). Also see Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter’s Getting Jefferson Right:
Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President which directly responds to David Barton’s
recent publication entitled The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed about
Thomas Jefferson. Barton’s publication characterizes Jefferson as a conservative, devout
evangelical.
199
Dawne Moon’s God, Sex and Politics: Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies
provides an important ethnographic study of everyday negotiations interpretive communities and
individuals make with the theological traditions they partake in. Dawne Moon, God, Sex and
Politics: Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004),
92.
75
This study shall not attempt to account for individual agency in doctrinal
interpretations or make definitive statements about personal structures of belief across
conservative and fundamentalist adherents. This study operates under the assumption
that aside from individual agency, Christian nationalist evangelicals share the theological
traditions under investigation by and large. This inheritance includes interpretive
traditions that have a basis in Calvinism, the Scottish Enlightenment, classic liberal
political thought, Common Sense realism, Baconian empiricism, and historically modern
(American) doctrinal conceptualizations of inerrancy, inspiration, literalism, and
providence. This study also assumes that while individuals are theoretically free to resist,
contest, restage, or radically reinterpret these traditions, interpretative communities
nonetheless take cues from religious leaders who significantly shape doctrinal
understanding by providing constant coaching for followers in “orthodox” reading
practices. I labor under this assumption, following the work of Stanley Fish and Kathleen
Boone particularly, because the question of individual agency in cases of religious belief
strain under the existential threat of excommunication and damnation. Said another way,
such potential losses include but are not limited to anomic anxiety, a threatened sense of
identity, loss of religious community, the imagined loss of redemption and eternal life,
and loss of family support. Like any serious deviation in belief or practice from a norm,
the idea of being forsaken by the Divine for willful disobedience and heresy provides
formidable psychological incentives toward conformity.
76
CHAPTER 3
FORGETTING GOD’S PLAN: PROVIDENCE, CHRISTIAN
NATIONHOOD, AND HISTORICAL REVISIONISM
The Christian Americanist perspective holds that Divine Providence inspired our
founders to erect a Christian nation predicated upon biblical writ. To Christian
nationalists, history has a purpose and its purpose is designed and directed by God
(Providence). American “exceptionalism” represents God’s plan to erect a “City upon a
Hill”— “the light of the world.” Without a God-given purpose to history, everything that
transpires is left to chance. More significantly, without a divine purpose to history, the
United States loses its special luster as God’s chosen nation for world redemption.
David Barton correctly states that Providence “retained a strong place in
American speech” for centuries and has only “fallen into disuse” in the twentieth
200
century.
He asserts that Americans today have formed an incorrect view of providence
201
as an “impersonal deistic designation for God.”
He blames this misinformation on the
202
work of Bible translators who neglect to use the term altogether.
Barton also blames
contemporary academics for summarily presenting history as devoid of meaning and
203
divine purpose.
Thus he opines,
The primary reason for this errant belief is Modernism—a contemporary
academic approach that severs history from its context and setting by examining
historical
events and persons as if they occurred and lived today rather that in the
204
past.
200
David Barton, Brad Cummings, and Lance Wubbels, The Founders’ Bible, (Newbury
Park: Shiloh Road Publishers, 2012), 763
201
202
203
204
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid, 764
Ibid.
77
According to Barton, modern educators, academics, critics, and Christians mistakenly
think of the founders as deist.
205
It is with this in mind that Barton, billing himself as a
premier historian and expert on American and Constitutional history, works assiduously
to set the record straight. Espousing a “biblical worldview,” Barton places the figuration
of God at and as the center of truth. Accordingly, God is the force behind history,
American “exceptionalism,” legitimate knowledge (truth), law and redemption.
Derek Davis and Matthew McMearty describe the Christian nationalist vision as
one that employs multiple strategies to “prove” that the founding fathers were not only
Christian men in their personal lives, but also leaders who intended that the nation be
formally Christian.”
206
Barton routinely quotes men like John Quincy Adams, George
Washington, Benjamin Rush, John Witherspoon, and Daniel Webster to illustrate their
faith in Providence and their usage of the term. In one essay he quotes John Jay as saying
“Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as
the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their
rulers.” He neglects to mention that this quote is derived from a personal letter addressed
to John Murray (1816), in which Jay also states, “Real Christians will abstain from
violating the rights of others, and therefore will not provoke war.”
205
207
Mark Chancey
Ibid.
206
Derek H. Davis and Matthew McMearty, “Americas ‘Forsaken Roots’: The Use and
Abuse of Founders Quotations,” Journal of Church and State 47 (2005): 449.
207
John Jay to John Murray, Bedford, 12 October, 1816. The online Library of Liberty.
John Jay to John Murray, Jun.-John Jay, correspondence and public papers of John Jay, vol. 4
(1794-1826). The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston, A.M.
(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890-93). Vol. 4 (1794-1826).
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2330&chapter=220
814&layout=html&Itemid=27
78
astutely identifies this strategy as biblical proof texting. This “proof by sound bite”
208
approach is a standard feature of conservative evangelical sermonic habits of speech.
Chancey reflects that “using proof texts to teach about complicated historical issues leads
to a skewed understanding of our national heritage and undermines critical thinking skills
209
rather than fostering them.
Chancey concludes that the “idealization of Protestant
dominance and its revisionist history” in Christian nationalist educational materials and
discourse attempts to influence and reshape “the collective memory of American origins”
encouraging students to understand American identity as “quintessentially conservative
Protestant.”
210
This chapter concerns itself with David Barton’s strategic restaging and
deployment of the idea/term Providence. Barton calls upon this theological structure to
characterize the founders as if they shared modern conservative Protestant values.
Moreover, he establishes Providence as the truth standard by which the legitimacy of
knowledge claims are summarily affirmed or rejected. I argue that Barton’s mobilization
of the theology of Providence functions as an interpretive strategy to verify a Christian
nationalist epistemological paradigm as “real” and true knowledge against
epistemological rivals. Providence, as Barton renders it, operates in concert with
narratives of historical revisionism and conspiracy. Barton uses the distinction between
authentic Christian history and revisionist secular history to establish the basis upon
which knowledge is respectively (de)legitimated on the basis of God as authorizing
principle. This is an important first tier in an overall strategy to fashion American and
208
Mark A. Chancey, “Reading, Writing and Religion II: Texas Public School Bible
Courses In 2011-2012, (a report from the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. Texas
Freedom Network, 2012), 54.
209
210
Ibid, 56
Chancey, “Textbook Example,” 557
79
Constitutional law as bound to and authorized by divine law, which comprises the focus
of this dissertation.
This analysis draws upon various materials produced by Barton including his
publications, educational DVDs, public speeches, and TV and radio broadcasts. From
The Founders’ Bible, I analyze two articles dedicated to the subject of Providence
respectively entitled “All History Unveils His Story” and “The Providence of God.” I
also examine “The Bible, Voters and the 2008 Election,” “God: Missing in Action from
American History,” and “A History of Black Voting Rights.” Additional artifacts used in
this inquiry include his 10 volume educational DVD series entitled The American
Heritage Series and an extended chapter on revisionism called “Revisionism: A Willing
Accomplice” from Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion. From his
countless public appearances and broadcasts, I use dispatches /archival material furnished
by Right Wing Watch. This organization publishes daily video / transcript coverage of
prominent right wing pundits meant to document far right public advocacy and activism.
This chapter begins with a brief overview of the theological concept of
Providence. Next, I explore Barton’s construction of the concept of Providence and the
manner in which he mobilizes this concept to legitimate a Christian nationalist
epistemological paradigm while discrediting opposing sets of knowledge and expertise.
The narrative of historical revisionism forms one central element in his overall
deployment of theological Providence, which serves as a tactic to affect the deauthorization of outside (non-Christian nationalist) knowledge. In the second section, I
consider how Providence, as a strategy to legitimate or discredit knowledge, creates the
foundational basis upon which far right political goals are biblically naturalized,
defended, and justified.
Theological Providence: A Brief Overview
80
Theologically, the idea of and belief in Providence holds that God actively directs
the events of human history. Calvin’s treatment of the doctrine (providentia Dei) posited
that “all that happens is impelled by God’s almighty will and by His active
cooperation.”
211
According to Kerry Walters, Calvin argued that the theology of
Providence was based in Scripture (Gen 22:8), which reads, “And Abraham said, my son,
God will provide” (Deus providebit).
212
Walters notes that the Calvinist conception of
Divine Providence viewed God as fully active in world affairs rather than simply
omnipresent. Such a position lies in contradistinction to the Enlightenment belief in god
213
as a deus absconditus, a first cause no longer operating within the world directly.
Revolutionary and antebellum Americans imagined that Providence, used to denote the
divine as well as divine agency in history, smiled down upon them, and that God had a
special mission of greatness for the new nation. Calling upon the good grace of
Providence stood as a common invocation of the day. Most famously, the Declaration of
Independence, in its final thoughts, affirmed, “And for the support of the Declaration,
with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” While historians agree that three out
of four God terms in the Declaration were added in the congressional editing process,
changing Jefferson’s original draft (Jefferson only used “nature’s god”), some differ in
their assessment of how these terms were meant to signal and or appease both Unitarians
and deists, on the one hand, and devoutly Calvinist groups (Congregationalists,
214
Presbyterian, Baptist, to names a few) on the other.
William Casey McWilliams
211
Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology, trans. Gene J. Lund, (Saint Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 1968), 260
212
Kerry S. Walters, Benjamin Franklin and His Gods, (Champaign: University of
Illinois Press, 1998), 98
213
214
Ibid.
For the latter argument, see particularly Wilson Carey McWilliams, "The Bible in the
American Political Tradition," in Religion and Politics, ed. Myron J. Aronoff, (New Brunswick:
81
suggests that “nature’s god” and “Creator” where sufficiently ambiguous, and thus did
not function to denote a Judeo-Christian God as referent. Jeffry Morrison argues that
“Divine Providence” and “Judge of the World” were distinctly meant to be solicitous to
those in the Reformed tradition (Calvinist) across the thirteen states.
215
In its contemporary usage, “writers extolling a providential view of American
history begin with the theological premise that God is sovereign over his creation and
216
continues to order the universe that he has created.”
Theological Providence remains an
overarching theme within education materials for conservative evangelical
homeschoolers, as well as for conservative evangelical university education, particularly
in the curricula of schools such as Patrick Henry College and Liberty University.
217
For
Transaction Books, 1984), 21 and Jeffry H. Morrison, “Political Theology in the Declaration of
Independence,” (paper presented at a conference on “The Declaration of Independence,”
Princeton, NJ, April 5-6, 2002), 6.
215
Morrison, “Political Theology,” 6. Note that Morrison documents that Jefferson’s
original draft did not capitalize “nature’s god.”
216
John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction,
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 60
217
See Randall J. Stephens and Karl Giberson, “Conservative Christianity and Its
Discontents,” Religious Dispatches Magazine, (March 13, 2012): 5. Accessed March 14, 2012.
For an insightful study of Christian homeschooling materials see Francis A. Paterson, “Building a
Conservative Base: Teaching History and Civics In Voucher-Supported Schools,” Phi Delta
Kappan, 82 (2000): 150-155. A typical example from a Bob Jones textbook reads, “Our
sovereign God directs the affairs of men and nations to accomplish His will. As you begin your
study of the history of the United states, keep in mind that God has likewise directed—and is still
directing—America’s history.” Quoted in Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 62.
Also see Michael W. Apple, God’s Educational Reform,” Educational Policy 14 (2000): 703-710,
Michael W. Apple, Educating the “Right” Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality, (New
York: Routledge, 2001), Benjamin Baez and V. Darleen Opfer, “Ideology and Educational
Policy: An Analysis of the Religious Right,” Educational Policy 14 (2000): 582-599, Fritz
Detwiler, Standing of the Premises of God: The Christian Right’s Fight to Redefine America’s
Public Schools, (New York: New York University Press, 1999), Mark A. Chancey, “A Textbook
Example of the Christian Right: The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75 (2007): 554-581, Catherine A. Lugg, “Reading,
Writing, and Reconstructionism: The Christian Right and the Politics of Public Education,”
Educational Policy 14 (2000): 622-637, and Mark Chancey’s trenchant analysis of Texas public
school Bible curricula and source material in Mark A. Chancey, “Reading, Writing and Religion
II: Texas Public School Bible Courses In 2011-2012, (a report from the Texas Freedom Network
Education Fund), Texas Freedom Network. Accessed 15 January 2013. www.tfn.org.
82
histories of the United States in particular, Providence underscores American
“exceptionalism,” pointing to God’s special plan for the nation. Evangelical historian
John Fea explains,
The specific study of American history illuminates best God’s true plan for the
ages. The history of the United States is more important than any other era or
region of the globe, save ancient Israel.
This is because God has given the United
218
States of America a unique destiny.
Fea credits Peter Marshall and David Manuel’s publication The Light and the Glory
(1977) for significantly reviving the providential perspective in the later half of the
twentieth century, particularly within the homeschooling movement. Marshall and
Manuel muse, “From the beginning this book has been about the search for that original
vision. If we could find God’s hand in our nation’s beginnings, if we could discover that
her foundations had been laid by Christian men and women who were conscious of being
guided by God, maybe we could help modern Americans recover our national sense of
purpose and destiny.”
219
Employing the language of public memory (and forgetting)
Marshall and Manuel recall that their mission thirty two years ago, when The Light and
the Glory was first published, represented an attempt to give Americans “a window into
the rich Christian heritage that most of us did not even know our nation possessed,
220
because secular historians often ignored it altogether.”
They state, “this national
amnesia was a serious problem” back when the book was first penned. After thirty-two
years, according to Marshall and Manuel, this problem has reached epic proportions.
Prominent far-right evangelical leaders such as Tim LaHaye, Francis Schaeffer,
and Jerry Falwell equally contributed to the contemporary understanding of Providence
218
Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 60
219
Peter J. Marshall and David B. Manuel Jr., The Light and the Glory, 1492-1793,
(Grand Rapids: Revel, 2009), 9
220
Ibid.
83
citing American exceptionalism and constitutional law as evidence of God’s presence. In
his now famous tract Listen, America, Jerry Falwell wrote,
America has reached the pinnacle of greatness unlike any nation in human history
because our Founding Fathers established America’s laws and precepts on the
principles recorded in the laws of God, including the Ten Commandments. God
has blessed this nation because in its early days she sought to honor God. Any
diligent student of American history finds that our great nation was founded by
godly men upon godly principles to be a Christian nation. Our Founding Fathers
were not all Christian, but they were guided by biblical principles. They
developed a nation predicated on Holy
Writ. The religious foundations of
221
America find their roots in the Bible.
Falwell suggests that “diligent” students of American history recognize providence as the
guiding force in human affairs, intimating that those who fail to recognize this fact are
hampered by deficiency in their scholarly efforts. Falwell’s depiction of “a nation
predicated on Holy Writ” with “roots in the Bible” gestures toward the affirmation of a
Christian nation created by and for God through his humble servants. Fea notes, Christian
nationalists “believe that God gave the responsibility of the founding of the United States
to Christian men who then applied their faith directly to the creation of the
Constitution.”
222
He observes that millions of Christian nationalists believe that the
223
Constitution is founded upon biblical writ and that God is in “control of history.”
Fea
like many other concerned evangelical historians recognize Barton as one of the most
prolific and influential voices promoting Christian nationalism in the new millennium.
224
Fea aptly notes that popular Christian publications produced to reflect God’s providential
221
222
223
224
Jerry Falwell, Listen, America, (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), 25.
Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 75
Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 57
Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 58 and 71
84
agency in history--while marketed as “authoritative historical studies”-- are theological
225
rather than historical in content.
Barton’s Rhetoric of Providence, Revisionism, and Legitimate Forms of
Knowledge
David Barton’s use of theological providence illustrates a discursive strategy to
legitimate one epistemological paradigm against cultural rivals. His definition of
doctrinal Providence is uncontroversial. According to Barton, Providence denotes both an
active God and a God who watches over “His beloved with foresight, care, and
226
protection.”
Citing Noah Webster, he notes that the term functions as a direct reference
to God himself (Divine Providence) and also points to divine acts of “superintendence
227
which God exercises over His creatures.”
However, the manner in which Barton
mobilizes the concept as memory texts attempt to direct and influence public memory
and politics.
One strategy Barton engages dictates that any historical account that fails to
mention Providence or foreground God in historical narratives illustrates false
(illegitimate) knowledge. Barton argues, “Educators in earlier generations believed that
to omit such aspects—especially the religious elements and a providential view of
history—was to deprive students of a truthful portrayal of America.”
228
To substantiate
this point he turns to Charles Coffin, a “popular author of student history books in the
1870s,” to support his contention. Coffin’s sentiment reads,
225
226
Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 60-62
David Barton et al., The Founders’ Bible, (Newbury Park: Shiloh Road Publishers,
2012), 763
227
228
Noah Webster as quoted in Barton, Founders’ Bible, 763
Barton, Original Intent, 286
85
There is still one other point [to the teaching of history]: you will notice that while
the oppressors have carried out their plans and had things their own way, there
were other forces silently at work which in time undermined their plans, only
no—as if a Divine hand were directing the counter-plan. Whoever peruses the
“Story of Liberty” without recognizing this feature will fail to fully comprehend
the meaning of history. There
must be a meaning to history or else existence is an
229
incomprehensible enigma.
Coffin’s reflections suggest that history cannot be properly understood without
providential framing. Coffin intimates that such framing brings order to events that
otherwise appear incomprehensible and chaotic. Barton’s choice of Coffin’s words help
illuminate the rules for forming historical recollection, at least according to Barton for the
edification of his readers. Here, history must have meaning and purpose. This purpose
demonstrates God’s plan in action. Failure to recognize God’s agency points to a failure
to comprehend historical events (reality) properly.
The presumption of Providence, God’s hand in human affairs and will made
manifest, functions as a truth standard that authorizes the veracity of statements in much
the same way Foucault’s assessment of scientific discourse operates. Foucault theorized
that in the early modern era the language of science became the basis upon which
subjects, discourses, and sets of knowledge could be disqualified if deemed unscientific.
Foucault asked “what types of knowledge do you want to disqualify in the very instance
of your demand: ‘Is it a science?’ Which speaking, discoursing subjects – which
230
subjects of experience and knowledge – do you then want to ‘diminish’?”
As a rule
that governs the formation of statements, the presumption of scientific truth works to
229
Ibid. Barton recycles material from one publication to the next. He uses Coffin’s
quote in his 2012 publication The Founders’ Bible to argue that the omission of Providence from
historical narratives illustrates revisionism. David Barton et al., The Founders’ Bible, (Newbury
Park: Shiloh Road Publishers, 2012), 913
230
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977, ed. Colin Gordon, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 85
86
legitimate or de-legitimate knowledge, discourses and speaking subjects.
231
Foucault
argued that relations of power did not reside in meanings derived but rather in the
assertion of truth that accrued to statements deemed scientifically authoritative.
232
Thus,
he suggested scholars attend to the “effects of power that circulate among scientific
statements.”
233
The theology of inerrancy, as stated earlier, derived its authority upon the
presumptions of scientific rigor. In Barton’s usage, providence, in conjunction with
doctrinal inerrancy, functions to legitimate one set of knowledge (and authoritative
voices) against rivals by establishing Divine warrant as the truth-bearing standard by
which the authority of statements is affirmed. Providence asks “Is it biblical?” and “is it
warranted by God?” The rule to establish the truth of statements for Christian
nationalists like Barton is certified only if the answer declares, “Yes, it is biblical.” If it
is biblical, it is factual because God said so, a refrain popular among biblical literalists.
234
Barton’s mobilization of this authorizing standard demarcates the boundary of
accepted knowledge from (revisionist) illegitimate knowledge and expertise. In “All
History Unveils His Story” Barton warns his readers,
231
232
233
234
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 112
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 114
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 112
See Smith, Christian, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly
Evangelical Reading of Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012). Smith observes that this
refrain typically states, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it!” (7) This refrain my also be
recognized in gestures that enact witnessing such as “I know this to be true…” Mike Huckabee
recently uttered this incantation at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, stating,
“These are the things that I know. I know there’s a God, and I know this nation would not exist
had He not been the mid-wife of its birth. And I know that this nation exists by the Providence of
His hand, and that if this nation forgets our God, then God will have every right to forget
us…there is no other way to explain our history other than by His hand of Providence.”
Huckabee went on to say that American knows deep in their hearts that this is true. Kyle
Mantyla, “Deep in Their Hearts, Americans Know That God Created This Nation,” Right Wing
Watch. Last modified March 7, 2014. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/huckabee-deeptheir-hearts-most-americans-know-god-created-nation
87
Don’t let the current anti-Biblical approach to teaching history dissuade or
discourage you from a study of what actually happened in America. Return to a
use of biographical history (study the primary individuals involved), and apply
a
235
Providential viewpoint that ‘History is God’s providence in human affairs.
This conclusion follows a lengthy exhortation to heed God’s words to remember “the
days of old.”
236
Barton’s rule for historical understanding requires history to conform to
an ostensible biblical approach. According to him, this standard alone discloses “what
actually happened in America.” The argument intimates that the biblical approach yields
absolute truth. Thus while one applies a providential viewpoint, such a method is treated
not as interpretation but rather as that which produces “irrefutable” truth in the form of
witnessing. The figuration of God stands as the symbolic verification of legitimate
knowledge. In another publication Barton writes, “The reintroduction of a truthful and
complete telling of American history is long overdue. Daniel Webster was right: ‘history
is God’s providence in human affairs,’ and it is time for Americans once again to become
237
aware of the remarkable hand of God throughout our history.”
Citing God’s authority
through Webster, Barton establishes himself as one who brings forth a “truthful and
complete telling of American history” through the auspices of the providential
perspective. Foucault prompts us to “question ourselves about our aspirations to the kind
of power that is presumed to accompany such a science.” In the case of Christian
nationalist discourses, we must necessarily ask what kind of power accompanies
Providence and the presumptions of biblical Christianity.
235
238
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 915
236
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 911 and David Barton, “God: Missing in Action from
American History,” WallBuilders, 1. Accessed August 1, 2013. http://www.wallbuilders.com/
libissuesarticles.asp?id=100. Originally published June 2005 in The National Religious
Broadcasters Magazine.
237
238
Barton, “God: Missing,” 5
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 84
88
Barton’s construction of the providential perspective labors to discredit “dreary
academic”
239
history, advocating a Christian nationalist epistemological position in the
process. Barton objects to the removal of the providential perspective from modern
240
historical practice.
He argues that this practice demonstrates “a ‘scholarly’ effort to
241
expunge the historical record of any acknowledgement of God.”
He reminds his
readers that God exhorts them to remember and review “what God has done in times
242
past.”
As such, Christians should bypass the “sterile facts”
244
of dates and places”
243
and “recitation of a string
historians offer in favor of biographies. To Barton, historical
remembrance is important since it allows us to make judgments about the present and
future based on our past.
245
He argues that biographies present history through “the eyes
246
and life experiences of those involved.”
He suggests we learn from biographical
stories like “David and Goliath, Daniel and the lion’s den, or Peter walking on water.”
247
While Barton appears to endorse experience as a more truthful medium of historical
expression, his biographical subjects are, for the most part, mythological entities offered
to his readers in the spirit of biblical literalism. Such figures and events within the
framing of biblical literalism are literally true and taken as an article of faith. Much like
Coffin, Barton concludes that historical accounts that neglect God’s agency and fail to
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
David Barton, “God: Missing in Action from American History,” 1
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 912
Ibid.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 911
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 912
David Barton, “God: Missing in Action from American History,” 1
Ibid.
Ibid.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 911 and Barton, “God: Missing,” 1
89
tell “His story” are devoid of purpose and meaning, and thus, not fully accurate.
Barton stresses, “an accurate history can never be completely secular.”
249
248
The above
argument aims to discredit academic scholarship. In these examples Barton contends that
historians produce dry, fact-based renditions of historical events. He states that this style
of history “has become dreary and too often a useless academic subject” unlike the
liveliness of biographies found in the Bible.
250
In addition to these mild statements, Barton’s exhaustive rhetoric of a revisionist
conspiracy provides a critical tactical element by which oppositional voices are
summarily dismissed. His shift to a conspiracy narrative requires him to abandon the
argument that historians are boring, fact-spewing automatons for a more sinister
characterization that denounces academic scholarship as revisionist in design;
intentionally misleading and fabricated in order to influence public opinion, judicial
decisions, and policy commitments. The American Heritage Series foregrounds this
conspiracy narrative with repetitious voiceovers that chime in roughly every ten-minutes.
The opening sequence invites its audience to
Discover the forgotten and astonishing story of our nation’s foundation in the
American Heritage Series. For centuries, American’s were taught a truthful view
of history that recognized the Godly heroes and moral foundation our nation was
founded upon. But in recent years, a new version of history has assaulted the
moral and spiritual fiber of our nation, leaving the truth of our past eliminated and
forgotten, until today. Join historian David Barton and experience
the untold
251
story of our nation’s history, in the American Heritage Series.
248
249
250
251
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 912
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 913
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 911
The American Heritage Series with David Barton, DVD, directed by John Pevoto and
David Barton (Aledo, TX: WallBuilders, 2009), Disc 3. My transcription.
90
Barton’s play on memory and forgetting weave throughout this ubiquitous voiceover. It
speaks of sinister machinations that have wrought terrible consequences for the country.
This rape of memory, the forgotten truth, stands as a heinous abuse. Remembrance offers
redemption. Without naming names, this pithy voiceover indicts those academicians who
have “assaulted the moral and spiritual fiber of the nation.” Unlike their forebears who
faithfully produced an “accurate” history of the nation, our modern historians have failed
in their duties. Another voiceover prompts,
Were George Washington and the other founding presidents men of moral
character? Or were they rebellious political zealots, as many historians now
teach? How did such opposing views of American history emerge in academic
circles today? And do they have any basis in
factual history or are these new
252
teachings the result of a revisionist agenda?
The copy attempts to lead the witness, prompting the auditor to finish the enthymeme.
The founders were moral patriots, not political zealots, and therefore, opposing scholarly
views represent a revisionist agenda. Here Barton shifts from characterizing historical
scholarship as dry and boring to portraying it as illegitimate knowledge produced to
253
mislead the public and denigrate great men of history like Washington.
Barton’s assiduous treatment of revisionism seeks to discredit oppositional voices
through ad hominem attacks, prompting his audience to dismiss arguments advanced by
revisionist usurpers of nation. He describes historical revisionism as an intentional act of
ignoring, distorting, or “misportraying” historical facts “in order to maneuver public
252
253
The American Heritage Series
Many scholars have grappled with Barton’s strategy to portray the founders as modern
day evangelicals. Therefore, I will not repeat their deft efforts. See in particular, John Fea Was
American Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction, (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2011), Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter, Getting Jefferson Right:
Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President, (Grove City: Salem Grove Press, 2012), and
Martin E. Marty, “David Barton’s Christian America,” Christian Post, May 10, 2011. Accessed
May 19, 2011. http://www.christianpost.com/daved-bartons-christian-america-50163.
91
opinion toward a specific political agenda.”
254
Castigated as institutional liars and
branded as elitists, Barton paints professional historians as hacks bent on advancing the
secularization of government and culture by falsifying the historical record. He suggests
that the tools of their trade include but are not limited to drawing upon “untruths” or
employing the use of fiction in place of fact, which Barton terms “faction.” He
condemns them for systematically relying on overly broad generalizations and leaning
upon insinuation and innuendos to dupe an unsuspecting public. Most importantly,
revisionist, he insists, omit the providential perspective from their historical work while
uniformly failing to use primary source material for evidence, two ideas that we will
255
return to with careful attention.
Christian scholars fare no better with Barton. He accuses them of a wholesale
“failure to acknowledge religion and its effect on America (or any of its virtues)” which,
he contends, is not due to a lack of available historical materials.
256
Barton accused
Evangelical historians Mark Noll and George Marsden of resorting to “psychobabble”
and “psychohistory,” rejecting their publication “The Search for a Christian Nation,”
which refutes the Christian nation thesis. In November 2013 Barton spoke to students
from Ohio Christian University about his critics Warren Throckmorton and Michael
Coulter who challenged the veracity of Barton’s latest publication about Thomas
Jefferson. When asked about his critics Barton stated that “secular guys” had tried to
denounce him for years but “they couldn’t do anything because we had so many
documents. So the secular guys went and recruited some Christian professors, who then
254
David Barton, Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion, (Aledo:
WallBuilders Press, 2004), 279
255
See David Barton, “Revisionism: A Willing Accomplice,” Original Intent: The
Courts, the Constitution, and Religion, (Aledo: WallBuilders Press, 2004), 279-318.
256
Barton, Original Intent, 286
92
came after me and that made national news.”
257
Barton’s ad hominem attacks invite
audiences to summarily disregard scholarship deemed contrary to a “biblical worldview.”
In such cases oppositional perspectives are not simply unbiblical, but rather anti-biblical - literally against God, civilization, and nation.
These interlocking discourses of providence, revisionism, and conspiracy
underscore a preoccupation with forms of public memory, cultural norms, and “secular”
indoctrination—the ways in which non-biblical perspectives potentially disrupt, displace,
and challenge a “biblical worldview.” Barton characterizes this liberal conspiracy as a
concerted effort by progressive judges and academics to “secularize history” such that
Americans will “grow up striving to ‘protect’ the supposed religious-free atmosphere
258
which they would have us believe made America great.”
Inculcation and value sets
underlie this concern. For Barton, mass inculcation of secular values results in an
unwitting allegiance to a nation divorced from its religious foundation. Worse, those
indoctrinated with false beliefs strive to reproduce and protect such ideals. According to
Barton, the cunning architects of public amnesia control access to and delimit public
understanding of the nation’s founding and core identity. Reflecting on their tactics, he
opines,
If revisionists can persuade the public that all of the Founders were deists, then
they will have recast the Founders’ religious beliefs, thus concocting a historical
precedent for todays’ unpopular court decisions, which limit public religious
expression. The use of overly broad generalizations induces erroneous
257
Kyle Mantyla, “Barton: I am Very Scary For People Who Have a Secular
Worldview,” Right Wing Watch, November 14, 2013. Accessed December 5, 2013.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-i-am-very-scary-people-who-have-secularworldview. Also see Throckmorton and Coulters website www.gettingjeffersonright.com
258
Barton, Original Intent, 286
93
impressions and wrong conclusions; therefore, any
public policy built on these
259
mistaken foundations will be inherently flawed.
Revisionist judges and academics concoct “the appearance of widespread historical
approval for a generally unpopular social policy” and implement such policies
accordingly.
260
Failing to recognize the founders’ religious convictions, they must
necessarily form legal decisions (and influence policy formation) with erroneous views
contrary to the founders’ intent. Tellingly, his lament recognizes, even if intuitively, that
261
truth is established and naturalized through discourse and belief.
A generation growing
up under the influence of “mistaken” ideas about the separation of church and state, he
fears, will reach maturity ready and able to defend a “secular America.” Students will,
his logic intimates, know of nothing better than what they have absorbed through public
schooling and pop culture. It is with just such an erroneous set of beliefs and a faulty
understanding of history that ultimately, Barton warns, such revisionist tactics will strip
“protections for public religious expression” and destroy public morality.
262
The dictates of Providence require historians to functions as panegyrists for God.
Historians who do not saturate their scholarship with “positive references to religion, the
family, marriage, free-enterprise economics, traditional values, entrepreneurialism, and
other foundational American virtues” stand suspect of revisionism.
263
Barton vests
259
Barton, Original Intent, 283. Note that the phrase “religious freedom” within
Christian right parlance translates into arguments denying the separation of church and state and
decrying a lack of freedom to rail against homosexuality without challenge in the public arena.
260
Barton, Original Intent, 279
261
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 95
262
263
Barton, Original Intent, 318
In one ironic case Barton accuses scholars George Marsden, Nathan Hatch, and Mark
Noll, all distinguished evangelical historians, of practicing revisionism. He takes umbrage with a
publication they wrote for educated lay Christians entitled In Search for a Christian America; a
book originally published as a response to Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto. Barton
accuses these academics of practicing “psychobabble” and “psychohistory” which he stresses
94
historians with the task of values advocacy rather than historical research.
264
His
assertions suggest that historians should play the role of religious proselytizer and
encomiast rather than that of a scholar. To Fea, Providence casts the historian in a
prophetic role. Accordingly, he posits, “If God is indeed ordering the universe according
to his plan, then the job of the historian, according to defenders of Christian America, is
to identify and proclaim his purpose as it played out in the past.”
265
Writers who extoll
the providential viewpoint begin with the “theological premise that God is sovereign over
266
his creation and continues to order the universe that he has created.”
For Barton the
providential perspective reveals God’s agency as the source and wellspring of America’s
greatness. Accordingly, for Christian nationalists, Providence bears upon historical
interpretation as an a priori condition. The idea of a secular, non-Protestant destiny is
anathema to the providential perspective.
Divine Order: Episteme, Hierarchy, and God’s Mandate for the Nation
Rhetorically, Divine Providence represents the underlying principle or agentic
element that superimposes order and purpose upon the universe. It functions as a nomos,
endowing the universe with meaning and cosmic purpose. The rhetorical utility of God
as an ordering device assuages existential insecurity by infusing human affairs with God
enables authors to “not only project but also to ‘prove’ their opinions regardless of what the facts
or documents of the day might establish to the contrary.” Barton, Original Intent, 311-312
264
For an overview on values advocacy see Denise M. Bostdorff and Steven L. Vibbert,
“Values Advocacy: Enhancing Organizational Images, Deflecting Public criticism, and
Grounding Future Arguments,” Public Relations Review 20 (2004), 141-158 and Bradford
Vivian, Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again, (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 73.
265
266
Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 62
Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 60
95
ordained certainty and meaning. Social constructionist Stephen Berger observes that
human beings crave their rhetorical inventions to appear back to them as stable, objective
facts. As a fundamentalist construct, the divine is the grounding or embodiment of truth.
God as the linguistic repository of truth promises metaphysical certainty in the face of
267
existential impermanence, instability, impartiality, and contingency.
The act of
naming, according to Berger, attempts to produce structure out of chaos by ordering
experience and projecting these constructs outward. For Berger, “A meaningful order, or
nomos, is imposed upon the discrete experiences and meanings of individuals.”
268
Berger
theorized that the plausibility of the divine as nomos destabilizes in the face of
secularization. As a principle of order, meaning, and purpose, it suffers a “crisis of
269
credibility” in the face of pluralism.
Human beings project authority outward onto the
figuration of God as a means to transform contingent, earthly power and ethical
propositions into moral absolutes. Kenneth Burke identified this operation as a rhetoric
of transcendence. A rhetoric of transcendence inaugurates a process whereby one
linguistic realm is transcended by being viewed in terms of a realm ‘beyond it.’’’
270
This
reconfiguration frames or circumscribes meaning according to circumstance by rescaling
linguistic circumference. In the case of providence, human agency and ethical
commitments are transfigured as providential agency and God’s moral law. These
conventions argue in favor of ontological truths situated outside human language and
history. The trick of language performs the operation. Considering human motivation in
267
I use the term fundamentalist here to denote a religious disposition, rather than the
historically situated fundamentalism of any particular religious group.
268
269
270
Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 19
Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 127
Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and
Method, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 187 and Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of
Motives, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 420-430.
96
the mobilization of such a god term, Burke surmised that the ultimate motive of homo
dialecticus “would thus be grounded not in the search of ‘advantage’” but rather “it
271
would be grounded in a form, in the persuasiveness of the hierarchic order itself.”
He
contends, if the “god term” is the “completion of the dialectical process,” then God as the
“genuinely transcendent would be sought in the direction of whatever was unaccounted
272
for.”
Stated another way, God is both the “ground of all possibility” and, the “ultimate
transcendence,” beyond question.
273
The absence of Providence marks existence as unstable, open to interpretation,
chaotic, and random. The inverse proposition confirms Protagoras’ assessment that
“Man is the measure of all things.” Tellingly, Barton’s usage of Charles Coffin in both
Original Intent and The Founders’ Bible expresses a distinct preoccupation with order
and its absence. To repeat, Coffin stated, “Whoever peruses the ‘Story of Liberty’
without recognizing this feature will fail of fully comprehending the meaning of history.
There must be a meaning to history or else existence is an incomprehensible enigma.”
274
Accordingly, we lose our sense of “reality,” our sense of self in the face of anomy, or
nomic disruption.
275
With theological Providence, “Every change, every revolution in
human affairs, is, in the mind of God, a movement to the consummation of the great work
of redemption.”
276
Well before Barton’s time, but part of his theological inheritance,
Hollis Read argued in The Hand of God in History, Or, Divine Providence Historically
271
272
273
274
275
276
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 276
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 276
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 298-299
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 913 and Barton, Original Intent, 286
Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 21
Hollis Read, The Hand of God in History, Or, Divine Providence Historically
Illustrated in the Extension and Establishment of Christianity: 1802-1887, (HP Press, 1848), iv
97
Illustrated in the Extension and Establishment of Christianity (1802-1887) that casual
observers assumed the universe, and human history for that matter, arise from chance and
chaos. For Read, the observant student sees through this apparent chaos and discovers
“system and form.” He concludes, “All is animated by one soul, and that soul is
Providence.”
277
So too Jerry Falwell concluded that any “diligent student” recognizes
God’s agency in human affairs, and specifically in the form of our biblically founded
278
nation.
Theoretically, without Providence, our deeds and ethics remain a product of
our agency, fallible, contingent, and subject to judgment. As authors of our life worlds
we have no transcendental justification for our acts and no political mandate beyond our
own machinations. Rhetorically reconfiguring human actions into divine agency
attempts to place that which is done in the name of God beyond scrutiny and judgment.
As previously demonstrated, Barton’s treatment of Providence serves to
legitimate one epistemological paradigm (biblical worldview) above and against
paradigmatic rivals. We have traced the manner in which Barton deploys the concept as
a means to identify and discredit historians who omit God as the driving agent of history.
Barton argues that knowledge, historical analysis included, cannot be complete or
279
accurate if it is secular.
Barton warns that scholars try to erase God, and in doing so,
they write history
…Almost universally presented void of purpose. Yet no history can never really
be secular, for whether modern educators acknowledge it or not, God is actively
involved in the dealings of all men and all nations, in all ages. 280
When rightly
understood, all history is really a record of His unfolding story.
277
278
279
280
Read, Hand of God, iv. (All quotes)
Falwell, Listen, American, 25
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 912
Ibid.
98
Barton’s discourse provides general rules for the evaluation of knowledge. Without God
as an “overarching theme” history cannot be rightly understood.
281
Since scholars render
sets of knowledge without acknowledging God’s hand in human affairs, they produce
knowledge that is incomplete at best, and patently false and mendacious at worst. The
importance of grasping the “truth” stands tantamount to Barton since, “we learn from
282
history; and what we learn affects our behavior.”
He reminds readers, “Revisionism
attempts to alter the way a people sees its history in order to cause a change in public
policy.”
283
Tellingly, Barton stresses that “false” public memories of history engender
improper public policy formation. Moreover, “false” memories foster commitment to
political ideals that are contrary to God’s law. With these primers, Barton establishes the
“factual” basis of Providence, and the foundation for a justificatory scheme that sanctions
far right politics in the name of divine warrant. Through this biblical epistemological
paradigm he seeks to influence political attitudes and behavior by targeting historical
recollection, the general production of knowledge, and public memory.
The rhetorical construct--providence / revisionism--legitimates a “biblical
worldview” by vilifying those associated with alternate understandings of the world.
This vilification serves to hierarchically order social relations and epistemological truth
predicated on biblical fidelity. Epistemological commitments deemed anti-biblical,
secular, or “liberal” belong to illegitimate knowledge categorically. Such voices are to be
ignored. The “scapegoat mechanism,” as Burke termed it, not only produces unity and
order through division, but also, more importantly, serves as a marker to identify and
discredit illegitimate voices and ideas. Burke theorized that scapegoating produces a
profound sense of consubstantiality (identity and belonging) between those “who,
281
282
283
Ibid.
Barton, “God: Missing.” 1
Barton, “God: Missing,” 3
99
looking upon it as a chosen vessel, would ritualistically cleanse themselves by loading the
burden of their iniquities upon it,” in order to be “reborn of the self” and ritualistically
purified.
284
As per Barton’s claim, revisionists have “assaulted the moral and spiritual
285
fiber of our nation, leaving the truth of our past eliminated and forgotten, until today.”
Barton presents his expertise as that which will illuminate the true untold history of the
nation- a counter-measure against enemies of the State. Scapegoating, as symbolic
action, re-establishes “social cohesion, a sense of security, and an obedient relationship to
286
authority.”
The rhetoric of scapegoating aims to restore hierarchical order.
287
Barton’s
combined portrait of revisionism and Providence work to naturalize two distinct
hierarchical orders. First, knowledge stands as legitimate (biblical) or illegitimate
(secular). Second, Barton places men of his ilk at the top of the heap, affirming
heteronormative patriarchal headship as the proper, God ordained structure for human
social relations.
284
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1969), 406-7. The “iniquities” to be cleansed in the case of Christian nationalist politics are those
interests and efforts that seek to disenfranchise and or restrict the liberty of various fellow
Americans in a manner contrary to Constitutional decree. This includes but is not limited to
LGBT communities, Democratic voters, pro-choice advocates, and “secular humanist” liberals.
The corollary of such a stance seeks authorization of draconian policy efforts through the
auspices of the conceptualization of an “inspired” Constitution. The “biblicalization” of the
Constitution serves to justify far right policies as constitutionally sound and based upon God’s
will. I explore this in detail in subsequent chapters.
285
The American Heritage Series. My transcription.
286
Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia and Its Discontents,” in The Collective Memory Reader,
eds., Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitsky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, (Oxford University Press,
2011), 454. Also see Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other
Essays, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) and David Brion Davis, Fear of
Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present, (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1971)
287
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 406-408. Also see Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of
Motives, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 260-266
100
Theoretically, Barton’s conception of Providence functions to direct discursive
productions of truth.
288
Foucault states that, “there can be no exercise of power without a
certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this
association.”
289
He contends, “We are forced to produce the truth of power that our
society demands.”
290
Although the concept of Providence does not order the productions
of truth for the culture at large, it functions centrally to govern productions of truth within
the “biblical worldview.” That is to say, the “divine” operates as the authorizing standard
of statements of truth within the Christian nationalist fold. Barton’s interest to impose it
as a governmental and cultural standard for the culture at large illustrates a central
interest of Christian nationalist politics.
The inverse proposition of Providence deconstructs the figuration, pointing to an
absence of authority and purpose. Kenneth Burke mused that the mystic can “compensate
for his own particular doubts about human purpose by submerging himself in some vision
291
of a universal, or absolute, or transcendent purpose.”
Burke deftly argues that the
paradox of substance renders this type of imagined purpose “so ‘pure’ as to be much the
same as no purpose at all,” and likens the psychology of the mystic, in this case,
commensurate to “the psychology of neurosis.”
292
The struggle over public memory, as
embodied within Barton’s rhetoric, demonstrates a contest for nation played out, in
significant ways, within the terrain of the symbolic, where epistemological hegemony is
centrally at issue as the means to establish ontological and metaphysical truth. God’s
“Christian nation” stands as divine purpose in action. As an inverted proposition, the
288
289
290
291
292
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 93
Ibid.
Ibid.
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 288
Ibid.
101
claim is void of substance. Berger argues that every construction of reality finds itself
293
haunted by the “possibility of its collapse into anomy.”
Barton’s struggle against
epistemological intrusions from outside cultural voices illustrates a pitched rhetorical
effort to stave off anomic collapse of a self-professed “biblical worldview” in the face of
American otherness. More significantly, it illustrates an assiduous effort to assert power
through discourses of truth, and to position such knowledge in a manner that advances far
right political and cultural hegemonic interests. The providential perspective offers rules
for the productions of truth to those who espouse a Christian nationalist worldview.
Barton’s elaborate treatment of the concept aims to inform and direct the political beliefs
and behavior of far right patriots, as well as offer talking points for the faithful.
Hence, Providence functions not simply as an ordering principle but rather as the
foundation upon which such ordering and purpose establish who may speak, by what
authority, and to what effect. What effects of power unfold from productions of truth
discourses that foundationally require the presumption of biblical fidelity? Positioning
himself on the right side of history and memory, Barton’s rhetoric works to legitimate
and hence naturalize specific relations of power / knowledge that are grounded in the
definitive authority of the Divine. Barton’s outline of Providence functions to legitimate
one body of knowledge while discrediting all rivals. Disqualification of outside voices is
essential for the maintenance of the biblical worldview Christian nationalism espouses,
and, more importantly, for the political authorization such a perspective grants.
Providence and revisionism serve these purposes well. They equally underwrite any
conceivable political stance important to the movement and authorized such actions as
instituted by God.
Based upon the criteria of “biblical principles,” God serves as the standard by
which policy, everyday behavior, culture, and politics are to be judged, any political
293
Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 23
102
stance may be authorized by mobilizing such a warrant. Having identified those who
may not speak, and those whose expertise is to be summarily ignored, providential
discourse is free to establish the basis upon which truth is produced, authorized, and
initiated toward Christian nationalist goals. The figuration of God offers cover for those
who would project their interests and beliefs into a realm outside human agency and
invention. Invoking God’s authority as the basis for public policy short circuits political
thinking and debate. For example, in a 2012 WallBuilders’ radio broadcast Barton urged
Christian-patriots to take charge of the culture by making tolerance a sin and hate a virtue
again. He implored,
So we’ve got to get to the point where tolerance is seen as a sin because we’re
tolerating a lot of stuff that destroys our families, that destroys our own character
and we can’t tolerate that stuff. We have to get back to the point where hate is a
virtue, at least certain kinds of hate. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil and we
need to have a hatred of things and get off this fence of having no passion about
anything. You know, “I tolerate anything, I’m not going to have a passion good
or bad, I’m not going to hate anything…” We just can’t do that and we’ve got to
get back to294that same type of intolerance, that we’re going to be intolerant of
liberalism.
Barton’s sentiments call for a return to an assumed original state of being, which requires
adherents to hate God’s enemies and to brook no compromise culturally or politically.
His language utters a command in the form of “We just can’t do that!” meant to direct his
audience to the proper political stance and attitude. He commends behavioral obedience,
prompting his ideal followers to enact biblically righteous hatred for the greater glory of
God. The ambiguity of this statement leaves the condition and kinds of hatred
unspecified, creating an open-ended opportunity to justify various intolerant stances in
support of any number of political interests and goals. When we consider the use of God
294
Kyle Mantyla, “Barton: ‘Hate is a Virtue’ and ‘We’re Going to be Intolerant of
Liberalism,’” Right Wing Watch, January 2, 2012. Accessed January 23, 2012.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-hate-virtue-and-were-going-be-intolerantliberalism.html.
103
as the grounding term for political activity and ideological fidelity, such a concept helps
underscore the seriousness with which Christian nationalists stake their claim to nation.
Barton’s tone resembles that which Svetlana Boym calls restorative nostalgia.
Accordingly, the restorative nostalgic style is governed by two plot lines, “the return to
origins and the conspiracy.” The protagonists, ever under siege, find themselves in a
pitched battle of good against evil.
295
Such a perspective speaks of a Manichean universe
moving toward its eschatological climax. As Boym notes, restorative nostalgia “takes
itself dead seriously.” She suggests that adherents of restorative nostalgia do not view
themselves as nostalgic, but rather as defenders of the truth in a battle against a
296
pernicious foe.
In another example Barton commands a boycott of Starbucks Coffee since the
corporation supports marriage equality. In one of his radio broadcasts (2013) he stated,
“You can’t drink Starbucks and be biblically right.”
297
In his typically downhome style
of communication he warned, “one of the things God makes really clear is you’re not to
298
be helping the bad guys advance their agenda which is against God.”
He continued,
I’m talking about a whole value system: People who reject God’s value system
across the board and if we go help them, then we’re in trouble with God because
we’re helping the enemies. It’d be like an act of treason if this were a military
term, but to do that spiritually, you can’t go join the enemies of God and expect
God to 299
bless you on all the values and all the things he said was right and
wrong.
295
Boym, “Nostalgia and Its Discontents,” 453
296
Boym, “Nostalgia and Its Discontents,” 453. Barton’s rhetoric, in this case, is but one
example in a three-decade old canon of religious right rhetoric decrying the liberal destroyers of
Christianity and nation. Such discourses are evident in the writings of religious right pioneers
such as Jerry Falwell, Anita Bryant, Tim LaHaye, Francis Schaeffer, and Phyllis Schlafly.
297
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-drinking-starbucks-committingtreason-against-god
298
299
Ibid.
Ibid.
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Here Barton’s rhetoric reveals of general formula by which he directs the political
behavior and commitments of followers. The above discourse offers instructions on
proper behavior, advocates the adoption of a political stance, justifies its authority
through God, and issues a warning of divine retribution in the face of disobedience.
God’s enemies include LGBT communities and their allies. Yet, the swath equally
encompasses all those who disregard God’s value system, a values system Barton and his
far right cohorts actively construct on an ongoing basis. Such groupings include but are
not limited to “activist judges,” academics including prominent evangelical scholars, and
“secular humanist-liberals.” Barton’s discourse holds that these entities are dangerous
simply because their interests are deemed against God and are, therefore, anti-biblical.
Such a stance need not contend with arguments to the contrary. As Burke stated, the god
term functions as the “ultimate transcendence” beyond question and reproach. As a
disciplinary warning, Barton reminds his listeners that to patronize Starbucks is to
commit treason against God. By such an act, God retracts his blessings and his favor. The
invocation of God closes the debate, sanctifies the position through divine authority, and
prompt followers to respond obediently to God’s presumed will.
More significantly this formula underwrites Barton’s advice on biblical voting.
His extended essay entitled “The Bible, Voters and the 2008 Election” offers instructions
on how to “vote the ten commandments.” Barton instructs that God has a top four “nonnegotiable” items that voters must support above and before any other criteria. First,
voters must “appoint originalist judges.” Second, they must “protect unborn life.” Third,
they must oppose the “ennoblement of homosexuality,” and finally, they must publically
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acknowledge God and “honor Him in policy.”
With these “non-negotiables” in place,
Barton serves as God’s mouthpiece, issuing the following warning,
300
David Barton, “The Bible, Voters and the 2008 Election,” WallBuilders, (2008): 30.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/downloads/BibleVoters_lowres.pdf.
105
In fact, to elevate an issue above where God has elevated it is to usurp His
authority and that of His Word, and for a voter to select a candidate who is “right’
on immigration, healthcare, the economy, energy, etc., but is wrong on the
priority issues of righteousness such301as abortion and marriage is simply to usurp
His authority and that of His Word.
Barton’s iteration repeats the same warning twice within one sentence. Those who fail to
heed God’s priorities have acted against God. He clearly schools his readers, dictating
the proper political stance and the manner in which citizens are required to vote and
prioritize issues. Quoting George Washington’s October 3, 1789, Thanksgiving
Proclamation, Barton’s reminds his biblical voters that, “It is the duty of all nations to
302
acknowledge the providence of Almighty God” and “to obey His will.”
He contends,
the “most clearly un-Biblical policies” that govern the nation are “abortion-on-demand,”
“homosexual marriage,” “prohibitions against public acknowledgments of God,” and
303
“activist judges”.
Barton’s rhetoric attempts to exact obedience by threat of divine
discipline. He repeats this formula at a conference entitled Champion the Vote (2010).
Barton stresses, “God says, ‘I want you to keep marriage the way I told you it was back
in Genesis.’” He continued,
What doesn’t make the top ten is the environment or helping the poor or energy or
whatever. So if we take other issues and raise them above God’s top ten, then we
have usurped what God has told us in the Scriptures and what God told his nation:
“I’ve given you 613
laws, but here’s my prioritization, these are the most
304
important ones.”
301
Barton, “The Bible, Voters,” 10
302
George Washington as quoted in Barton, “The Bible, Voters, and the 2008 Election,”
30. Barton’s emphasis.
303
304
Barton, “The Bible, Voters,” 11
Kyle Mantyla, “Barton: Vote the Ten Commandments,” Right Wing Watch, October
2, 2012. Accessed October 3, 2012. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-vote-tencommandments
106
Barton assumes God’s voice urging voters to forget poverty and other pressing social
issues since they are not among God’s top priorities for the nation. Once again, to act
otherwise is to usurp God’s authority.
This strategy seeks to discredit public education as well. Barton reminds his radio
listeners that God does not sanction public education. Emphasizing that Christian
children placed in public schools including colleges will not receive God’s blessing,
Barton states, “You can train them the right way or you can put ‘em in public school and
305
see what you get out of that.”
He admonishes his Christian listeners whose children are
in public school, saying “show me any biblical model where God has his kids put in
secular education. Not a single.... [sic] So how do you expect to put your kids in
something God has never blessed and expect him to…”
306
Barton emphatically stresses,
If you’re going to be in Babylon, you don’t get Babylonian education. And if
you’re going to be307Moses, you don’t get Pharaoh’s education. You gotta get
God’s education!
Barton postures as God’s insider, helping others understand God’s will for the nation.
Working in tandem with what Barton tirelessly defines as illegitimate educational
materials, venues, and instructors, Barton’s rhetoric encourages disengagement with
alternative voices, provides God as the authorizing principle behind such acts, and
threatens followers with God’s potential retribution in the face of disobedience.
305
Kyle Mantyla, “Barton: There is No Model Whereby God Blesses Those in Secular
Education,” Right Wing Watch, November 4, 2013. Accessed November 4, 2013.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-there-no-model-whereby-god-blesses-thosesecular-education
306
My transcription follows Barton’s exact expression including where he does not
conclude his sentences.
307
Ibid.
107
A final example illustrates both this underlying authorizing strategy and Barton’s
use of history to influence public memory and policy formation. Speaking of the Bible,
Barton states,
It is God who established civil government, and for Christians to say, “I’m not
going to get involved—that’s secular.” You’re denying the authority of God’s
Word. It’s God who established the right basis for economics done the right way.
And to say, “oh, economics, that’s secular stuff, I’m not going to…” You can’t do
that! This is all God’s stuff! It is out of this book [points to the Bible] that we get
civil rights.
Significantly, Barton instructs his constituents that they cannot abstain from the battle,
particularly as it concerns government and economics. To do so is to “deny the authority
of God’s Word.”
A Theology of (dis)Accreditation
Conceptually, the providential perspective conditions all historical accounting as
evidence of God’s agency in human affairs. Applied, the providential perspective
mobilizes theological precepts in the name of historical analysis. A historical account
devoid of providence, for Christian nationalists, speaks of a universe without meaning,
order, or purpose. The figuration of providence as God’s direct agency provides an
ostensible order and meaning to existence. It speaks of God’s plan for the universe and
human redemption. Barton mobilizes the construct to discredit “secular,” oppositional
voices and bodies of knowledge while authorizing the Christian nationalist
epistemological paradigm as “true” knowledge. Barton asserts that the absence of a
providential perspective illustrates positive proof of a conspiracy to hide American’s
biblical history. This conspiracy rhetoric identifies usurpers of nation (and God) as
responsible for the falsification of history. These “enemies of God” are responsible for
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creating an entire cultural milieu that defends the notion of a secular Constitution, the
separation of church and state, and policy formation based upon anti-biblical principles.
Barton’s use of providence establishes the standard by which knowledge and
expertise are deemed biblically sound or invalidated as anti-biblical. Barton argues that
secular cultural agents continue to purposively expunge God’s name and influence from
the historical record. I argued that Barton mobilizes the concept of providence as an
interpretive strategy that authorizes a Christian nationalist epistemological perspective
and discredits rival expertise and bodies of knowledge. Providence serves not only as a
means by which one body of knowledge is legitimated over another, but, in the final
analysis, operates--through this model of legitimation--to form the crucial foundation
upon which any far right political interests may be popularized, naturalized, and
defended. Invoking God as the authorizing standard for public policy establishes a
troublesome legal, intellectual, and cultural precedent that forecloses upon genuine,
responsible, and rigorous political and ethical thinking and deliberative practices. God as
authorizing standard is antithetical to a constitutional republic, a point that Barton
circumvents in his demand for obedience. He does so by repetitively and explicitly
reminding his audience that acting against God’s will invites divine retribution.
Barton’s historical renderings aim to influence belief and political behavior. His
narrative argues that false knowledge leads to improper governance and policy formation,
and this has brought the nation to the brink of ruin. Leaders like Barton work assiduously
to keep lay Christian nationalists motivated and active in the political battle to restore the
nation to God. I have endeavored to demonstrate that Barton’s discourse illustrates a
marked concern for the dissemination of cultural knowledge, as well as an awareness of
how belief systems, or regimes of truth, form the basis upon which relations of power,
knowledge, and social hierarchies are naturalized, deployed, and reproduced.
Barton’s prolific body of work, as we will see in the subsequent chapters,
illustrates the application of a providential perspective continuously, most often as an
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implicit given, by which the invocation of biblical fidelity serves as the authorizing
principles of all historical and political arguments. Said another way, Barton legitimizes
policy, ideas, and arguments upon the basis of whether they are deemed “biblical” or
“anti-biblical.” Providence --God’s presence-- then, extends beyond just the treatment of
historical evidence and narrative to a larger complex where the veracity of statements and
propositions require the sanction of biblical fidelity (God’s warrant).
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CHAPTER 4
STRATEGIC BIBLICAL LITERALISM: REMEMBRANCE, TEXTUAL
AUTHORITY, AND BARTON’S INSPIRED CONSTITUTION
To my knowledge, a case can be made that Americans have known the
Constitution best when they have revered it308
least, and that idolatry has too often
served as a convenient cover for ignorance. – Michael Kammen
On the eve of the 2012 Republican National Convention, key Republican
politicians and religious right leaders participated in an opening event entitled “Prayer
Rally for American’s Future: Committing Our Nation and the GOP Convention to God in
Prayer” which was held at the River Church in Tampa. Sponsored by the state chapter of
Focus on the Family (Florida Family Policy Council in conjunction with Citizenslink),
the event streamed live connecting various churches around the country via cyberspace to
the River Church Rally in Tampa. This live stream event invited citizens across the
309
nation to “unite and cry out to God for mercy and blessings on our nation.”
One of the
event’s key participants, David Barton, also served as a delegate and contributing writer
310
for what was hailed as the “most conservative GOP platform in history.”
Michele
Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Phyllis Schlafly shared the headline with Barton, the first
two speaking at the Tea Party portion of the rally that followed group prayer.
Conservative radio show host Rusty Humphries declared that he wanted to take the
country “upward, to God.”
311
Humphries decried “We have to treat these liberals like
308
Michael Kammen, A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American
Culture, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 24
309
http://www.prayerrally2012.com
310
Kyle Mantayla, “David Barton: 70 of My 71 Motions Were Included in the GOP
Platform,” Right Wing Watch, August 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlI4aQH3tVM.
311
Rusty Humphries has a nationally syndicated radio show called The Rusty Humphries
Show where he serves as a conservative, pro-Tea Party commentator.
111
dogs. Grab ‘em by the collar and say ‘bad democrat, bad democrat. Bad. No, no, I said
no!’” Humphries told the audience that he had a message for Obama and the White
house, for Nancy Pe-lousy (an intentional pun), who he likened to a witch, for Hillary
Clinton, “Bill Clinton’s WINO, Wife in name only,” for the RINOs (Republicans in name
only), and all of the “Czars, moochers, bums, bandits, looters, and thieves otherwise
known as liberals.” Humphries shouted, “I’m gonna say it slow so that even these
liberals can understand it…IT’S NOT YOUR MONEY, IT’S OUR MONEY!.... this
money belongs to the American people.” The crowd joined in the chant, as they had
312
joined Bachman in the refrain, “We are going to take this country back.”
Humphries’s
cast of characters left no doubt about who qualifies as an enemy of the State.
Earlier, during the prayer portion of the rally, the anti-same-sex coupling and antiabortion rhetoric loomed large. Participants prayed for the marriage amendment and
asked God to turn the courts into a pro-life, pro-“traditional marriage” institution. They
wished for a new President (Mitt Romney) who would share their values. Supplicants
were treated to a variety of lectures reminding them that same-sex relations and same-sex
marriage caused an “immediate loss of personal freedoms, an immediate loss of parental
rights, and an immediate loss of religious liberties.”
313
Barton explained to the crowd that
the founding fathers made abortion illegal via the Seventh Amendment. Decked out in a
shirt covered with the American flag, he emphatically stated,
“The first belief we have in an American government, in American society, is that
there’s a divine Creator. That is not a personal belief. That’s an official,
government belief that’s in our founding document. First thing we say is “There’s
a Creator.” The second thing we say is “We believe the Creator gave us a certain
set of rights, that are God-given, inalienable rights. They exist to every person on
the globe just because they were born, just because, actually, just because they
312
“Tea Party Unity Rally 2012 at the River Church in Tampa.” Last modified August
27, 2012.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31CC_cRNLg8
313
“Highlights from Prayer Rally for America’s Future.” Last modified August 27, 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwoQEdyIHw
112
were conceived, quite frankly! The Founding Fathers recognized abortion as a
crime way back in the beginning. That’s why in the Seventh Amendment of the
Constitution, part of the common law, you’re not allowed to do abortions.
Because God gave us 314
life, not humans. Humans can’t take life that God gives so
it’s real simple stuff.” (My emphasis)
The above vignette highlights the “take back the nation” rhetoric popular amongst
religious right constituents within the Republican Party. The discourse centers on the
proposition that God birthed a Christian nation, which has only recently been
commandeered by secular liberals. Within this discursive snapshot we witness both an
easy tendency to vilify the opposition and an invitation for the audience to identify
themselves as authentic Americans ensconced in a struggle to recapture the organs of
government from godless traitors of the nation. Barton’s comments illustrate the general
premises that ground the Religious Right’s avowed claim to nation. He credits the
creations of the government to God, citing the divine as the source of “inalienable rights.”
Barton reads the Constitution’s Seventh Amendment as if it were in complete harmony
with and a direct expression of far right abortion politics, sanctioned by God. A quick
perusal of the Seventh Amendment might make outsiders wonder how audiences accent
to Barton’s reading. At play are larger theological structures and communally circulated
strains of argumentation that lend plausibility to his reading of the Constitution. Barton
reads the Constitution as a God ordained document, by which he and his followers stake
their claim to an ostensibly American Christian nation. As public memory texts, millions
of Christian nationalist and political allies rehearse renditions of a Christian Constitution
insisting upon the factual basis of their interpretations. The politics underlying this
public remembrance of a Christian nation seeks to legitimate far right political ideology,
and treat it as if it were biblical and Constitutional. This chapter focuses on the rhetorical
314
“Barton: Abortion Banned Under 7th Amendment.” Last modified August 27, 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOoGuPJ8pM8. The Seventh Amendment states: “In suits of
common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury
shall be preserved and no fact tried by jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the
United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
113
strategy Barton mobilizes to affirm his reading of a Christian Constitution, investigating
the theological codes that ground his interpretation.
This chapter explores the interpretive procedures Barton enacts to meet the
challenge of a Constitution devoid of explicitly Protestant declarations. Barton calls upon
Americans to “remember” a Christian nation, arguing that such a mandate is “literally” in
the Constitution. Since the Constitution’s content issues no explicit declaration of
allegiance to Protestantism or Christianity in general, Barton creates the text anew,
offering a narrative meant to prove the biblical foundation of the national charter. Barton
crafts intertextual relationships between theology and the Constitution as a means to
procure the textual evidence he needs to make his case “literally.” As such, he performs
“literal” reading for his audience, exploiting a shared belief in literalism, inerrancy, and
inspiration common to conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists. I argue that this
interpretive strategy, as performed and rendered through the framing of literalism,
inerrancy, and inspiration, enables Barton to provide an “inspired Constitution” for his
audience; one predicated upon biblical writ, and, thus, underwritten by the hand of God.
Barton’s rhetorical construction labors to fix the content of original intent, establishing
God as the authoritative voice undergirding American law. The subterfuge of literalism
and inspiration facilitate the “appearance” of documentary proof for the Christian
mandate. The appearance of an inspired original intent serves as a justificatory scheme
by which nationalists like Barton affirm actions to Christianize public policy in the name
of remembrance, founding intentions, and God.
315
The chapter begins by elucidating the rhetorical scaffolding Barton erects to
support the plausibility of a Constitution founded upon biblical writ. Barton primes his
315
Some policy initiatives that illustrate the effort to Christianize public policy are as
follows but not limited to the Marriage Amendment (one man/one women), covenant marriage,
school vouchers, faith based initiatives, home school movement, Unborn Amendment initiative,
and anti-abortion and invasive ultra sound legislation.
114
audience to regard the Constitution as “enduring rather than evolving, and draws upon the
legal hermeneutic known as originalism in concert with biblical literalism to lend
credibility to the premise of a factually based, immutable original intent embodied within
the text. Next I trace Barton’s case for an inspired Constitution, analyzing the rhetorical
and political significance an “inspired” Constitution denotes to Barton’s ideal audience.
Here Barton shifts from priming the document as fixed in meaning, to supplying that
meaning for his audience’s consumption. I analyze the manner in which the theological
matrix of inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism functions to condition his audience’s
perception of the text, meant to motivate political behavior in favor of the restoration of a
“remembered” Christian nation. Last, I explicate how Barton’s literalist operational
definition of “primary sources” advances his overall argument. I demonstrate how this
configuration enhances his authoritative ethos and serves as an important framing
element in support of an inspired Constitution.
Treating Texts Literally: Interpretation and Its Subterfuge
In the following section I examine the structural foundation Barton erects to
render constitutional meaning as stable and static. Barton mobilizes several
argumentative strands that support his larger construction of an inspired Constitution.
First, Barton attempts to “stabilize” the text by coding it as “enduring” rather than
“evolving” in its textual nature. I trace his advocacy of originalism–-which he treats as
the only authentic constitutional interpretive schema in existence--and discuss how his
characterization of this twentieth century legal hermeneutic leans upon the edifice of
literalism and historical remembrance to substantiate this claim. I investigate his
operational definition of primary documents versus secondary documents, demonstrating
how this formulation lends authority to his larger constitutional claim. Before turning to
Barton’s argumentative foundation, I briefly retrace the general historical context of the
115
Constitution’s original production and circulation, and consider the question of its
interpretation from a rhetorical perspective.
As stated earlier in this study, the Constitution represents a document produced by
multiple individuals over an extended period of time. Its conceptual makeup draws
heavily upon Enlightenment theories of republicanism and representative government.
The document demonstrates no singular, unified voice but illustrates instead the best
effort of a collective to draft a constitutional instrument amenable to the political
communities it sought to unite under a federal government. The manuscript represents an
exercise in compromise. It was not constructed or ratified to the satisfaction of all
concerned. The Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers testify to the extended
debate over its features, proffering a record of the specific grievances advanced by its
detractors. The charter’s flexibility and nuanced language remains a source of
contestation and debate between political agonists. The interpretive history of the
Constitution is far too complex and rich to discuss in detail within this study.
Nonetheless, it must be stated that the interpretation of its provision and our
understanding of the motivations and intentions of its drafters continue to shift despite
continued attempts by various political combatants to claim its meaning and authority for
316
one political stance or another.
From a rhetorical standpoint, the Constitution offers provisions that must
necessarily be interpreted by some type of hermeneutical schema. Kenneth Burke
observes that, as a form of address, the Constitution’s content “propounds certain desires,
commands, or wishes.”
317
As such, he suggests that “Constitutions are important in
singling out certain directives for special attention, and thus bringing them more clearly
316
317
See chapter two for an extended treatment of this subject with source citations.
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 360
116
318
to men’s consciousness.”
Accordingly, the text requires new enactments based upon its
verbal structure. Burke elaborates,
Since the Constitution itself does not specify priority among the wishes, does not
state which among these equals shall be “foremost,” then the Court must make
these decisions for itself, its judgment being a “new act,” so far as the
Constitution is concerned. And this act would lie outside the Constitution, being
319
motivated by the Court’s view of the Constitution-beneath-the-Constitution.
Focusing on the court and its interpretive process in the above example, Burke
underscores the polysemic and undecided condition of textuality, and highlights the
agent’s role in crafting its meaning. He argues that each instance of reading necessitates
extra-constitutional decisions that select and deselect which wishes should be granted or
320
ignored, subsumed, or amplified in every case.
Burke astutely notes that, “The fiction
of positive law has generally served to set up the values, traditions, and trends of business
as the Constitution-behind-the-Constitution that is to be consulted as criterion.”
321
This
suggests that the criteria by which we make such decisions lies outside the text itself.
Moreover, Burke’s point intimates that interpreters are situated readers, and as such,
bring their interpretive biases and interests into the exegetical process. In this sense, the
“fiction of positive law” appears to mask that the constructs that human beings draw upon
to animate the Constitution from without.
As situated readers, we cannot alienate ourselves from the traditions, values, and
perspectives we bring to the text. Hans-Georg Gadamer suggests that much of what
318
319
320
321
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 367
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 380
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 376
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 363
117
preconditions our understanding remains outside the interpreter’s recognition.
322
He
asserts, “The prejudices and fore-meanings in the mind of the interpreter are not at his
free disposal. He is not able to separate in advance the productive prejudices that make
323
understanding possible from the prejudices that hinder understanding.”
Gadamer’s
sense of hermeneutics, as a process of application, interpretation, and understanding,
prompts us to move beyond the “naiveté” of historical objectivism, as if the situated self
324
disappears in the event of understanding.
He suggests that a historical object (e.g. U.S
Constitution, the Bible) is not an object, but rather a conjoining of “the reality of history
and the reality of historical understanding” where understanding constitutes a new event
“in every concrete situation.”
325
From this standpoint, understanding constitutes
application, and all application by agents is bound by conditions that bear upon acts of
interpretation.
326
Gadamer concludes, “understanding is always interpretation.”
327
Barton’s literal framing of the Constitution attempts to establish the document as
transparent in expression and deed. That is to say, Barton encourages his readers to think
that understanding the authentic expression within a text requires no interpretation, a
gesture that extends the presumptions of biblical literalism to textuality in general. As a
literal document, the Constitution would theoretically “say what it means, and mean what
322
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.
Marshal, (London: Continuum, 2006), 308
323
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Truth and Method,” in The Collective Memory Reader, Jeffery
K. Olick, Vered Vinitsky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), 181
324
325
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 307, 298
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 308
326
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 299
327
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 306
118
it says.” Barton emphasizes this point in his The American Heritage Series informing his
audience,
You know, the Constitution is such an easy document. It is a short document.
You can sit down, you can read it in a half an hour. It’s just not a hard document
to read. Most Americans have never read it, even once in their life. In the period
of time it takes to watch a sitcom, you can read the Constitution and know what
the document says. But we rely on the media, on law professors, on guys like this
[holds the book The Godless Constitution up to the camera for his audience to
see] to tell us what
it says. If we read it for ourselves, it’s a no brainer. It’s a
328
very easy thing. (My emphasis)
Barton’s insistence on the straightforward accessibility of textual meaning conveys a
literalist’s assurance. Though he stresses anyone can read the document in a short period
and understand its meanings, Barton makes a point to discredit oppositional voices with
the same focused energy he exerts to shape and guide the perceptions he wishes his
audience to adopt. In his assertion, one can hear the refrain of Charles Hodge
proclaiming that the Bible is a “plain book,” “intelligible by the people” provided they
329
come to its pages with the proper religious attitude.
Such a “proper religious attitude”
would find assistance through the Holy Spirit, who guides the reader to the proper use
and understanding of the text.
330
Where Hodge relied upon the “storehouse of facts”
plainly apprehended within the Bible, Barton emphasizes much the same treatment of the
Constitution, obfuscating the inconvenient fact that the Constitution represents a multivocal document that is neither unified in its provisions, nor beyond contestation in the
interpretation of it statutes.
328
The American Heritage Series with David Barton, DVD, directed by John Pevoto and
David Barton (Aledo, TX: WallBuilders, 2009), Disc 3
329
330
See Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, I
Hodge, “Perspicuity of Scripture,” Systematic Theology, I
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology1.iii.vi.v.html
119
Barton advocates a reductive version of the legal hermeneutic known as
originalism as a tactic to establish the Constitution’s literal accessibility. He covers this
terrain in his densely annotated Founders’ Bible (2012), as well as in The Bible, Voters,
and the 2008 Election. In The Founders’ “What is Constitutional?” Barton writes, “The
Constitution is a simple and straightforward document; it is easy to understand and can be
read in twenty minutes. Yet today we are regularly told that it is complicated and only
331
those with the highest legal acumen…can interpret it.”
His narrative emphasizes that
elementary students once regularly studied the text and grasped its meaning without the
332
aid of legal experts.
He continues, “Even the overall nature of the Federalist Papers
333
testifies to the simplicity of the Constitution.”
Then, Barton makes an abrupt shift
arguing that,
For The Constitution’s first century and a half, the uncomplicated philosophy
used to interpret it was called Originalism, Original Intent,334
or Textualism—the
simple belief that the Constitution means just what it says.
Here he introduces the concept of originalism as a simple juridical interpretive tradition
only recently aborted. Without offering an explanation of the general assumptions of this
interpretive tradition, his shift in focus from lay readers to legal experts maintains the
basic premise he seeks to champion. That is to say, he wishes his audience to understand
that judges read the manuscript faithfully for what it “actually” says. Barton reiterates to
his readers, “again, very simple! In short, the Constitution was written in plain English
and means just what it said.”
331
332
333
334
335
335
Barton’s claim neglects to state that originalism is a
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1973
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1974
120
neoconservative legal hermeneutical invention of the latter twentieth-century. Instead
Barton proffers a patently false historical accounting of originalism, situating it as an
interpretive practice as old as the nation itself. Barton’s rendition of originalism
presupposes that interpretive practices are simple acts of reading the “transparent” intent
of the founders within the document. Practitioners of originalism like Robert Bork and
Antonin Scalia assume that the Constitution’s provisional “desires” are plainly evident
provided it is read by adopting the mindset of the historical era it was created in and by
tracing authorial intent.
336
Barton presents Constitutional interpretation as a false dilemma whereby
originalist conservative jurisprudence is judged authentic and “faithful” to textual
meaning and “liberal” readings are deemed illicit innovations of the document. In The
Bible, Voters, and the 2008 Election Barton instructs citizens to choose the presidential
candidate who would declare “’The Constitution is sacred…I don’t believe in liberal
activist judges, I believe in strict constructionists.’”
337
He warns his audience against
338
choosing judges who think of the Constitution is a “living” document.
Accordingly,
Barton stresses, “Under original intent (also called ‘strict constructionist,’ or ‘originalist’
336
For an excellent discussion of the concept of originalism see Jack N. Rakove,
Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, (New York: Vintage
Books, 1996). Also see Robert M. Howard and Jeffrey A. Segal, “An Original Look at
Originalism,” Law and Society Review 36 (2002): 113-138, Daniel Levin, “Federalists in the
Attic: Original Intent, the Heritage Movement, and Democratic Theory,” Law and Social Inquiry
29 (2004): 105-126, Jack N. Rakove, "The Great Compromise: Ideas, Interests, and the Politics of
Constitution Making," The William and Mary Quarterly 44 (1987): 424-457, Louis E. Feldman,
“Originalism through Raz-Colored Glasses,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 140 (1992):
1389-1428, Gregory Bassham, Original Intent and the Constitution: A Philosophical Study,
(Savage: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), Caleb Nelson, “Originalism and Interpretive
Conventions,” University of Chicago Law Review 70 (2003): 519-598, and James McBride,
“Religion and the First Amendment: An Inquiry into the Presuppositions of the ‘Jurisprudence of
Original Interpretation,’” Journal of Law and Religion 6 (1988):1-23.
337
David Barton, “The Bible, Voters, and the 2008 Election,” (Aledo: WallBuilders,
2008), 11-12. http://www.wallbuilders.com/downloads/BibleVoters_lowres.pdf
338
Ibid.
121
approach), judges actually read the Constitution and attempt to follow its clear written
meanings until such time as the people themselves amend the Constitution to give it a
new direction in a specific area.”
339
Activist judges, conversely, do not derive their
guidance “from an actual written document with fixed absolutes but rather from their
340
own previous decisions on a subject.”
Barton uses the idea of originalism—rendered
here as another form of literalism-- to establish the plausible basis upon which he shall
claim that original intent is a historically factual and fixed expression embodied within
the text. This step is important in the overall process he undertakes to characterize the
essence of its contents as inspired, and thus representative of God’s will.
Though Barton makes a case for originalism and plain reading, scholarly research
demonstrates otherwise, where multivariate analysis suggests “legal arguments as to text,
and particularly intent, have little impact on the votes of even those Justices alleged to be
originalists. Instead, ideology continues to explain their decisions.”
341
The notion of
textual felicity is central to Barton’s arguments, as it is within the originalist perspective
in general. In the process of affirming the fidelity of contextualization through authorial
figuration and historical period, the literalist framing serves to occlude the interpretive
processes by which originalist judges render ideologically motivated judgments. The
339
Ibid. My emphasis added.
340
Ibid. The argument that progressive judges and politicians willfully neglect reading
the Constitution and form their legal decisions based upon personal opinion circulates widely in
conservative public discourse. For instance, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, in
2013 accused President Obama of exercising “dictatorial powers” arguing that the President
intentionally “ignores” the Constitution. The refrain implicitly argues that progressive ideas are
contrary to the Constitution and those who espouse them must necessarily be ignoring the
Constitution in the process of policy formation. Brian Tashman, “Dobson on Obama’s
Reelection: ‘Nearly Everything I have Stood for these Past 35 Years Went Down to Defeat,’”
Right Wing Watch, January 7, 2013. Accessed January 7, 2013.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/dobson-obama-reelection-everything-stood-for-pastyears-went-down-defeat.html
341
Robert M. Howard and Jeffrey A. Segal, “An Original Look at Originalism,” Law and
Society Review 36 (2002): 113
122
literalist framing enables originalist advocates a means to credit their own authority as
truthful, honest, and accurate. As a matter of practice, originalists deny interpretive
agency in favor of autotelic texts and authorial intention.
With originalism in place, Barton’s next rhetorical move situates God as the
definitive authorial voice within the Constitution. He promotes the idea of an “enduring”
342
Constitution against the modern conception of an “evolving” national charter.
Barton’s
rhetoric attempts to prime the text as stable and singular in meaning, preparing it as a
ready container for projected Christian nationalist precepts and values. Again in “What is
Constitutional?” Barton charts the parameters of the “false” beliefs undergirding
“activist” legal decisions. Accordingly, readers learn that the “Living Constitution’s”
foundational assumptions hold that,
1.
There is no objective, God-given standards of law, or if there is, they
are irrelevant to the modern legal system.
Since God is not the author of law, the author of law must be man, in
other words the law is law simply because the highest human authority,
the State, has said it is law.
Since man and society evolve, therefore law must evolve as well.
Judges, through their decisions, guide the evolution of law.
To study
law, get at the original sources of law—the decisions of
343
judges.
2.
3.
4.
5.
342
George Thomas argues, “The Madisonian view suggests that the Constitution calls
forth continual debate about constitutional meaning. The ‘settlement’ of constitutional issues is
not an essential feature of our constitutional system.” (233) Hence, according to a Madisonian
perspective, “constitutional maintenance is an essentially political task called forth by an active
institutional framework – a sort of ‘living Constitution.’” George Thomas, "Recovering the
Political Constitution: The Madisonian Vision," The Review of Politics 66 (2004): 238. Also see
Derek H. Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774 – 1789, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), xi, and Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the
Making of the Constitution, (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 14. Michael Kammen notes that
prior to the twentieth century, Americans spoke of the Constitution as an “instrument” or “great
machine.” A shift occurred in the beginning of the twentieth century whereby Americans began
conceiving of the Constitution as an organic organism, referring to it as such. See Michael
Kammen, A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture, (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 17-19.
343
Ibid.
123
Barton’s shift here is subtle but critical. By his logic, the objective standard of law is the
“God-given standards of law.” Already we have moved from the constitutional text as
law to the notion of objective law as underwritten by God’s authority. If God is not the
author of law, then we are left with man as the measure of all things. From this vantage
point, Barton performs an operation of linguistic transcendence, reframing the
Constitution within the rhetorical circumference of Divine law. In this new verbal terrain,
secular (profane) authority is characterized as subjective, fallible, inauthentic, and, most
importantly, against God design. Barton’s discourse identifies the threat to the idea of
universal law posed by deconstructionism. He rails against postmodern relativity stating
“Because poststructuralism rejects absolute truth in favor of individual interpretations (a
condition lamented in Judges 21:25 that ‘everyone did that which was right in his own
eyes’), individual anarchy against traditional unifying national values is encouraged and
group affiliation is elevated above national identity.”
344
The notion of God’s law enables
Christian nationalist like Barton to lay claim to the nation’s identity and organs of power
in a manner ostensibly ordained by God. This distinction is critical to Barton’s overall
argument since he strategically positions himself as God’s mouthpiece. “Man’s law” is
relative, requiring us to take responsibility for the conventions we establish and the social
constructions we call into being. The invocation of God occludes Barton’s agency as
God’s ventriloquist.
The underlying principle of originalism assumes that meaning is located within
the clearly expressed intent of founding authors. The fiction of returning to an original
345
state illustrates an “attempt to capture the exact essence of a thing.”
As Foucault
asserted, it speaks of a ‘”primordial truth fully adequate to its nature,” and while enabling
344
David Barton, “Deconstructionism and the Left,” 4. WallBuilders. Last modified July
28, 2011. http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=95644.
345
Michel Foucault, ““Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul
Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984): 78
124
a “possible field of knowledge whose function is to recover it.”
346
Foucault contends, the
“truth of things correspond to a truthful discourse” and not to the supposed origin or
347
“thing” itself.
The guiding assumptions of originalism postulates original intent as a
field of knowledge which than requires originalists to recover it.
God as origin or original source (of creation, and hence law) functions in the same
capacity. Barton’s shift marks God as the foundation and creator of law. He brands God
as the Author behind universal law in general and American law in particular. This is the
idea Barton aims to affirm when he labors to discredit the understanding of “man” as the
measure of all things. In this case, searching for authorial voice becomes a quest to
ostensibly understand God’s will and return to the source of all things. Curiously, Roland
Barthes likened the search for authorial intent to that of a gesture akin to theological
conviction. He argues, “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing
‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author God) but a multi-dimensional space
in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue
348
of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture.”
According to Barthes, this
cult of the Author imagines that we can understand intent by “knowing” the personage of
the author. This functions much like suggesting that we understand the meaning of
scripture if we first know God’s personage, or by extension, have the Holy Spirit as
guide. It is not an accident that Barthes addresses the term “Author” as an analog for
“God.” Significantly, he posits, “To give an Author is to impose a limit on the text, to
349
furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.”
To impose a limit on the text
illustrates precisely what Barton’s rhetoric seeks to enable in the minds of a receptive
346
347
348
349
Foucault, The Foucault Reader, 79
Ibid.
Ibid.
Barthes, Image - Music – Text, 147.
125
audience. As the authorizing force behind both the Bible and law (as Barton conceives of
it), a proprietary claim to special knowledge of God’s dictates establishes the basis upon
which textual matter is subsumed under this singular authorial source. By such a gesture,
the interpretation of the Constitution, or other “founding documents,” are summarily
reduced to the procedure of reading God’s intent.
The operating assumption undergirding this assertion of a universal standard
effaces human agency, supposing that in its application, God makes the rules, not men.
Boone’s observation comes to mind, that those who presume to speak for God suggest
that it is not their words, but God’s commands, a strategy that denies interpretive agency.
Boone states, “authoritative interpreters are able to exercise power over their subjects by
obfuscating the distinction between text and interpretation” and as such “interpreters
350
establish their credentials and ally themselves with the absolute text.”
Such a strategy
deflects moral responsibility and culpability while deriving its authoritative stance (and
justification) from the divine.
Having established that the “evolving” Constitution derives its authority from
God, Barton concludes his article on “What is Constitutional” by hailing his audience to
understand themselves as authentic subjects of the nation, united against those who defy
the law of the land and God’s will. Barton writes, “The real danger of a Living
Constitution rests not in the fact that societal corrections are needed, but rather in the fact
that they are made by unelected and unaccountable individuals whose personal values
usually do not reflect those of ‘We the People.’” With this he commands, “We the
People” must reject the “Living Constitution,” return to original intent, and “remove
351
those who ignore or usurp the Constitution.”
350
351
Boone, For the Bible Tells Them So, 78-9
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1977-8
126
With this priming in place, Barton develops the idea of an inspired Constitution,
moving one step closer to the implicit argument that God mandated a Christian nation
and that this mandate is plainly evidenced within founding documents. We turn to his
rhetorical invention of an inspired Constitution and trace its political ramifications as
memory texts intended to influence political behavior and public knowledge. The next
section begins with a brief review of biblical literalism, inerrancy, and inspiration, which
were contextualized at length in chapter two.
Barton’s Inspired Constitution
The concept of biblical inerrancy holds that scripture constitutes the direct Word
of God, infallible and unerring in its entirety. Biblical literalist believe that the inerrant
nature of God’s revelation can be comprehended through literal reading practices, and
plainly understood by the educated and uneducated alike. Theologically, inspiration acts
upon the reader, not the text. The text itself is treated as unerring and unchanging. In
this sense, human readers bring fallibility to the equation, and the Holy Spirit acts
supernaturally to guide readers to the proper understanding of revelation.
352
The
designation also denotes God’s active hand in producing such documents. The idea of an
inspired Bible has come to be taken as the direct word of God and not just his revelations
as recorded by human beings. Inspired documents, while written by human beings, are
said to be the work of God through faithful vassals. The first concept combats the
problem of the ambiguity and instability of language. The second contends with the
352
For excellent sources on literalism, inerrancy, the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in
interpretation see Earnest R. Sandeen, “The Princeton Theology: One Source of Biblical
Literalism in American Protestantism,” Church History, 31 (1962): 307-321, Earnest R. Sandeen,
The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1880-1930, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2008), Kathleen Boone, The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of
Protestant Fundamentalism, (London: SCM Press, 1989), and Charles Hodge, Systematic
Theology, Vol. I, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968).
127
problem of shoring up textual authority. In this tradition, certainty is critical. Authority
comes from God, not human creations, and authority rests on the presumed stability of
the written word. The rhetorical categorization of inspiration as a “truthful” postulation
of the nature of textuality assumes that inspired documents are conditioned by the
fundamental qualities of inerrancy and literalism. An inspired document is both a text
directed by God’s providential hand and also a work directly representative of God’s will.
We will explore the features and ramification of these theological elements
employed as rhetorical strategies that enable David Barton to biblicalize “original intent,”
and claim it in the name of contemporary Christian nationalism. As a critical
intervention against “secular” culture, one significant way Barton contends with the
absence of religious language in the Constitution is by marking it as inspired. Religionists
from a prior era sought to amend the Constitution as a solution to the omission of
specifically Protestant Christian references in the text. Their modern counterparts have
sought a different rhetorical solution to overcome the problem. Christian nationalists
read the Constitution as a Christian national charter. I turn first to Barton’s The
American Heritage Series, 10 Volume educational DVD collection, to explore the
multilayered approach Barton crafts to provide his audience proof of a Christian mandate
within the nation’s charter. In a critical segment entitled “America’s Inspired
Constitution,” Barton plots two theologically significant moves in a series of arguments
meant to first, establish the scriptural nature of the Constitution, and second, to shore up
the authoritative stance of conservative religious expertise over and above “secular”
voices.
Barton claims that the framers of the nation’s charter were inspired by the hand of
God to produce a Constitution founded upon biblical writ. His argument postulates that
the Constitution is an inspired document assigning it a designation that holds distinct
meaning for conservative evangelicals and proponents of the religious right. He treats
this subject at length in a segment of The American Heritage Series entitled “America’s
128
Biblical Constitution.” The first section of this segment combines a repetitive voice
narrative with a pre-orchestrated discussion on a sound stage between Barton and his
Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN) hosts Matt and Laurie Crouch. Acting upon each
other, the voice over provides a summary of the conclusion Barton prompts his viewers
to adopt in the form of declarations and leading questions while the scripted conversation
focuses on a refutation of a secular Constitution. The voice over sounds roughly every
ten minutes interrupting the staged exchange between interlocutors. The narrative chimes
in:
A closer look into our nation’s history reveals surprising and irrefutable evidence
of the Bible’s influence on our nation’s Constitution. But does a biblically
inspired Constitution make America a Christian nation? And is there a place for
the Bible
in today’s modern political climate? Discover our nation’s godly
353
history.
These four sentences provide a layer of framing meant to act upon the audience’s
comprehension process. The audience receives implicit instruction to recognize and
regard the evidence Barton will present as irrefutable. While this section’s title-America’s Biblical Constitution --directs audiences to the conclusion Barton seeks to
affirm, the term “inspiration” also signals to conservative evangelical adherents central
theological precepts that are distinctly recognizable and resonate in a manner that might
go unnoticed by auditors outside the fold.
354
The explicit drift from “biblical influence” to
“biblically inspired Constitution” illustrates a strategic shift that seeks to establish the
biblical inspiration of the Constitution as factual, endowing the document with divine
353
354
American Heritage Series, disc 1
David Domke and Kevin Coe, The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political
Weapon in America, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 8-9. Also see Charlie McCrary,
“David Barton and Maurice Halbwachs; Or, Another Blog Post about Barton,” Religion in
American History, August 23, 2012. Accessed on August 28, 2012.
http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2012/08/david-barton-and-maurice-halbwach-or.html.
129
authority.
This small change of phrases enacts a monumental rhetorical movement
loaded with theological content. While the idea of influence can be construed as either
direct or indirect, the phrase “biblically inspired Constitution” denotes a direct influence,
undertaken and underwritten by God. Taken literally, if evidence stands as plainly
expressed facts without interpretive bias, then any “facts” revealed must necessarily be
certain, and unassailable, especially where an inspired document is concerned. It
represents one critical linguistic gesture that lends credence to the idea of a quasi-sacred
text, or at least, a text devoid of secular substance. As a first move to restage the text, the
presupposition of inspiration renders the Constitution as God directed. Such a
supposition, logically extended, intimates that this “inspired” text would naturally
mandate a Christian nation since its content is assumed to be closely related to God’s
Word, if not directly representative of God’s will. The forgone conclusion of a “biblically
inspired Constitution” strategically invites auditors to recognize a consubstantial
relationship between biblical writ as God’s WORD and the Constitution as “inspired” by
biblical writ. An inspired document seen through the lens of inerrancy denotes an
assumed state of infallibility pertaining to God’s will.
Working in concert with the above voice over, the staged discussion between
Barton and his TBN hosts in “America’s Inspired Constitution” finds Barton
orchestrating a spirited refutation of the “godless Constitution.” Barton begins his lecture
by stating, “The Constitution was framed largely by Christian individuals who used many
biblical ideas for what they did in that Constitution. So it’s not a secular document! Now
355
we hear that it is.”
He holds a thin book up to the camera called The Godless
Constitution for his home audience to see and suggests that this tiny essay represents one
of the seminal “revisionist” works responsible for fomenting mass amnesia concerning
355
The American Heritage Series, DVD, produced by David Barton, (Rock Rapids, IA:
Bridgestone Multimedia Group, 2007). Note that this segment “America’s Inspired Constitution”
is on Disc 1.
130
the inspired nature of the Constitution. He claims that The Godless Constitution, written
by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore from Cornell University, stands as THE
“textbook” used in colleges and universities around the country to brainwash the public.
In his relaxed, informal speaking style, Barton says “the book is written by a couple of
professors, and they go through and say ‘oh, it is a godless document…this nonsense
about being religious people involved or religious ideas—but it just doesn’t happen.’”
Barton drafts a straw man argument, dramatizing the “fact” that Kramnick and Laurence
“fail” to use citations to document support for their thesis. He continues,
So what they give us here is a note on sources. So now we are looking for all the
documentation that proves it is godless. Well, right up top they say ‘we have
dispensed with the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes.’ Wo wo wo, (sic) timeout! You say it is a godless Constitution but you aren’t going to document that?
We just have to trust you? And so what they say is to say everyone knows this so
we’re not going to use any footnotes, we’re not going to document it. What an
amazing thing for an academic textbook to give no sources for their citations
except ‘Trust us, we’re Ph.Ds, we know what we are talking about.’ Now that is
widely used. Most students don’t know the difference, they don’t go ask those
guys ‘why are you saying that it is godless, why do you say the Founding Fathers
356
were atheists, agnostics? Where is your proof?
Barton’s assertions call Kramnick and Moore’s motives and methods into question. He
accuses them of failing to provide a scholarly accounting of sources, implying that the
textbook said to be the definitive college preparatory on the Constitution is nothing but
unsubstantiated personal opinion. Here Barton subtly encourages his audience to
cultivate a pessimistic attitude toward lettered professionals, especially if they deny the
sacred nature of the nation’s charter. Barton rests his case upon the contention that these
academics, like other revisionists, have provided no proof. He insists that they have
promoted unverifiable belief in place of rigorous scholarship. However, in this very
instance, Barton fails to disclose to his audience the detailed explication Kramnick and
356
Ibid.
131
Moore provide for their readers. The scholars state for the record, “Because we have
intended the book to reach a general audience, and also because the material we have
cited is for the most part familiar to historians and political scientists, we have dispensed
with the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes.”
357
Though Kramnick and Moore cite a
substantial body of work published across disciplines in an addendum, Barton necessarily
glosses over these details.
His straw man argument accomplishes three tasks. It proves by way of disaccreditation that the Constitution is not godless. Second, it discredits contrary voices,
especially academic voices, upon the assumption that scholars use secondary documents,
and therefore publish their personal opinions rather than facts. Finally, it operates to
bolster Barton’s seeming authority and expertise. Working in conjunction with the voice
over that treats an “inspired Constitution” as factual, this section primes the audience to
form specific judgments about the textual nature of the nation’s charter. Having
disestablished the secular nature of the document, Barton turns to his next tactic of
applied literalism to strengthen his case in favor of an inspired Constitution, and in
support of his trustworthy expertise.
Literalism, Primary Documents, and Textual Authority
Barton misrepresents the work of Kramnick and Laurence to negate their
argument--that the Constitution is secular in nature. He accuses them of rendering an
unsubstantiated revisionist opinion in place of documenting facts. Barton plays to the
idea of primary and secondary sources as a way to legitimate the substance of his literal
357
Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against
Religious Correctness, (New York: W.W Norton and Company, 1996), 179. Ironically, readers
can search this book on amazon.com and review this list of sources starting on page 179. Barton
attempts to suggest that the authors provide no such accounting of source material, yet the
verification of his ruse may be quickly revealed by a simple search on retail sites such as
amazon.com that have a “look inside this book” feature.
132
reading performances and authority. Said another way, Barton relies on a distinction
between primary and secondary sources to authorize his ostensible plain textual readings
of primary sources against scholarly secondary sources. The operational definition
allows him to establish himself as a literal reader of facts while characterizing his
opposition to those who proffer opinion and uniformly ignore original sources.
A critical premise in Barton’s literalist arsenal revolves around operational
definitions of primary and secondary sources. Barton draws together a lay understanding
of original (primary) sources with “pietistic” literalism to frame an inspired
Constitutional Christian mandate as textually factual.
358
For Barton, primary documents
contain facts (plainly expressed “truth”) and require no interpretation while secondary
sources represent opinion. To illustrate the distinction and highlight his own
trustworthiness, Barton compares his publication Original Intent to The Godless
Constitution arguing that his work represent sound scholarly methodology built upon
primary documents that speak the truth of history for themselves. In section one of
“America’s Biblical Constitution” Barton instructs,
“‘Oh everybody knows it.’
“That’s a very poor reason for saying it’s godless. On the other side [he picks up
his own publication Original Intent] you got books like that one, Original Intent
[Laurie Crouch makes a cheering noise] that says exactly the opposite. 1500
footnotes, 87% of the footnotes come from Founding fathers own life [sic] while
they were still alive. So when you use their documents, you reach the conclusion
that this is not godless. When you ignore all the documents, you can say [he
holds up Kramnick and Laurence’s publication] ‘Trust us, it’s a godless
constitution.’ And this is revisionism designed to have an impact on our behavior
and our policy.
“So what happens is judges will quote that and say ‘It’s a godless Constitution, so
you can’t have this religious liberty, this religious display,’ whatever…but that is
not based on history.”
358
Indeed, his argument concerning primary sources appears to be one of the most
regularly parroted refrains in the posting of his ardent fans.
133
Barton exploits the language of science crediting his book as a representative example of
rigorous scholarship. Using the lingo of percentages and citations, he leans upon the
edifice of such academic apparatus as if this alone testifies to the validity of his work and
affirms his historical conclusions. Here, more is better, and Barton aims to show that his
work is packed full of primary documents (i.e. 1500 citations), and hence, real facts.
Barton treats primary documents as if they need no interpretation and convey the author’s
intended meaning. He concludes for his audience that these document confirm the
biblical nature of the Constitution and the original intent of the founders to create a
Protestant nation. He leaves off with two additional and important comments. The first
is that historical revisionism aims to influence political behavior and policy. In Barton’s
case, his revisionist tactics are projected onto Kramnick and Laurence by his slight of
hand, and literalism occludes this operation. The second comment brands a godless
Constitution as historically inaccurate. Barton creates a nexus between historical
accuracy, literal language, and primary documents, marking himself as the one who
simple imparts the facts of the documents at hand. Such a gesture plays at authenticity,
both in the construal of his ethos and in the presumption of textual felicity as fixed and
embodied by primary documents.
Barton’s primary sources argument distinctly exploits the shared theological
belief in literalism even as he offers an argument that unfolds under the guise of scientific
instruction. Moreover, the premise serves to mark the boundaries of authoritative
expertise, and to discredit “outside” scholarship. In Original Intent, Barton states, “A
simple means by which revisionism in any of its forms may be identified is its nearly
359
universal failure to cite primary-source documents.”
Original Intent provides a graphic
display meant to illustrate this point, as he draws a comparison between his book and In
359
David Barton, Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion, (Aledo:
WallBuilders Press, 2004), 316
134
Search of a Christian America, written for a Christian lay public by evangelical historians
George Marsden, Mark Noll, and Nathan Hatch. Barton explains his graph, “88 percent
of the ‘historical sources’ on which they (Marsden, Noll, and Hatch) rely postdate 1900
and 80 percent postdate 1950!” He intimates that such sources are necessarily secondary
and therefore not authoritative. In comparison, Barton stresses, Original Intent “only
uses 34 percent (rather than 88 percent)” of sources that postdate 1900, while “only 21
percent (rather than 80 percent) postdate 1950.”
360
Barton concludes, “When a book (i.e.
In Search of a Christian America) examining the founding of American government
(1760-1805) does so by analyzing sources published primarily after 1950, the conclusions
reached are not surprising.”
361
That is to say, according to Barton’s calculus, Noll,
Marsden, and Hatch are incorrect to assert that the founders never intended to mandate a
362
Christian nation.
Barton relies upon notions of plain texts and straightforward readings to make
himself appear as if he were a reliable expert who merely bears witness to an explicitly
rendered textual truth. The literal framing obfuscates his acts of interpretation. Barton
performs as witness and truth-bearer for his followers. He offers adherents the promise of
authoritative, transparent, textual reliability. And, with textual truth, he offers them the
apparently explicitly stated truth of their Christian nation, which, he argues, has been
commandeered by insider infidels. He implores his following to read the text in its plain
meaning, to know the truth by such acts, and to commit this truth to memory.
With his primary sources argument in place, Barton advances a causal claim
meant to account for the deterioration in the public’s recall of the founders’ original
intent. Barton draws upon notions of literalism and memory as buttressed by his primary
360
361
362
Barton, Original Intent, 317
Barton, Original Intent, 318
Ibid.
135
documents premise to bolster his contention. According to Barton, America has
experienced a gradual but serious “devolution” away from the founders’ intent. For
Barton, public amnesia, and its resultant ignorance of original intent, is predicated upon a
paucity of publically available, “accurate, factual information.”
363
In part, he blames
academics and activist judges for hiding these materials from public purview. In
accordance with this supposition, he concludes that American’s have uncritically
accepted what they have been told by the media, law professors, and academics.
364
Barton
suggests that Americans “have never heard any evidence that would indicate otherwise.
So what happens is that the absence of evidence is proof of what the assertion is,” to
which he adds that most Americans remain ignorant of major provisions within the
Constitution.
365
He contends that the public, on the one hand, has been woefully
underexposed to factual documents. On the other hand, he equally stresses that those
who misread original intent do so because they either intentionally ignore the truth
(leftist elites/activist judges) or because such readers have been mislead by the liberal
establishment. He stresses, “The failure to delve into primary sources leads to
widespread gullibility.” He warns against following demagogues who would lead a half
educated people astray; a people, he says, educated “enough to read what he [the
demagogue] says, but not enough to know whether it is true or not.”
366
Framed within a
literalist perspective, primary sources offer an antidote to gullibility because they speak
an unmitigated truth unfettered by interpretive bias. Treating the Constitutional text as a
clear, simply-stated, literal expression of a singularly straightforward, unchanging
original intent, Barton encourages his audience to judge policy and academic argument
363
364
365
366
Barton, Original Intent, 331
American Heritage Series
Ibid.
Ibid.
136
based upon an intent that he identifies as theologically inspired and infallible. Barton’s
rhetoric supplies the framing conditions for his audiences’ understanding of the
constitutional text, and hence, the nation’s true identity.
The Politics of Remembering An Inspired Constitution
The theologies of inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism originally aimed to defend
biblical authority in the face of biblical criticism and other cultural challenges. As Ernest
Sandeen notes, “The gravest charge that can be leveled at the Princeton Theology is that
it was not so much a theology as an apologetic, not so much an approach to be discussed
as a position to be defended.”
367
Modern biblical literalism, steeped in the suppositions of
Common Sense philosophy, permeates conservative evangelical and fundamentalist
thinking.
I argue that Barton draws upon the suppositions of biblical literalism (inerrancy,
and inspiration) to direct and shape his audiences’ understanding and expectations of the
Constitution. Specifically, Barton projects the grounding assumptions of biblical
literalism onto the Constitution and other founding documents. He builds his case by
treating the textual matter of the Constitution as if it were akin to the Bible--explicit,
plainly stated, and easily understood by all. Barton adds a second layer to this
construction by incorporating a reductive discussion of originalism into his disquisition
on constitutional literalism. Originalism functions as an important supporting element in
his larger argument since it argues in favor of the historic basis of constitutional plain
reading as practiced by accurate, reliable judges rather than “activist judges.” Barton’s
appeal to historical remembrance attempts to establish the factual basis of his claim, even
367
Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism
1800-1930, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 130
137
though originalism arose as a conservative legal hermeneutic in the latter half of the
twentieth century. He nonetheless gestures toward historical recall to concretize his
assertion. Last, Barton makes an important distinction between primary and secondary
documents, a distinction meant to deepen his audience’s belief in literal textuality, as well
as to support his interpretations as trustworthy, authentic, and factual. This notion of
autotelic texts serves as a kind of conceptual container for Barton’s lessons in
constitutional meaning, the most important of which is that the Constitution is inspired by
God and reflects His law. Biblical literalism as applied to the Constitution and built
through these series of arguments prepares his audience to regard, understand, and
perceive the text as literal and inspired prior to reading.
Branded as an inspired document, the Constitution takes on the proportions of
biblical inerrancy and inspiration, which implicitly argue that the manuscript is, in
essence, the Word of God. That is to say, the designation of inspiration essentializes the
Constitution, marking it as an expression of God’s will. In his elaboration of this claim
Barton shifts quickly to a position where constitutional law, as God’s law, must be
applied according to God’s dictates and not those of “the people,” their representatives,
or the government. In his customary fashion Barton defends this assertion by castigating
those who would argue that the Constitution is a secular document. Thus he creates the
entire structural edifice that inoculates against contrary evidence and opinion, conditions
the text to be regarded as inerrant, inspired, and literal, and appropriates the text-ascontainer to be filled with Christian nationalist values and policy interests as if they came
from within the text and through God. Such moves allow Christian nationalists like
Barton to read God’s will into the Constitution as befits the movement’s political aims
and policy interests, all of which is performed under the auspices of historical
remembrance, documented fact, and fidelity to the nation’s charter.
As memory texts, Barton’s assertions of textual evidence, coupled with literalist
framing and intertextual reading practices, attempt to make present the factual reality of a
138
Christian national mandate. The presumptions of literalism acts to occlude Barton’s
interpretive license, prompting audiences to regard textual authority as God given, and
outside the realm of human contrivance. As remembrance, activist are invited to rise to
the demands of this divinely ordained Christian nation as God’s soldiers in the fray to reChristianize the nation in the name of Divine will. While we cannot say whether Barton
believes in his own constructs of the Constitution and the Bible, it can be said that he
labors exhaustively to provide memory narratives of nation to receptive audiences, and
that his talking points are well respected and regularly rehearsed by religious right lay
adherents and Republican politicians alike. His memory narratives seek to establish the
biblical and constitutional basis of contemporary far right ideology and policy interests.
Moreover, his readings attempt to foreclose textual meaning and “opportunities for
understanding.”
368
With this in mind, we turn to Barton’s treatment of the Declaration of
Independence. He characterizes the Declaration as the nation’s real charter, relegating the
Constitution to a subordinate role as bylaws. I explore the rhetorical features and political
ramifications of this significant construct.
368
I borrow this phrase from Kristen Hoerl.
139
CHAPTER 5
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AS “THE LAWS OF
NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD”
From 1790 onward, Americans have sought to win political ascendancy by
strategically invoking the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States. Arguably, no contest over nation seems persuasively forceful without the
authorizing power that these two quasi-sacred artifacts lend in a “proprietary struggle for
control over memory” and state.
369
Significantly, these documents function, in part, as a
repository for public memory, and as such, the many ways they are invoked stand
readable as cultural productions of public memory. Although public memory is forever
contestable, Stephen Browne astutely observed that, “Representatives will, of course,
assert proprietary claims on the past and hence on its celebration; they will impose, if
only through sheer repetition, narratives of identity which bracket out certain memories
and privilege others. This rhetoric of power, jockeying for ownership, is based in a
370
‘struggle for possession and interpretation of memory.’”
George Orwell famously
wrote in 1984, “Who controls the past…controls the future: who controls the present
371
controls the past.”
Memory narratives “make claims to cultural knowledge,” and these
372
claims are not politically disinterested.
While both documents stand endlessly
available to cultural appropriation and are subject to the hermeneutical schemes brought
369
Stephen Browne, “Reading Public Memory In Daniel Webster’s Plymouth Rock
Oration,” Western Journal of Communication 57 (1993): 465
370
371
372
Browne, “Daniel Webster,” 466
George Orwell, 1984, (New York: New American Library, 1961), 32
Stephen H. Browne, “Reading, Rhetoric, and the Texture of Public Memory,”
Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 238
140
to bear on the text, our stories about these documents often seek to foreclose upon
understanding and delimit public reading practices.
Christian nationalists draw upon the symbolic resources of the Declaration and
Constitution, treating them as biblically inspired documents, to affirm far right political
prerogatives. At a 2013 Tea Party rally, Rafael Cruz, religious right activist and father of
the now infamous Senator Ted Cruz, rehearsed a refrain for public consumption that has
become a ubiquitous talking point in far right political discourse. An impassioned Cruz
called upon Christians to return to the “biblical principles” set forth in the Declaration
373
and Constitution, and to retake the political “forefront.”
Invoking Proverbs 29:2, Cruz
bellowed, “We have allowed the wicked to rule; it is our fault,”
374
Cruz suggested, if ten
percent of abstaining Christians “would vote for Christian principles, for biblical
principles, for men and women that stand for the Constitution and the Word of God, we
could take every position and office from dog catcher all the way to the highest positions
in life.”
375
The Constitution and Declaration, according to Cruz, stand as the two greatest
documents ever penned beside the Bible. He continued, “The reason is they were written
on the knees of the Framers. The Framers were seeking divine revelation from God,
that’s why the Constitution and Declaration have lasted over 230 years because they were
376
divine revelation from God.”
Cruz’s historical recollection constitutes a well circulated
373
Kyle Mantyla, “Rafael Cruz: The Declaration and Constitution Were ‘Divine
Revelation From God,’” Right Wing Watch, July 16, 2013. Accessed September 24, 2013.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rafael-cruz-declaration-and-constitution-were-divinerevelation-god
374
375
376
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. Barton states a similar premise, that the Constitution’s enduring power is based
within its inspired nature. In this claim, Barton, as well as Cruz, neglect to attend to the Civil
War as an example of a significant breech and departure from the Constitution. See The American
Heritage Series with David Barton, DVD, directed by John Pevoto and David Barton (Aledo, TX:
WallBuilders, 2009), Disc 3 and Barton, The Founders’ Bible, (Newbury Park: Shiloh Road
Publishers, 2012), ix. Rafael Cruz’s “divine revelation from God” reiterates the populist talking
141
script within far right rhetoric, invoked to stir Christians to participate in rending the
nation back from the “wicked.” Cruz represents one of numerous religious right public
figures who routinely call upon the idea of an inspired Constitution and Declaration to
affirm far right political ambitions.
Far right activists and politicians routinely rehearse the remembrance of a
Declaration of Independence as a document that embodies biblical principles. The point
of interest in this claim is not simply that the Declaration is an inspired document akin to
the Constitution, but rather that the Declaration stands as the nation’s charter. In this
narrative, the Constitution is said to be a subordinate document, governed entirely by the
Declaration’s provisions. As a memory text, I suggest this narrative “makes claims to
cultural knowledge,” and indeed seeks to shape contemporary epistemological beliefs in a
manner that supports far right political prerogatives, ideology, and policy formation.
Such a configuration of the Declaration rests upon the idea that it embodies biblical
principles. While the idea of an inspired Constitution uses the same rhetorical strategy,
the construction of the Declaration as the nation’s “real” charter accomplishes important
political work that the idea of an inspired Constitution cannot initiate alone.
This chapter investigates the productive political memory work underwritten by
the idea of an inspired Declaration of Independence said to be the definitive charter of the
nation. I endeavor to illustrate how literalism, inerrancy, and inspiration play a critical
formative role in fashioning these document as such, and to tease out the political
ramifications of this particular construct, which functions as a vital discursive resource
for Christian nationalist advocates. I turn to the rhetorical repository created by David
Barton to analyze this convention in detail. Barton argues that the Constitution and
Declaration are to be read as one document, where the Declaration is treated as the
point of an “inspired” document, an idea David Barton works tirelessly to publicize. Moreover,
Cruz’s remarks rehearse a providential narrative characterizing the Founders as instruments of
God.
142
nation’s charter and the Constitution as its bylaws. I argue that this configuration not
only enables Barton to account for the lack of Protestant declarations in the Constitution,
but also more importantly, it allows him to override Constitutional provisions altogether
turning to the ostensible “biblical principles” within the Declaration’s preamble as the
definitive standard by which law must be judged. Such a tactic illustrates an obvious
advantage for those who claim special knowledge of God’s will. As a discourse of public
remembrance, it aims to act upon the educational, intellectual, and political
understandings of its target audiences in a manner that bolsters far right political
objectives and encourages their political activism and cooperation.
I begin this chapter by historically contextualizing the Declaration of
Independence. The purpose for which it was written marks the beginning of its story, but
certainly not its end. I trace some of the ways in which the document has come to stand
as a potent symbol of national identity, and how the process of memorialization has
bestowed it with a quasi-sacred status. Historical contextualization does not, in and of
itself, reveal a singular “truth” about the document’s substance, meaning, and purpose.
Rather it allows us to investigate its multifaceted rhetoricity over time. If anything,
historical contextualization helps us affirm that the document’s meaning and purpose
remain decidedly unfixed and open to present and future appropriation toward various
political ends. I turn to Barton’s publication Original Intent to analyze his treatment of
the Declaration in relation to the Constitution. Barton’s two-fold reading restages the
principles in the Declaration’s preamble as biblical in nature. Building from this
supposition, Barton instructs his audience to apprehend and understand the Constitution
and Declaration, as a singular textual work of two parts. I delineate how the reading
strategy is meant to precondition his ideal audiences’ understanding of constitutional law
as that which derives its authority from God via the “biblical principles” within the
Declaration.
143
The Declaration of Independence in Context
Deemed one of the most cherished documents of our nation, the Declaration of
Independence came into existence pragmatically, and, once drafted and disseminated,
fulfilled the initial purpose for which it was created.
377
That is to say, the Declaration of
Independence, as an illocutionary speech act, proclaimed to the nations of the world that
the United States of American was a sovereign entity newly separated from and equal to
its former mother county, Great Britain. John Hancock stated that the document was
meant to close the previous regime and provide the “Ground and Foundation for the
future government” that, initially, under the Articles of Confederation, was often referred
378
to as “These United States of America.”
As Pauline Maier and other historians note,
“The histories and political writings from the 1780s generally describe the document
“primarily as the act of independence.’”
379
She observed, “Participants in the extensive
debates over the creation and ratification of the federal Constitution mentioned the
Declaration, again, very infrequently,” and, in these instances, simply to affirm the right
380
of the people to dissolve tyrannical government.
John Adams commented that the
document was a “memorable Act by which [the United States] assumed an equal
377
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, (New
York: Vintage Books, 1997)
378
Maier, American Scripture, 162
379
Maier, American Scripture, 169, Philip F. Detweiler, “The Changing Reputation of the
Declaration of Independence: The First Fifty Years,” The William and Mary Quarterly 19 (1962):
558, and Derek H. Davis, Religion and The Continental Congress, 1774 – 1789: Contributions to
Original Intent, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 109. Also see John Fea, Was America
Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2011), David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2007), and Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in
the History of Political Ideas, (New York: Vintage Books, 1958).
380
Maier, American Scripture, 169
144
381
participation among the nations.”
His son, John Quincy Adams, likened the
382
Declaration to one of many state papers specific to a particular occasion.
Indeed, the
bulk of the Declaration consists of enumerated grievances against the King of England.
The long list of political infractions served to justify the revolutionary act of separation,
framing it as necessary and righteous rather than treasonous and impetuous. The
document’s concluding statements called this separation into being, affirming the new
nation’s sovereign status and political right to exist.
Historians tend to agree that the Declaration was not drafted to function as a
public disquisition on human rights, neither was it a document that served as “Articles of
Incorporation.”
383
John Fea suggests, “Most would agree that the Declaration of
Independence was not a theological or religious document, but neither was it designed
384
primarily to teach Americans and the world about human rights.”
By the time of the
Revolutionary war, as well as throughout the ratification of both the Articles of
Confederation and, then, the Constitution of the United States of America, the
Declaration fell silent within public discourse. The nation’s attention turned first toward
war, and after the war’s conclusion, toward securing “a more perfect union” in the form
of the Constitution, which established a federal government in place of the existing loose
confederation. As Derek Davis observes,
The thirteen years between the adoption of the Declaration and the ratification of
the Constitution was a period of intense political change. The Declaration’s
loose, free wheeling philosophy of the people’s ‘rights,’ preserved to a large
degree in the Articles of Confederation, gradually gave way to the Constitution’s
more structured framework that was necessary to support a strong national
government. If today we find tensions between the Declaration and the
Constitution, there was virtually no discussion of Nature’s God, natural rights, or
381
382
383
384
As quoted in Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, 129
Ibid.
See Maier, Fea, Detweiler, Davis, Armitage, and Becker in particular.
Fea, Christian Nation, 128
145
consent of the governed. As Roger Sherman understood it, the question was “not
what rights naturally belong to men,
but how they may be most equally and
385
effectually guarded in society.”
As Davis describes, the Declaration provided colonists a proclamation of separation that
announced this political action to the nations of the world, as well as the citizens of the
thirteen states. The principles espoused in the preamble were not new political ideas but
386
rather ideas that typified Enlightenment thought in the eighteenth century.
The
production of the document came not from an effort to draft a treatise on natural rights,
but rather to affect political separation from England and proclaim American sovereignty
at home and abroad. The preamble’s theory (principles) would come to be regarded as
“American scripture,” yet the document itself was created in haste to meet a very specific
exigency.
Critical attention to the Rights of Man philosophy within the preamble began to
arise in public discourse during the politically acrimonious years of the 1790s, which
witnessed the painful birthing of a two party system, the Federalists and Democratic
Republicans, who battled each other fiercely for national control and ideological
ascendency. Indeed, no real mention of the Declaration, particularly the preamble’s
philosophical content, appeared in the writings of the founders or popular newspapers of
the day until the late 1790s.
387
While Federalists consciously moved away from the
language of equality between “men” and liberty for all, Jeffersonian Republicans
embraced it strategically, fully exploiting the growing public reverence for Jefferson as
the Declaration’s primary author, but also the general liberty loving spirit of common
385
386
387
Davis, Religion and The Continental Congress, 113
Fea, Christian Nation, 129 and Maier, American Scripture, 149
Detweiler, “Changing Reputation,” 567-569; Maier, American Scripture, 169-171.
The content of Federalist and Republican newspapers such as the Columbian Centinel and
Independent Chronicle during the 1780s through to 1800 illustrates this point poignantly.
146
citizens. Detweiler explains it best, the Federalists “were not champions of the voice of
the people.”
388
While Jeffersonian Republicans had taken to drumming up enthusiasm for
the Declaration’s principles, reading the document aloud at Fourth of July celebration and
appealing to it virtues in the press, the Federalists worried about the Declaration’s antiBritish tone, as well as the principles of rights the document espoused. According to
Detweiler, the concepts of equal, inalienable rights, public sovereignty, and the right of
389
the people to abolish a tyrannical government were anathema to Federalist sensibilities.
They deemed such political maxims “subversive” and against the establishment of firm,
390
federal “law and order.”
As time marched forward, Americans would cease to focus on the vast majority of
the Declaration’s content, favoring the preamble as politically useful to present day
activist causes. Fea observes, “Americans have become so taken by the second
paragraph of the document that they miss the purpose of the Declaration as understood by
391
the Continental Congress, its team of authors, and its chief writer, Thomas Jefferson.”
Detweiler notes, “Americans of 1776 were not arguing about the meaning of the
preamble in the fashion in which they argued some ten years later about the meaning of
the Constitution.” Detweiler and Maier both agree that these “self-evident” truths,
captured broadly in the preamble, have become, over the course of American history, a
sight of intense and acrimonious struggle as groups fought over the meaning and
application of the Declaration’s political philosophy. Maier writes “The Declaration was
at first forgotten almost entirely, then recalled and celebrated by Jeffersonian republicans,
and later elevated into something akin to holy writ, which made it a prize worth capturing
388
389
390
391
Detweiler, “Changing Reputation,” 567
Detweiler, “Changing Reputation,” 566-7
Detweiler, “Changing Reputation,” 568
Fea, Christian Nation, 128
147
392
on behalf of one cause after another.”
As such, she suggests, Americans have come to
regard the document as the “moral standard by which the day-to-day policies and
practices of a nation could be judged.”
393
As the founders took on mythic proportions, the
document, as a site of struggle and repository of national identity, has come to be
regarded as sacred literature of inestimable national value.
We turn to Barton’s two-part rhetorical invention of the Declaration, first tracing
the means by which he reconstitutes the preamble as that which records and expresses
biblical principles. I examine Barton’s use of historical narrative to affirm the literal
394
textual existence of “Transcendent Biblical natural law principles”
within the
Declaration’s preamble. I analyze the rhetorical constructs that enable Barton to recategorize the preamble’s philosophical statements, and discuss the political ramifications
of this important reconfiguration in his overall argumentative strategy to place God’s law
at the center of American law and the nation.
The Declaration’s Biblical Preamble
The first tier of Barton’s invention enacts a substitution of the Rights of Man
philosophy in the Declaration’s preamble with what he terms “transcendent, Biblical,
natural law principles.” Barton’s biblically coded set of principles stand as a literal given
in his argumentative progression. In Original Intent: The Courts, The Constitution, and
Religion, Barton posits that the wholesale abandonment of the “Transcendent, Biblical,
natural-law standard,” as established within the Declaration, has produced moral and
395
cultural decline.
392
393
394
395
Barton treats the construct of a “biblical preamble” as an historical fact
Maier, American Scripture, 154
Ibid.
Barton, Original Intent, 241
Barton, Original Intent, 242-246
148
that has, in its state of abandonment, caused cultural decay. Barton sets up a causal
relationship (cause / effect scenario) situated within in an “historical narrative.” The
suggestion of such a relationship lends his narrative ontological gravity, setting it in the
linguistic circumference of concrete beingness and physical interaction. He writes,
The second era, which began the slow accumulation of positivistic Justices on the
Court through the 1930s and 1940s, was not fully actuated until the Court’s 196263 decisions. Those decisions openly repudiated the transcendent, Biblical,
natural-law standards which had prevailed—or had at least not been set aside—
since the time396of the Founders, and instituted legal positivism as the
replacement.
Barton intimates that the American legal standard, from the time of the founders to the
mid twentieth century, had been predicated upon “transcendent, Biblical, natural-law”
until (liberal) judicial activism supplanted this standard. Before Barton answers the
question of whether this change constitutes a positive or negative outcome for American
society, he prompts his audience to consider Matthew 7:17-20 as a guide to ponder the
fruits of this new standard. The verse reads: “Every good tree bears fruit, but a bad tree
bears bad fruit. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
397
Next, he enjoins his
readers to use the principle of “reason” to guide their consideration, this time quoting
John Witherspoon to set an example. He quotes Witherspoon as writing,
This rule of trying every principle…by its fruits….[sic] is certain and
infallible….There seems, indeed, to be an exact analogy between this rule in
religious matters, and reason in our common
and civil concerns. Reason is the
398
best guide and director of human life.
396
397
398
Barton, Original Intent, 241
Ibid.
John Witherspoon as quoted in ton, Original Intent, 241.
149
Using Witherspoon as the spokesman for common sense reasoning, Barton’s reference
pertains to dual traditions within fundamentalist thought; Scottish Common Sense
philosophy and Baconian rationalism, both of which still characterize conservative
evangelical thinking today. Moreover, although Witherspoon’s sermon pre-dates Hodge’s
Systematic Theology, modern biblical literalist would recognize such terms to denote the
qualities assumed to be inherent to inerrancy and literalism. With Matthew,
Witherspoon, and inerrancy functioning as critical primers, Barton offers a series of
graphs, five in all, meant to guide his audience to the conclusion that the abandonment of
the “transcendental biblical natural law” constitutes a negative development in American
culture, affirming the need to return to the biblical standard ostensibly instituted by the
founders.
Leaning upon the recognizable language of science and statistical proof, Original
Intent furnishes a series of graphs meant to highlight the result of the institutional
“rejection” of the Declaration’s ostensible “biblical natural law” as historically factual.
Seizing upon the year 1963 as the historical moment American culture divorced itself
from the Declaration’s “biblical natural law”, Barton notes, “The institutionalization of
positivism and the abandonment of the transcendent Biblical natural law principles have
not produced national improvement or prosperity but have worked in the opposite
399
direction.”
Barton’s graphs chart the decline in morality as measured by unwed “girls
15-19” and incidence of sexually transmitted diseases since 1963, increases in violent
behavior, a significant decline in SAT scores (“educational achievement”), and the
deterioration of family stability (as measured by single parent households and female
400
headed households).
Barton informs his readers, “the following charts are
representative of several areas in which the Court has implemented its new approach and
399
400
Barton, Original Intent, 242
Barton, Original Intent, 242-246
150
each accentuates the year in which positivism became the enforced standard. The
correlations are striking.”
401
With the year positioned on the X Axis, a vertical line
marked “Biblical natural law rejected” intersects with the year 1963 on each graph.
Barton relies upon the aesthetics of scientific and historical presentation to produce the
aura of concrete evidence within these series of graphs. They stand as a visual prompting
to understand recent political, historical, and juridical trends in American culture as the
result of the abandonment of God’s expressed law. At stake is neither the assumption of
biblical values nor the veracity of the graphic displays as historical representation
themselves. This “evidence” merely brings the story line into literal view, enhancing the
plausibility and drama of the narrative Barton promotes. The moral to the story in
Barton’s tale argues that Americans invite national destruction when they ignore the
biblical principles that underwrote our nation’s laws. By lauding the transcendent
biblical principles and reviling the social deterioration in the absence of their application,
Barton’s underlined discourse seeks to entice patriots to action in the recovery of nation.
The above illustrates how Barton makes a case for the factual nature of
“transcendental, Biblical, natural-law” by establishing a fabricated historical narrative,
replete with quasi-statistical charts, meant to illustrates a cultural decline said to be
predicated on the abandonment of the presumed biblical standard expressed within the
Declaration. Barton asserts that this transition from a biblical legal standard to a secular
one has resulted in “unacceptable changes in morality, criminal behavior, education, and
family stability.”
402
The second tier of Barton’s invention lies within the phrase
“transcendent, Biblical, natural-law” itself. We turn to consider this rhetorical figuration
and the epistemological and political work it aims to undertake.
401
402
Ibid.
Barton, Original Intent, 247
151
The principles Barton has labeled “transcendental, Biblical, natural-law” pertain
to the Declaration’s preamble which scholars note contains philosophical statements
403
concerning the theory of natural rights.
As Derek H. Davis states, “No modern
404
scholarship disputes that natural law philosophy is what undergirds the Declaration.”
Barton’s renaming tactic accomplishes two persuasive tasks. First, the juxtaposition of
“transcendent biblical” with the term “natural law” allows Barton to intimate that natural
law is that which is underwritten by biblical writ. Barton plays off of the early modern
understanding that God’s law and natural law were analogous. Second, Barton amplifies
the conflation of the relationship between natural law and transcendent biblical law by
seizing upon Jefferson’s phrase “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” as a means to
ground, or make present, his revised “principles” in the document itself. His choice of
Jefferson’s now famous phrase offers him the ability to formulate natural law and biblical
transcendentalism as one and the same substance. Through strategic placement,
appropriation, and treating terms as equivalent, Barton exacts a linguistic transformation
that affirms the veracity of his claim. In a series of modified repetitions, he leads with
the phrase “transcendent, Biblical, natural-law standards.” Following this phrase
sequentially, Barton uses the referents “transcendent Biblical natural law principles,” “the
laws of nature and of nature’s God,” and “transcendent values of the Declaration”
405
respectively.
Barton also relies upon single words such as “principles,” and “values” to
signal the same in his proof texts, as I will illustrate in detail in the next section. In this
403
Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political
Ideas, (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), 7-8. Also see Becker’s chapter entitled “Historical
Antecedents of the Declaration: The Natural Rights Philosophy.”
404
405
Davis, Religion and The Continental Congress,104
Barton, Original Intent, 241, 247, 251. The terms “transcendent Biblical natural law”
and “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” occur within a three-sentence structure. I have
maintained Barton’s punctuation as it appears in his book.
152
case, Barton has seized upon a quotidian phrase of the day, “the laws of nature and of
nature’s God,” and transformed it into a marker denoting biblical principles.
Thus when Barton states emphatically that American courts have “violated the
system of the ‘laws of nature and of nature’s God,’” he treats the phrase differently than a
term for the divine.
406
Here he employs the moniker as if it signified “transcendent,
Biblical natural law principles.” By such a maneuver, Barton invites his audience to
recognize this phrase as proof that the manuscript reflects the Word of God. Moreover,
Barton’s assertion suggests that to ignore God’s principles within the document is to
violate God’s law. The underlying argument exacts a critical shift where faithfulness to
the law is first and foremost predicated upon following God’s dictates, where discerning
God’s will stands as the criterion by which we assess the soundness of American law.
Barton advocates that the preamble’s principles are biblical in nature and that the
Constitution must be read through the biblical preamble in order to be understood and
interpreted properly, which I turn to next. As illustrated above, Barton draws upon some
of the precepts that governed the religious and political thinking of the early modern and
Enlightenment eras to bolster his case for a biblical preamble. Historically speaking, the
functional fiction that supported first the sovereignty of kings, and then later popular
sovereignty, was that of the divine. The “divine right of kings” gave way to the
figuration of popular sovereignty, but the idea of God as the source that legitimated
sovereignty remained. Historian Edmund Morgan notes,
The sovereignty of the people was not a repudiation of the sovereignty of God.
God remained the ultimate source of all governmental authority, but attention now
centered on the immediate source, the people. Though God authorized
government,407
He did it through the people, and in doing so authorized
government.
406
407
Barton, Original Intent, 247
Morgan, Inventing the People, 56
153
The concept that God authorized government and legitimated popular sovereignty runs
though Puritan thinking
408
409
and American revolutionary rhetoric.
Yet, while it was
inconceivable at the time to imagine anything other than a Christian God as the creator of
human rights, as expressed in the preamble, John Fea observes that the document was not
a theological statement concerned with such declarations. He writes, “While the
Declaration clearly affirms, for example, that human rights come from ‘the Creator,’ the
original intent of the founders was not to write a theological document, a system of
government, a treatise on American values, or even to declare that human rights came
from God.”
410
He notes that the God language within the manuscript reflects the
411
“religious worldview of its writers and endorsers.”
At the same time, the document
neither presumed to be a treatise on government nor a theological statement concerning
the nation’s identity and source of law.
By instructing his readers to apprehend the Declaration as a document that first
and foremost enshrines transcendent biblical natural law principles, he has, in effect,
“schooled” his audiences to come to the text with a pre-determined understanding of its
content and “essence.” If this premise (transcendent biblical principles) is taken at face
value, as Barton’s rhetoric insists it should, then divine authority, as an argumentative
strategy, stands ready to “overcome all obstacles that reason might raise.”
408
412
Doubting
Morgan, Inventing the People, 126
409
See Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794, (Indiana: Hackett
Publishing Company, 2003), and Merrill Jensen, ed. Tracts of the American Revolution, 17631776. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003. For a now classic statement concerning
God-given natural rights penned in 1775, see Alexander Hamilton “The Farmer Refuted.”
410
411
412
Fea, Christian Nation, 130
Fea, Christian Nation, 131
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 308
154
413
God’s word within the Declaration, in this case, is tantamount to attacking God.
Stated
another way, failure to affirm the Declaration’s preamble as an expression of biblical
values constitutes an affront to divinely ordained truth. Faith marks the standard by
literalism takes shape, and faith is the standard by which Barton’s transcendent biblical
principles are framed and presented as an a priori condition for understanding the
nation’s founding.
Barton’s strategic restaging of the preamble’s contents serve a larger purpose
rhetorically and politically. He relies upon this construct to make a claim for the
Declaration’s primacy above and over the Constitution. In the following section, I trace
the argumentative maneuvers that enable Barton to position the Constitution as a
secondary document of state, dependent upon the Declaration’s “biblical” preamble in
matters of juridical interpretation and application. By this same gesture, Barton accounts
for the absence of Protestant declarations in the Constitution by reading it through the
biblical principles ostensibly embodied within the Declaration.
The (Conservative Evangelical) Constitution As Read Through the
(Biblical) Preamble of the Declaration
Having established the assumed factual basis of biblical principles within the
Declaration’s preamble, Barton crafts a case for the consubstantial relationship between
the Constitution and the Declaration. That is to say, he contends that the Constitution
must be interpreted as a secondary document to the preamble of the Declaration. Barton
mobilizes his assertion of the literal presence of biblical principles to school his readers in
413
Casey Ryan Kelly and Kristen E. Hoerl, “Genesis in Hyperreality: Legitimizing
Disingenuous Controversy at the Creation Museum,” Argumentation and Advocacy 48 (2012):
123-141
155
the proper way to comprehend the Constitution’s expressed intentions. First, he frames
the relationship between these two documents through a business analogy, then he labors
to establish such reading practices as traditional (historically true), and finally, he
conjures the textual (supposed corporeal) edifice meant to verify the literal truth of his
claims. By this series of maneuvers, drawing upon historical and textual realism, Barton
aims to establish that the Constitution must be read through God’s laws, since he argues
that the charter is dependent upon and derived from biblical writ.
Barton suggests that the Declaration and Constitution constitute a two-part
manuscript. He argues that the Declaration (Articles of Incorporation) represents the
nation’s charter and the Constitution (Bylaws) furnishes the specific provisions of the
charter. He writes,
The Articles of Incorporation call the entity into legal existence, and the By-Laws
then explain how it will be governed. However, the governing of the corporation
under its By-laws must always be within the framework and purposes set414forth in
its Articles; the By-Laws may neither nullify nor supersede the Articles.
This analogy establishes the relationship between the two documents that enable Barton
to argue that the Constitution must be read through a biblical lens. Barton instructs his
readers, “The Constitution neither abolished nor replaced what the Declaration had
established; it only provided the specific details of how American government would
operate under the principles set forth in the Declaration.”
415
Pivoting off of the term
principles, his assertion explicitly contends that the nation’s charter must be read through
the Articles of Incorporation (biblical principles). He suggests that the Constitution
merely provides the provisional details while the preamble serves as the entity’s
foundational core. The proper comprehension of constitutional matter (original intent),
414
415
Barton, Original Intent, 247
Barton, Original Intent, 248
156
Barton posits, may be attained only in and through this biblical perspective. Although he
makes the argument that the Declaration constitutes the Articles of Incorporation,
Barton’s rhetoric actually advocates only for the preamble as such, focusing exclusively
on the smallest fragments within the manuscripts sub-section to assert the supremacy of
“transcendent biblical natural law” as the national standard. The majority of the
document’s content never arises in his discussion and its matter remains silent within
Barton’s inventive historical “recollection.”
An additional storyline casts this consubstantial relationship as a historical fact.
Suggesting that these documents were traditionally read as a single, two-part text, Barton
avers,
For generations after the ratification of the Constitution, the Declaration was
considered a primary guiding document in American constitutional government.
In fact, well into the twentieth century, the Declaration and the Constitution
were
416
viewed as inseparable and interdependent—not independent—documents.
The above plot line establishes a long historical trajectory for the supposed tradition of
reading the texts together. Barton’s assertion is correct only in so far as the precepts of
natural rights and sovereignty of the people were core ideals assumed to govern all
questions of law, as originally expressed within the preamble. Leaning upon the
refocused circumference of the (biblical) preamble, and drawing upon the assumptions
within historical and textual realism, Barton’s story implicitly argues that biblical
principles have governed constitutional interpretation until just recently. He thickens the
plot by suggesting,
While the Court’s change of standards has perhaps been a display of poor
judgment, the court’s actions have actually been illegal under the standards of
original intent. Furthermore, they have violated the values systems of the “laws
of nature and of nature’s God” established in the Declaration of Independence.
416
Barton, Original Intent, 247
157
Even though contemporary courts now regularly violate that legal standard, few
today consider such violations significant for they believe the Constitution
to be
417
independent of the Declaration. This incorrect belief is of recent origin.
With this narrative embellishment, a drama unfolds within the trajectory of history that
speaks of institutionalized national subversion from “activist” courts, a popular refrain
regularly rehearsed by far-right advocates. By suggesting that treating these documents
independently constituted an (illegal) illicit act contrary to original intent, Barton
enhances the dramatic tension in his tale of lost tradition and a nation under siege. At the
same time, this statement plants a seed for future juridical practice, advocating a return to
the biblical standard (Preamble Articles of Incorporation) of our founding, including the
implementation of disciplinary measures for those who read the documents as discrete
artifacts.
By framing the documents in this manner, Barton rhetorically rescales both texts,
reducing the scope of the Constitution by capturing it within the scenic domain of the
preamble. Moreover, the Declaration’s circumference is reduced to the (assumed)
preamble. Kenneth Burke states that the “contracting or expanding of scene is rooted in
418
the very nature of linguistic placement.”
Barton redraws the linguistic circumference of
both documents to produce a terrain dependent upon biblical writ. The preamble’s
supposed content is amplified and situated as grounding for Constitutional provisions.
The Constitution’s scope, subsumed within the enlarged scenic preserve of the preamble
principles, is reconditioned as secondary and dependent upon said principles. In this
configuration, biblical writ stands as the “edenic” or original ground for both documents,
and the preamble stands as a redundant principle, or second place of origination, upon
which the Constitution rests. Burke suggested that, “terrain determines tactics.” That is
417
418
Ibid.
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 84
158
to say, an argument predicated on scene as the grounding or situational setting suggests
419
what actions must be derived in accordance to the nature of the scene.
If the
Constitution and Declaration are founded upon biblical writ, then public policy formation
must conform to the ground from which it originated.
Barton’s historical tale establishes the now abandoned practice of earlier
generations to read the Constitution through the preamble’s principles. Strategically,
linking these two documents together enables Barton to infuse the Constitution with
“transcendent biblical principles,” which, in effect, supply the absent religious language
and Christian mandate the Constitution nowhere explicitly exhibits. This story instructs
his readers to recall and remember the factual basis of his claim, rehearsing the tragic
drama of an abandoned tradition that has, as a result, produced catastrophic cultural
decline. The moral of the story points to the re-adoption of these biblical standards in
American governance as remedy for the malaise.
As the final tactic of these rhetorical moves, Barton performs a literal reading of
supporting texts, conjuring the appearance of textual proof meant to confirm this tradition
of reading the Constitution through the biblical principles assumed to be within the
preamble. He creates the aura of ample textual (corporeally real) support by drawing
upon a series of fragments written by prominent founding figures and notable American
statesmen. Barton’s presentation of the body of evidence seems to suggest that he simply
bears witness to an unadulterated truth contained within the artifacts. He draws upon the
recognizable method of biblical proof-texting to support the ruse. Barton nonetheless
significantly edits and alters the text to support his overarching claims. Offered in the
spirit of a literal reading, Barton quotes Samuel Adams as having proclaimed,
419
Burke, Grammar of Motives, 13
159
Before the formation of this Constitution….[t]his Declaration of Independence
was received420and ratified by all the States in the Union and has never been
disannulled.
Adams’s quote is offered as textual proof of “earlier” generational practices. At face
value, Adams appears to confirm Barton’s contention, that the Declaration has never been
annulled. The unstated premise implies that since its provisions have not been annulled,
it bears upon the Constitution. By logical extension, since biblical principles represent
the only value Barton advocates in his extended discussions of the Declaration and
Constitution, the fragment above, through Barton’s framing, suggests that God’s
“transcendent biblical standard” is that which has and shall never be abrogated. Barton’s
theological literalism resides between the lines in his presentation. Read literally, this
fragment confirms the narrative of the tradition Barton brings to light, confirming the
central importance of the Declaration to constitutional interpretation. As a literal reading
that relies upon the seeming condition of historical reality embodied in national artifacts,
Barton leaves his body of evidence uncontextualized, never calling attention to the
extreme reconfiguration of the material he offers as concrete evidence. As a result, the
contextualization of quoted material tightly accrues around the story he has crafted for his
readers.
The elision of Rights of Man philosophy in the preamble plays a central role in
enabling Barton’s assemblage of evidence to support his larger argument. In the Adams
example, the missing material significantly points to the natural rights precepts Barton
carefully excises. Adams’s “Address to the Legislature of Massachusetts, January 17,
1794” commemorates the principles in the preamble that have “never been annulled.”
Adams declares,
420
Ibid. Barton’s emphasis.
160
Before the formation of this Constitution, it had been affirmed as a self-evident
truth, in the Declaration of Independence, very deliberately made by the
Representatives of the United State of America in Congress assembled that, “all
men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights.” This Declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all
the States in the Union and has never been disannulled. May we not from
hence conclude, that the doctrine of liberty
and Equality is an article in the
421
political creed of the United States.” (Bold type indicates Barton’s quote)
Read in its fuller form, Adams’s reflections affirm the Enlightenment ideals espoused in
the preamble of the Declaration. Barton plays with linguistic slippage using the “never
has been annulled” clause to underscore the biblical dictates of American law.
Interestingly, Barton erases the self-evident material in the preamble that affirms human
rights and equality under the law. Adams’s speech stresses, “Government is instituted for
the common good; not for the profit, honor, or private interests of any one man, family,
or class of men.”
422
Through omission, Barton enacts forgetting on the page, crafting a
quote that speaks of biblical principles based upon his extensive framing efforts, while
erasing the “self-evident” principles of human rights expressed in Samuel Adams’s
address. Barton concludes for his audience, “In the Declaration, the Founders established
the foundation and the core values on which the Constitution was to operate; it was never
to be interpreted apart from those values.”
423
Emptied of context and content, erasing the
very set of ideals Adams lauds, this restructured figuration appears to verify Barton’s
argument.
As a second example, Barton offers an excerpt of John Quincy Adams’s speech
entitled “The Jubilee of the Constitution.” Barton’s reconstruction of a small two421
Samuel Adams, The Writings of Samuel Adams Volume IV (1778-1802),
(Middlesex: The Echo Library, 2006), 286. Accessed September 10, 2011. www.echolibrary.com. Barton’s version reads: “‘Before the formation of this Constitution….[t]his
Declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union and has
never been annulled.’” (Barton’s emphasis) Barton, Original Intent, 247.
422
423
Ibid.
Barton, Original Intent, 250
161
paragraph section of Adams’s address is crafted in such a way as to amplify the terms
virtues and principles without including any descriptors of the terms prevalent in the
excised material. Thus J. Q. Adams is made to say,
The virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United
States…was no other than the concretion of those abstract principles which had
been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence…. This was the
platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected. Its
virtues, its republican character, consisted in its conformity to the principles
proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and as its administration…was to
depend upon the…virtue, or in other words, of those principles proclaimed in the
Declaration
of Independence and embodied in the Constitution of the United
424
States.
Having carefully emptied the quote of detailed description of the values in question, the
ambiguity creates open spaces for the superimposition of Barton’s biblical framing. The
citation represents two paragraphs significantly pruned and blended into one quotation.
The pertinent excised material grounds the terms “virtues” and “principles” as those
signifying the Rights of Man philosophy within the preamble. I use bold type to
represent Barton’s recomposed fragments. The extended quote reads,
Now the virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United
States, and was to give to its vital existence the stability and duration to which it
was destined, was no other than the concretion of those abstract principles
which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence –
namely, the self-evident truths of the natural and inalienable rights of man, of the
indefeasible constituent and dissolvent sovereignty of the people, always
subordinate to the rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme
Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sovereign, constituent, and
dissolvent power.
This was the platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had
been erected. Its VIRTUES, its republican character, consisted in its
conformity to the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence,
and as its administration must necessarily be always pliable to the fluctuating
varieties of public opinion; its stability and duration by a like overruling and
irresistible necessity, was to depend upon the stability and duration in the hearts
and minds of the people of that virtue, or in other words, of those principles
424
Ibid. Adams as quoted in Barton’s Original Intent.
162
proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence
and embodied in the
425
Constitution of the United States.
Adams’s sentiments rehearse for posterity the “core values” believed to be inscribed
within the Declaration. Adams’s reference explicitly reiterates the Rights of Man
philosophy in the preamble, and his commemoration of these values seeks to affirm the
nature in which they are shared political commitments among the polity. As memory
work, Barton’s literal rendering of history encourages readers to recall and reiterate the
biblical basis of constitutional law. Barton’s play on evidence supplants and eviscerates
the very political creed these speeches commemorate. As appropriated and reworked
memory texts, Barton mobilizes the commemorative elements with key terms (especially
Declaration, Constitution, principles, values, virtues) to affect public forgetting in the
service of Christian nationalism.
Barton follows this evidentiary offering with an excerpt from Lincoln’s speech
“Back to the Declaration of Independence,” which Lincoln delivered in Lewistown,
Illinois, August 17, 1858. Again, the critical elision Barton exacts targets human rights
precepts in the preamble. Lincoln’s extended quote with Barton’s version in boldface
type reads,
Wise statesmen as they were they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed
tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the
distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up a doctrine that
none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and
425
John Quincy Adams, Jubilee of the Constitution: A Discourse, (New York: Samuel
Colman, 1839), 54. http://www.archive.org/stream/jubileeofconstit00adam#page/n13/mode/2up.
Barton’s version reads: “‘[T]he virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United
States…was no other than the concretion of those abstract principles which had been first
proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence…This was the platform upon which the
Constitution of the United States had been erected. Its virtues, its republican character, consisted
in its conformity to the principles proclaimed in the Declaration and as its administration…was to
depend upon the…virtue, or in other words, of those principles proclaimed in the Declaration of
Independence and embodied in the Constitution of the United States.’” Barton, Original Intent,
250
163
take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began – so that truth,
and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not
be extinguished form the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and
426
circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.
Barton’s recollection of Lincoln’s speech plays upon the juxtaposition of the terms “selfevident truths” with “Christian virtues.” Without the quote in full, and in light of
Barton’s framing tactics, “Christian virtues” appear to be a cross-reference to “selfevident truths.” Barton speaks through Lincoln as a ventriloquist, calling Americans to
return to the Declaration’s self-evident Christian virtues, inviting readers to reignite the
“battle” begun by “their fathers.”
Historically, Lincoln’s speech came upon the heels of the Dred Scott verdict,
delivered just before he and Stephen Douglass, an arch supporter of the Dred Scott
decision, began a series of debates for a senate run that focused exclusively on the issue
427
of slavery.
Lincoln’s remarks against proslavery advocates coupled with his adoption
of the Declaration’s preamble to denounce slavery and affirm the ideals of equal rights
offer content completely antithetical to Barton’s task at hand. Barton’s reworking of
Lincoln’s sentiments not only expunge the Rights of Man content, but also this gesture
obliterates any sign that points to race and institutional slavery as the central concern
within Lincoln’s address. Barton concludes his evidentiary display by assisting Lincoln
to say “now my country men, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great
landmarks of the Declaration of Independence…let me entreat you to come back…come
426
Barton, Original Intent, 250 and Abraham Lincoln, Back to the Declaration of
Independence, August 17, 1858,
http://www.illinoisancestors.org/fulton/memories/lincolns_visit.html.
427
For a brief but excellent overview of the Dred Scott case see Paul Finkelman, ed.,
Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents, (Boston Bedford Books, 1997). Also
see in general Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2010) and David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglass, and Slavery: In the
Crucible of Public Debate, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
164
428
back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.”
The central message
Barton reconfigures speaks of returning to “transcendent biblical principles.”
In the above examples, Barton prompts his readers to “rehearse the customary
tropes of memory” he has provided. Barton disregards the “practical political
commitments” and the original “commemorative idiom” of the fragments he uses such
that his audience will follow suit.
429
The omission in each case is significant since it
completely effaces the Rights of Man precepts within the preamble. Barton draws upon
these quotes as literal evidence for his assertions. In the process, his rhetorical inventions
invite audiences to recite the mantra of biblical principles while ignoring the political
ideals the preamble expresses. The rehearsal of these tropes as remembrance works to
430
“restrict the citizenry’s collective capacity to derive resources from speech and action,”
other than those offered ambiguously as God’s laws for the nation. As Mark Noll argues,
the long-term effects of nineteenth century fundamentalist and conservative evangelical
thinking, particularly in regard to republican government, illustrates a tendency to “short431
circuit political analysis.”
In Barton’s case, his erasure of the Rights of Man precepts
encourages his readers to forget “relevant details of its own national past,” including the
details and nuances of Protestant history generally. With Barton’s discourses, the
unquestioned transcendence of civic tradition is nothing less than the transcendent laws
(and civic tradition) ordained by God. Such ideas, as powerful as they may be, do not
call citizens to thoughtful, reflexive, informed civic engagement since the terms offered
428
Lincoln as quoted in Barton, Original Intent, 250 and Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at
Lewistown, Illinois, 17 August 1858,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 2, (Ann
Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services, 2001): 545-546.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:567.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext#
429
Bradford Vivian, Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again,
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 73
430
431
Vivian, Public Forgetting, 85
Noll, Evangelical Scandal, 71
165
enact intellectual passivity in the name of obedience to God’s will. At the same time,
Barton’s discourse exacts a call to arms. Significantly, Barton’s rhetoric does not prompt
political idleness or passivity but rather its opposite. In this case, the dangerous manner
in which the polity is prompted to forget “details of its own national past” is insidiously
coupled with an injunction to (re)Christianize the government by all political means
necessary. Such discourse, as Vivian notes, illustrates “a morality of memory without an
ethics of memory.”
432
Barton’s rhetoric enjoins his audience to act without critical
reflection since they are armed with God’s truth and charged to recover the values God
has established for the nation.
Ultimately, Barton’s extended treatment belies his concern for the absence of
religious language within the Constitution. His effort to join both documents into a
single mandate reflects his interest in scripturalizing the Constitution in an effort to
capture its meaning (original intent) for Christian nationalists. Barton writes,
Today, as the knowledge of this interdependent relationship has been widely lost
or ignored, many individuals complain of the difficulties arising from the fact that
the Founders placed no explicit moral values or rights and wrongs in the
Constitution. However, the Founders needed to place no values in the
Constitution (the bylaws) 433
for they had already done so in the Declaration (the
articles of incorporation).
Barton’s story of a “widely lost or ignored” standard practice plays to the idea of public
memory and forgetting. Leaning upon the vestige of historical realism in his
“recollection,” Barton offers a definitive reason why the Constitution’s language is
devoid of explicit religious references to Christianity. The trajectory of his two-tiered
argumentative strategy, a biblical preamble and yoking the Constitution to the
Declaration’s “biblical” values, reveals its full rhetorical utility in the above sentiment,
432
433
Vivian, Public Forgetting, 87
Ibid.
166
which gestures to account for the absence of Christianity in the nation’s charter. If such a
mandate is literally in the Declaration, then it need not be restated in the bylaws.
Barton’s literalist solution to the absence of religious proclamations in the Constitution
situates the charter as an extension of the Declaration, and more importantly, the Bible.
Appealing to a literalist sensibility, Barton concludes, “Nonetheless, Courts over
the past half-century have steadily divorced the Constitution from the transcendent
values of the Declaration, replacing them instead with their own contrivances. The
results have been reprehensible.”
434
His concluding reflections suggest that the courts
have misread and or willfully ignored the preamble’s principles, and denied the true
relationship between the Declaration and Constitution. By drafting law according to the
courts’ own “contrivances,” and dislodging the Constitution from biblical principles, the
nation has strayed from original intent.
435
Barton’s mobilization of literalist assumptions
finds amplification in the presumption of an “object-based epistemology” that treats
textual material and physical objects (texts among them) as representing and embodying
an empirical reality independent of human conventions. Steven Conn states that an
“object-based epistemology” assumes that objects tell stories that can be apprehended by
the untrained observer.
436
The modern museum displays material in a fashion that
“implicitly endorses the authenticity of the visual object as representative of an ostensible
real past.”
437
As with biblical literalism, which insists that the human beings can plainly
read God’s revelations within scripture without assistance from anyone except the Holy
434
435
Barton, Original Intent, 251. My emphasis added.
Ibid.
436
Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), 4
437
Casey Ryan Kelly and Kristen E. Hoerl, “Genesis in Hyperreality: Legitimizing
Disingenuous Controversy at the Creation Museum,” Argumentation and Advocacy 48 (Winter
2012): 132
167
Spirit, Barton appeals to an “object-based epistemology” to bolster his case for corporeal
substantiation of his claims. It is not Barton but rather the documents (and God) that
speak these truths.
438
Literalists take “determinate meaning” as an “article of faith.”
Determinate meaning resides in the corporeal reality of texts. Artifacts (“original
documents”) speak their own truth, and the textual matter of documents represents a part
of that material reality. Without this assumption, there can be no essential textual (or
439
divine) authority and epistemological chaos ensues.
By suggesting that the courts have
ceased to read the Declaration and Constitution correctly, Barton implicitly affirms his
plain reading and honest portrayal of original intent, which he treats as existing
transparently in the founding manuscripts. Moreover, Barton’s sentiments serve to
delegitimize contrary or alternative interpretations. As a literalist, he plays in and
through the guise of straight reading, where opponents interpret (opinion) but Christian
nationalists read documents for what they truthfully express. He furnishes textual
evidence by making a performance of biblical text-proofing, a form of witnessing. His
tale is one that urges us to return to the literal truth in the Declaration, and to read original
intent as it is self-evidently expressed within both texts according to his body of
evidence. The underlined assumptions of biblical literalism, including biblical textproofing behavior, coupled with the presupposition of historical realism strengthen each
other’s authoritative plausibility producing the edifice of a reality said to be historically,
textually, and transcendentally true.
By way of a literal performance, Barton’s appropriation of terms like “the laws of
nature and nature’s God” enable him to gesture at written material as if it substantiates
his larger claims to nation. Barton directs his followers to “remember” the Christian
438
Boone, For the Bible,” 64. As Boone suggests, the literalist strategy appeals to “what
the Bible really says,” deflecting and denying interpretive practices as hand.
439
Boone, For the Bible, 67
168
“principles” within the Declaration that underwrite the Constitution and American law.
And, in this remembrance, he promulgates a “pernicious mode of public forgetting” that
calls upon adherents to imagine that conservative Protestant “values” facilitate the proper
way to craft and assess public policy.
441
judgment.
440
Values advocacy offers a standard for political
Barton invites his readers to recognize the Declaration as a Christian
document (transcendent biblical principles) establishing God’s dominion as the national
legal standard. It rehearses the remembrance of the Constitution as a subordinate
document to God’s law and the Declaration’s preamble. The values Barton lauds call for
sustained action against secular destroyers of the nation and Christianity for God’s glory.
By marking the Constitution and Declaration as distinctly theirs (conservative
evangelical), Barton captures the nation for his people symbolically. His rhetoric directs
the rehearsal of mantras affirming America’s biblical foundation. This injunction to
remember the “transcendent biblical natural law principles” of the Declaration illustrates
an “invitation addressed to memory to short-circuit the work of history,” critical thought,
and responsible, reflective civic engagement from those who desire and dream of a
Christian nation.
442
Article VI: Section 2 of the Constitution states,
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in
pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the
authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the
Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,443anything in the Constitution of laws
of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
440
Vivian, Public Forgetting, 64. Vivian deftly observes that memory and forgetting are
two aspects of one phenomenon. In particular, his research on neoliberal epideictic as a mode of
“pernicious forgetting” informs my thinking here. Also see David Barton, “The Bible, Voters,
and the 2008 Election,”(Aledo: WallBuilders, 2008).
http://www.wallbuilders.com/downloads/BibleVoters_lowres.pdf. Barton is one of countless
conservative evangelicals urging citizens to “vote biblically.”
441
442
Bostdorff and Vibbert, “Values Advocacy,” 143
Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2006), 87
443
US Const, Art. IV, § 2.
169
Barton’s rhetoric encourages his audience to neglect, forget, overlook, and generally
misconstrue the constitutional command that authorizes itself as the “supreme law of the
land.” Since God’s name is nowhere in these provisions, Barton makes an elaborate case
to infuse conservative Protestantism into the Constitution’s text by way of biblical
literalism and a restaged preamble. Barton’s discursive gestures advance far right
religious-political values under the guise of historical research. Although values
advocacy is not intrinsically harmful, the manner in which such rhetoric can prompt
public forgetting and promote intellectual passivity is ethically and politically
problematic. Barton’s advocacy, ethically speaking, “lays the ground work for public
policies that have dubious social merit.”
444
Bostdorff and Vibbert note that while values
advocacy holds numerous advantages as a style of communiqué, such messages are
advanced “frequently at the expense of audiences and thoughtful public policy.”
445
Barton’s narratives, in demarcating God’s law as the authorizing standard by which
constitutional law gains its legitimacy, illustrates a memory narrative that promotes
political dispositions and understandings sympathetic to present and future suspension of
constitutional law in the name of God’s will for a Christian nation.
Conclusion: Politics, Public Memory, and God’s Law
This chapter traces the rhetorical moves Barton makes to secure the Declaration
of Independence as the primary legal document proclaiming American Christian
nationhood. Barton reconstitutes the preamble’s Rights of Man and its god terminology
to reflect “transcendental Biblical natural law principles.” He treats this verbal
444
445
Bostdorff and Vibbert, “Values Advocacy,”153
Bostdorff and Vibbert, “Values Advocacy,”154
170
substitution as established fact and enhances its plausibility by crafting a historical
narrative that recounts it influence on American culture from the inception of the nation
onward. Barton’s story line culminates in a cause /effect scenario where he presents the
abandonment of “transcendental Biblical natural law principles” as the definitive cause of
ostensible American cultural decline.
Having established the veracity of this reconfigured preamble by way of historical
storytelling, Barton strategically positions the Declaration as the nation’s “real” charter.
By situating the Declaration as the Articles of Incorporation and the Constitution as its
bylaws, he constructs the Constitution as a subordinate state instrument, incapable of
functioning without the Declaration’s biblical preamble and God’s law. To bolster the
plausibility of this contention, Barton turns again to storytelling to “prove” that his
contention is historically true. Tethering the Constitution to the biblical preamble
affectively renders it a document that may be bypassed altogether when it does not
conform to God’s law as enshrined in the Declaration. In effect, Barton’s rhetoric makes
a double wager, as if to hedge a bet. He establishes the Constitution as an inspired
document AND he subordinates it to a higher order inspired document in the form of the
Declaration. This enables Barton to draw upon the Constitution as God’s law and or to
dismiss it as subsidiary and outranked by God’s authority in any given circumstance.
To solidify his major claim Barton turns to biblical proof-texting as a form of
witnessing. Here he quotes countless American statesmen providing textual fragments
offered in the spirit of concrete evidence. Though Barton’s tactics drastically alter and
decontextualize the fragments he advances as evidence, he makes a performance out of
bearing witness to his audience in the capacity of a faithful literal reader of texts.
Barton’s proof-texts signal key phrases he has already endowed with meaning. Thus his
fragments in their severely altered state play off of terms such as “principles,” “values”,
and “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” anchoring the material to his prior
assertions concerning the biblical nature of the preamble.
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Kenneth Burke reminds us that, “terrain determines tactics.” Barton’s larger
interest is to establish the basis upon which constitutional law must conform to God’s
law. If the Constitution is a subordinate document, and if it must be read through the
biblical lens of the preamble, and if God’s law underwrites the Articles of Incorporation,
then policy and law must conform not to the nation’s Constitution but to the
“constitution-behind-the-constitution” in the form of God’s authority. Barton’s overall
discursive project accomplishes two major tasks. One, it accounts for the missing
religious language of the Constitution, a vexing condition that contradicts the assertion of
an American Christian nation. Second, and more importantly, it allows Christian
nationalists to claim the instruments of government for the Christian nationalist cause
while simultaneously affirming the justifiable suspension of constitutional law in the face
of God’s will for the nation. As memory texts, Barton primes his audience to rehearse a
version of the nation that negates and nullifies the political commitments and civic
responsibilities incumbent to the maintenance of the American constitutional republic.
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CHAPTER 6
ONE BIBLICAL NATION UNDER OUR FAR-RIGHT HEAVENLY
FATHER: THE FOUNDERS’ BIBLE AS MEMORY AND MANDATE
Published in 2012, Barton’s Founders’ Bible exemplifies an exhaustive work
offered as a definitive historical accounting of America’s biblical underpinnings. As
such, it stands as his most ambitious memory project to date. The Founders’ Bible
combines the New Standard American Bible with an extensive collection of extra-biblical
commentaries, illustrations, and sidebars meant to offer literal “proof texts” of
American’s biblical history and identity. The promotional materials boast that it contains
some 330 pages of “major articles,” with “over 450 pages of embedded commentary
highlighting biblical insight and wisdom from the Founders on a wide range of topics.” It
includes “Over 150 biographies or insightful quotes from various Founders and other
influential people of history and the Founding Era.”
446
Barton penned the 66
introductions for each book of the Bible and wrote most of the “articles” offered as
commentary to scripture.
The Founders’ Bible website features a series of promotional videos that rehearse
narratives of national destruction at the hands of secularists. The Founders’ Bible is
presented as a corrective to set the record straight concerning America’s biblical history,
identity, and destiny. The official promotional trailer for the Founders’ Bible warns,
The United States of America is teetering on the brink of a great awakening or
inevitable destruction. [Dramatic, dark orchestral music plays in the background.
Image: liberal protestors holding signs that critique capitalism]
The foundations that gave birth to the most powerful, free, and prosperous nation
in the world (IM: NYC skyline) are in danger of crumbling (IM: prochoice
protestors + joblessness quotes, Obama, etc…) right before our very eyes. It’s
446
www.foundersbible.com
173
time to wake up from our slumber, to rediscover the true vision, passion, and
wisdom of our Founding Fathers. (IM: George Washington in forest with horse on
bent knee praying)
The Founders’ Bible tells the epic saga of the true forgotten history and deep
spiritual heritage that birthed the greatest and most powerful nation in the world.
‘One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all’ (pause) a
phrase we’ve heard countless times but know so little about.
The Founders’ Bible will reveal historical, indisputable facts and time-tested
wisdom for the way forward. Now, we the people must open our eyes and
rediscover what we thought we knew. It’s not too late for America.
Barton’s narrative begins with a tale of national destruction wrought by a systematic lack
of understanding or concern for the original intentions of the founders. The images
accompanying the copy identify the usual liberal suspects responsible for taking the
nation to the brink of “inevitable destruction.” Only a “great awakening” can save the
nation. Returning to the “wisdom” of the founders and understanding their original
vision for the nation forms the remedy and way forward. This prophecy of religious
revival and the threat of national annihilation sounds a call to arms, one that reverberates
through the entire volume. Barton’s concluding refrain asserts that the Founders’ Bible
“reveals historical, indisputable facts and time-tested wisdom for the way forward.” The
literalist rhetoric of “historical facts” coupled with the founders’ (presumed) intent
intimates necessary political actions to be waged in the present moment to save the
nation.
As a rhetorical artifact the Founders’ Bible resembles the structure of the Scofield
Bible in its use of extensive commentary that does more than explain (or contextualize)
biblical texts. Scofield’s annotations wrote a “Bible” that reflected dispensational
theology as historical and biblical truth. Whereby the Scofield Bible superimposed
dispensation theology onto scripture, the Founders’ Bible offers a providential rendering
of the nation’s founding, including the biblical basis of free market capitalism and our
174
republican form of government.
447
The compilation pairs over one hundred extensive
commentaries with a target scriptural component, where each article’s offset heading
indicates the relevant biblical passage to which it pertains. These articles are strategically
placed within scriptural matter, interrupting the natural flow of each biblical chapter.
Some chapters contain multiple articles interspersed throughout the biblical text. Figured
within sidebars, scattered throughout and embedded within biblical chapters, short
biographies of notable historical figures and lush, intertextually suggestive illustrations
fill the volume throughout.
The Founders’ Bible commentaries touch upon an array of far right political
stances, presenting these ideological components as if they represented God’s will for the
nation. This includes but is not limited to “pro-life”/anti-abortion discourses, free market
ideology, neoliberalism and privatization, American individualism and personal
responsibility discourses, issues related to anti-communitarian healthcare, anti-secular
public school education, pro-prayer in school, anti-gun regulation, heteronormative
headship family structures, covenant marriage, anti-birth control, anti-marriage equality,
anti-gay rights, anti-feminism, pro-death penalty, anti-new deal/social welfare policy, and
anti-union sentiments. It also includes essays that present whitewashed version of the
history of American slavery, characterizing the country and founding figures as generally
447
Barton has popularized these ideas for years, particularly through his public
appearances and DVD specials. The Founders’ Bible appears to be a first effort to place these
extended commentaries side-by-side with the Bible in full. Barton argues that “The whole
concept of the free market – it even applies to economics [scripture] – comes out of the Bible: 1
Timothy 5:8 and 2 Thessalonians 3:10. If we’re not a Christian nation, we’ll lose the free market
form of capitalism.” According to the King James Bible 2 Thessalonians 3:10 reads “For even
when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should they
eat.” 1 Timothy 5:8 reads “But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own
house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” For the transcription and video
segment see Kyle Mantyla, “Checking David Barton’s Biblical Citations,” Right Wing Watch,
posted April 4, 2011. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/checking-barton-biblical-citations.
For a systematic chart (derived from Barton’s teachings) that pairs biblical quotes with
Constitutional provisions see “The Bible and Government: Biblical Principles: Basis for
America’s Laws,” Faith Facts. http://www.faithfacts.org/christ-and-the-culture/the-bible-andgovernment
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against the institution. Moreover, white men are figured as the definitive heroes who
448
ended the practice and saved African Americans.
Within the Founders’ Bible, all state
documents of significance are coded as “inspired” including but not limited to the
Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of
Rights. And finally, the Rights of Man philosophy in the preamble of the Declaration is
restaged as “creation rights” given to human beings from God. As such the Declaration
and Constitution are said to reflect God’s law, not man’s law.
The sheer scope of this material is too large and unwieldy to treat within this
analysis. For the sake of argument, I restrict my focus to materials within the Founders’
Bible that advance free market enterprise (“anti-socialism” and treatment of the poor) and
that make a case for a biblical government based upon “inspired” founding documents. I
have chosen to incorporate the pro-capitalism materials for a number of important
reasons. First, neoliberal / libertarian discourse within the religious right rhetoric remains
underexplored territory within rhetorical studies. As an extension of larger Republican
Party ideals, it is not surprising that religious right figureheads such as Barton promote
free market ideology. What appears to remain perplexing is how this ideological
commitment works in conjunction with Christianity. The Founders’ Bible allows for a
critical examination of the reading practices that constitute the two stances into a
seamless unity. Second, I am interested in demonstrating that the rhetorical strategies
employed by Barton to scripturalize market policies and founding documents are the
same, thus drawing upon these seemingly disparate materials helps illustrate this point.
This is important in an overall understanding of how his reading practices and
intertextual work within the Founders’ Bible as a whole proffers “memory texts” that
affirm the biblical and constitutional nature of contemporary far right political ideals and
interests.
448
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 123.
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Barton presents The Founders’ Bible as definitive, empirical proof of the biblical
basis of the nation’s founding. The collection embeds voluminous commentary within
scriptural texts furnished as empirical support for the biblical basis of the nation, its
founding, original intent, and its proper destiny. As an object of study for rhetoric, it
offers an extended exploration of intertextual placement, persuasion, and rhetorical
constitution in the construction of scripture and nation. Moreover, it provides a window
into the manner in which theological codes (inerrancy and its subspecies) operate
discursively to precondition and animate argumentative claims. As memory texts, the
artifact delivers a vision of nation and scripture meant to shape and motivate far right
political behavior and attitudes. Undergirded by the rules and assumptions of biblical
literalism, The Founders’ Bible represents a compilation of scripture, commentary (far
right political ideology), founding documents, and textual excerpts by or about American
figures brought together intertextually to create a new composite whole. While the tome
offers scripture as empirical proof-texts said to reveal this hidden and forgotten history of
the nation, the extra-biblical matter serves to shape biblical content. I argue that these
commentaries (religious right-GOP political ideology) condition, frame, develop, and
guide the interpreted meanings derived from scripture and state documents. These
commentaries structure intertextual relationships, offer reading instructions for
interpretive practice, and provide assiduous ideological inculcation throughout the
manuscript. Forming a circuit, the commentaries produce scriptural meanings while the
aura of divine authority from biblical writ marks neoliberal far right ideology as divinely
created, sanctioned, and mandated within state documents.
This chapter begins with a brief discussion and analysis of important rhetorical
features of literalism, pointing to the manner in which its underlying assumptions
condition, undergird, and shape textual meanings derived from both scripture and state
documents within the Founders’ Bible. With these ideas in place, I turn to four
commentaries within this compilation concerned with the market economy and poverty.
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The first piece entitled “Free Market Enterprise” labors to prove the biblical nature of
capitalism, and specifically, the neoliberal economic order that defines the global default
market theory and praxis of the new millennium.
449
I examine how the commentary
creates scriptural and historical meaning (“reality”) while occluding such interpretive
maneuvers through the auspices of applied literalism. In concert with this piece, I
analyze the rhetoric of privatization and “personal responsibility” in “How Are We to
Help the Poor” which guides interpretation and conditions the content of Deuteronomy
24 and the nation’s founding. The disquisition “Socialism Versus the Free Market
449
By the term neoliberalism I am referring to an economic and cultural ideological
cluster of policy commitments. As an economic strategy for domestic and global markets,
neoliberalism refers to economic policy meant to free global and domestic capital flows
(restraints) as a means to dramatically redistribute wealth back to top bracket earners. In the
United State, stagflation during the 1970s ushered in an economic response that sought to depress
wages and labor, deregulate markets, and privatize and destroy public sector structures as a means
to redistribute wealth. Many scholars (cited below) argue that such practices have successfully
created unparalleled income inequality and a dramatic redistribution of capital to the top one
percent globally over the last three decades. Neoliberal policies are characterized by
deregulation, privatization, tax cuts benefiting investment and capital income, and government
collusion, which maintains and protects a corporate welfare state. Neoliberal policies represent a
new instantiation of capitalism from 1980s onward. As a constellation of discourses,
neoliberalism has become the hegemonic lens by which all social values are beset upon,
conditioned, delimited, directed, advocated, shaped, or silenced. That is to say, its values
dominate how (at least) Americans think about and discuss cultural issues as vast as ethics,
poverty and income inequality, sexuality, gender and conjugality, education policy and cultural
inculcation of knowledge including science (e.g. Climate change deniers and creationism), and
labor. Thus cultural neoliberal discourses include but are not limited to rhetorics of privatization
and personal responsibility (including anti-unionism and anti-labor rights), entitlements versus
benefits and attacks on the welfare state (which is racially coded), “family values” as the
protection of heteronormative marriage and headship familial structures, “biblical values,” “fetal
rights,” and libertarian free market sentiments. See Robert Asen, Invoking the Invisible Hand:
Social Security and the Privatization Debates, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
2009), James Arnt Aune, Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness, (New
York: The Guilford Press, 2001), Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism,
Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), Gerard Duménil
and Dominique Lévy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism, (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
2011), Ashley Davis-Hamel, “Successful Neoliberalism?: State Policy, Poverty, and Income
Inequality in Chile,” International Social Science Review 87 (2012) 79-101, David Harvey, A
Brief History of Neoliberalism, (Oxford: Oxford Press, 2005), Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of
the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics, (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 2012), and Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short
Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
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System” extends the political argument of the first two pieces, advocating neoliberal
values under the presumption of literal scriptural reading and historical “fact” finding.
Here God’s plan for humankind lies in the free-market economy. I analyze the manner in
which this extra-biblical commentary seek to biblicalize contemporary libertarian
interests, rejecting public sector structures as anti-biblical. In doing so, I trace how
presumptions of literalism assist the polemical messages within commentary as if the
facts resided in history and in biblical writ itself. The last short extra-biblical text
advocating neoliberalism advances the argument that flat taxation is both biblical and
representative of the founders’ intent. Collectively, these four pieces illustrate the
rhetorical strategy to write scripture and history, linking scripture to constitutional
provisions, in favor of contemporary far right policy interests while simultaneously
obfuscating the interpretive operations that condition and direct scriptural and historical
meaning making.
In the second section of this chapter I examine commentaries specifically written
to scripturalize the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, branding both as
derived from Biblical writ and “inspired.” I demonstrate how this strategy, as directed by
extra-biblical commentary, informs scriptural and historical understanding, conditioning
target texts and ideas (i.e. original intent) to appear as if they speak directly for the values
the essays advocate. Keeping the operations of literalism firmly in mind, I explore the
political ramifications of texts written to inform and direct public remembrance of and
political allegiance to a Christian nation. First, I analyze “America’s Political Form of
Government” which argues that our constitutional Republic was derived from Exodus
18:21 and is expressed in Article IV: Section 4 of the nation’s charter. Here I consider
the rhetorical maneuver that scripturalizes founding documents and its relationship to
invoking a “state of exception” to constitutional law. Next, I turn to two essays paired
with Ezekiel respectively entitled “When Law Violates Scripture” and “Inseparable: The
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution” which direct readers to regard both
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documents as first and foremost representative of God’s law. In previous chapters, I
traced Barton’s construction of inspired founding documents, explicating the political,
rhetorical, and theological significance of his discursive inventions. In this chapter I
revisit Barton’s treatment of the Declaration and Constitution as they are treated and
expanded upon within Barton’s opus The Founders’ Bible. I focus on materials that
supplement and build upon his claims of a biblical preamble and an inspired constitution,
demonstrating how they are positioned to interact intertextually with the rest of the
materials in the compilation. I follow the rhetorical developments that affirm and claim
constitutional republicanism for Christian nationalists and advocate for Constitutional
suspension where law is deemed unbiblical, and thus contrary to God’s design. I
examine the argumentative developments that, by the end of the Founders’ Bible, seek to
align the reader with far right political ideological commitments as if they were biblical,
prompting its audience to recapture the nation from heathen traitors and to stand ready to
override any legal structures that work contrary to conservative Protestant political and
cultural hegemony.
Rhetoric, Literalism, and the Founders’ Bible
To review, biblical literalism as an interpretive strategy provides rules and
presupposition that assist in the production of ostensible plain readings said to reflect
determinate, objective textual meaning. Applied biblical literalism may also be said to be
the performance or act of treating texts as sacred: eternal, infallible, and unerring. As
W.C. Smith argues, treating texts as scripture illustrates human action toward textuality
450
rather than representing an inherent quality within documents deemed sacred.
As an
article of faith, biblical literalists believe in the inerrant and inspired nature of biblical
450
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What is Scripture? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993),18.
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writ. The presumption of literalism in this case functions to obfuscate human agency,
disavowing the manner in which human beings craft, affirm, and constitute texts as
divinely inspired. Inerrancy argues for determinant textual meaning as secured by and
through divine authority. Theological inerrancy holds that human beings may err in their
reading of inerrant texts but the textual expressions themselves are assumed to be
unerring, infallible, unchanging, and binding upon all. For biblical literalists, inspired
texts express what they mean directly without need for interpretation. Based upon
theological tradition, the Holy Spirit guides human beings in the correct apprehension of
scriptural revelation. Therefore, readers must come to inerrant texts with the properly
reverent disposition to gain God’s assistance in the process of comprehension. By this
formula, the designation of “inspiration” to non-biblical texts extends the conceptual
framework of inerrancy (and literalism), marking them as direct reflections of God’s
Word and work in the world. The concept of “inspiration” serves to authorize texts as
bearing a sacred condition or quality, as touched by God. As such, the conceptualization
of an inspired Constitution, Declaration, and nation illustrates a strategy of appropriation
and framing. That is to say, inspired documents contain God’s given determinate
meaning. They must be read literally for what God intended to express. These ideas
serve as foundational pillars for Christian nationalist policy and activism, and find
extended expression in the 2,200 pages of the Founders’ Bible.
Literalism reveals its structuring presence both explicitly and implicitly.
Literalism serves as an implicit standard undergirding and structuring the Biblicist
451
perspective.
It serves as the implicit standard that preconditions the materials within
the Founders’ Bible. The Founders’ Bible expresses explicit literalist framing as well.
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As a review, Christian Smith outlines biblicism (aka biblical literalism) as “A theory
about the Bible that emphasizes together its exclusive authority, infallibility, perspicuity, selfsufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meanings, and universal application.” Christian
Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of
Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012), x
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For instance, its first commentary entitled “If Ever There Was a Time, It Is Now” begins
with the statements, “The Bible is called the Word of Truth. That has stood through the
452
solitary ages as an undeniable fact.”
Continuing with this literalist framing Barton
recalls that his family’s Bible bore the inscription “This Book contains the mind of God,
the state of man, the way to salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of
believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its
decisions are immutable.”
453
Two elements represent literalism distinctly, the first of
which is the assumption that the Bible is the mind of God – God’s word directly-- rather
than God’s revelations as written by men. The second marker of literalism appears in the
supposition, “its histories are true.” Barton’s suggestion that the Bible represents
“undeniable fact” expresses a literalist stance in its preoccupation with protecting the
“authority” of scripture as textually fixed, stable, objective, and immutable. Barton
emphatically proclaims, “This volume is the Word of God.”
454
These explicit elements
are nothing unusual or controversial for biblical literalists. Their placement in the front
matter imparts implicitly that the Founders’ Bible, commentaries included, contains
objective, undeniable historical and biblical facts that in essence represent the Word of
God.
The literalist approach to textual interpretation serves to frame and preserve the
presumption of unchanging and infallible textual truth. Strategically, the literalist
perspective applied generates the empirical evidence inerrantists seek to find regardless
of textual content. Kathleen Boone argues that literalists write the text prior to reading,
452
David Barton, Brad Cummings, and Lance Wubbels, The Founders’ Bible, (Newbury
Park: Shiloh Road Publishers, LLC, 2012), xxvi
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Barton, The Founders’ Bible, xxvii. Christian Smith notes how this declaration “The
Bible contains the minds of God” demonstrates a classic Biblicist disposition, as does the refrain
“God said it, I believe, that settles it.” Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, 7.
454
Ibid.
182
and that shared rules and interpretive conventions constitute textual meaning even as
literalists insist that texts speak for themselves. In taking the Bible, or other inspired
materials, literally, James Barr suggests that “inerrancy is maintained only by constantly
altering the mode of interpretation, and in particular by abandoning the literal sense as
455
soon as it would be an embarrassment to the view of inerrancy held.”
In this sense,
maintaining “indisputable” factual meaning within texts requires a method that is flexible
and simultaneously disavows the process of interpretation altogether. Literalist
assumptions enable readers to shifts in and out of literal modes of reading when the
preservation of an established set of meanings is at issue. Barr’s reflections seem akin to
the idea of linguistic deflection. Kenneth Burke theorized that our conceptual
vocabularies represent deflections of reality “when a given terminology, or calculus, is
456
not suited to the subject matter which it is designed to calculate.”
Applying Burke’s
insight to theological literalism as reading strategy, literal readings by necessity toggle
between various modes of interpretation other than “plain reading” to produce and
maintain the appearance of inerrant textual meaning; meaning presumed to be at once
fixed and factual. As a result the “inerrancy doctrine generates a host of strained
457
interpretations.”
According to Christian Smith, literalism necessitates strained interpretations.
These problematic interpretations arise, in part, as a result of treating the Bible as the
historical record of human existence. Strained interpretations necessitate non-literal
readings of scripture that are treated as literal even as the interpretive procedures and
resultant arguments demonstrate figurative, analogic, metaphoric, allegorical, or extra455
James Barr as quoted in Kathleen Boone, For the Bible Tells Them So: Discourses of
Protestant Fundamentalism, (London: SCM Press, 1989), 46
456
Kenneth Burke, Grammar of Motives, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1969), 59
457
Boone, For the Bible, 64
183
biblical exegesis. Literal readings render biblical figures, parables, and stories as
historically objective. Instances of strained interpretations have led to the now
widespread creationist contention that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s arc. Religious
Right luminary Francis Schaeffer painted himself in a tight corner by asserting that Adam
458
and Eve are historical figures in his book No Final Conflict.
Smith notes that literalists
respond to problems that arise in the texts in three ways. First, they may simply “ignore
the problematic texts pretending they do not exist.”
459
Second, they “‘interpret’ the
problematic texts as if they say things that they do not in fact say,” and third, they
“develop elaborate contortions of highly unlikely scenarios and explanations...which
seem to rescue the texts from the problems” at hand.
460
It is in light of these strategic
461
tendencies, Boone notes, “literalistic readers can reject Christianity in any form.”
Smith
comes to the same conclusion, suggesting that Biblicism cannot deliver on its claims. As
such, adherents “violate their own intentions” of reading the Bible faithfully and
literally.
462
For Boone, literalism may be understood in two sense of the word.
Accordingly, “It can be taken to mean the disallowance of figurative or symbolic
463
interpretation.”
464
referential.”
458
Literal, on the other hand, can denote the “empirical or the ostensibly
It is the process of interpretation coupled with the presumption of plain
Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1979),
18
459
460
461
462
Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, xi
Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, x, xii
Boone, For the Bible, 65
Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, x, xiii
463
Boone, For the Bible, 45. In the Calvinist tradition, a long-standing practice of
allegorical interpretation gave way to the primacy of literal interpretation. Yet the Calvinist
tradition eschewed allegorical exegesis only in cases where it seemed excessive or as an
unnecessary embellishment to verses that lent themselves to a more direct and immediate
interpretation.
464
Ibid.
184
reading that consequentially creates the “supposed evidence” literalist offer in the spirit
of empirical proof-text.
465
Boone argues that these “strained exegeses not only arise from
interpretive strategies, but they are themselves evidence that these strategies exist
466
logically prior to the text itself.”
The Founders’ Bible represents an exhaustive effort to furnish the literal truth of a
Christian nation--one that affirms contemporary far right politics as biblical. Its content
is based upon the general assumption that the Constitution directly quotes the Bible, and
that the founders consciously fashioned the Republic from scripture. Yet, applied
literalism often abandons the very practice it purports to deploy and represent
hermeneutically. As stated above, Barr suggests literalists abandon reading texts literally
when it becomes inconvenient to maintain some (presumed fixed) meaning within texts.
Barton illustrates this method of applied literalism where he insists that the Constitution
quotes the Bible verbatim. Popularized years before in his American Heritage Series,
Barton began rehearsing his contention concerning verbatim quotation early in 2012 in
anticipation of the release of the Founders’ Bible. In a talk at Northwoods Community
Church in Illinois, 2012, Barton states emphatically,
If you will take the Constitution in one hand and read its language and take the
Bible in the other hand and read it, you’ll say ‘Wow, that’s a direct quotation out
of a Bible verse.’ Yeah, exactly. If you look through the Constitution, you’ll find
so many direct quotations right out of Bible verse because that’s what they put in
the document.
Now today we’re often told, oh no, the Constitution is a secular document, it’s a
godless document. When people tell me that, I know that they’re biblically
illiterate, they don’t recognize Bible verses. If you read the content of that and
you know the Bible, you’ll say, ‘hey, that’s a direct quote out of Ezra 7:24 467
and
there it is out of Deuteronomy 17:5.’ It’s just throughout the Constitution.
465
Stanley Fish, Is There a Text, 340. Fish argues that “the text as it is variously
characterized is a consequence of the interpretation for which it is supposedly evidence.”
466
467
Boone, For the Bible, 65
Kyle Mantyla, “Barton: People Who Say the Constitution is Secular are Just Biblically
Illiterate,” Right Wing Watch, September 11, 2012. Accessed 9/11/2012.
185
Barton’s claim treats the idea of direct quotation in a two-fold manner. In the first
instance he invites his audiences to take the existence of biblical quotes in founding
documents as literally true and present within the text. In the second instance, Barton’s
case for “direct quotation” and “verbatim” iterations of scripture in the Constitution
defies the presumption of plain reading and strict literalism. For instance, Barton asserts,
Now, that’s why the Constitution is a problem. You look at Article III: Section 1,
the treason clause; direct quote out of the Bible. You look at Article II, the quote
on the president has to be a native born, that is Deuteronomy 17:15 VERBATIM.
I mean, look how many clauses come out of it. It drives the secularists nuts
because the Bible is all over. Now, we as Christians don’t tend to recognize
that.
468
We think it’s a secular document. We’ve bought into their lies. It’s not. (My
emphasis)
Barton’s use of the term “verbatim” betrays his literalist assertion since Deuteronomy
17:15 reads “You shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses, one
from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a
foreigner over yourselves who is not your countryman” and Article II: Section 1 of the
Constitution states “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United
states, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of
President.”
469
In this instance, the two passages bear a resemblance to each other
www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-people-who-say-constitution-secular-are-just-biblicallyilliterate.html. See The American Heritage Series, “America’s Biblical Constitution,” for a full
list of biblical quotes said to be in the Constitution. A partial list includes the following
correspondences: Article 1: Section 8/Leviticus 19:34; Article II: Section 1/Deuteronomy 17:15;
Article III: Section 3/ Deuteronomy 17:6; Article III: Section 3/Ezekiel 18:20. Barton lists the
separation of powers as derived from Jeremiah 17:9, the three branches of Government from
Isaiah 33:22, Tax exemptions for churches from Ezra 7:24, and Matthew 20: 1-16 as Jesus’s
stance against minimum wage policy.
468
Kyle Mantyla, “Barton: The Constitution Quotes the Bible ‘Verbatim,’” Right Wing
Watch, April 10, 2012. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-constitution-quotes-bibleverbatim
469
Art II: Sec 1
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 326 and the Constitution of the United State of America,
186
conceptually. However, in order to preserve the truthfulness of the claim Barton
advances, he must jettison literal reading to render the two fragments as equivalent and
not simply related analogically or otherwise. Barton’s emphatic assertion that the
Constitution is not a secular document requires both the implicit presumptions of
literalism (primary documents speak for themselves) and the “strained exegesis” that
produces the appearance of continuity and sameness between discontinuous fragments.
Literalism forms the crucial link that binds the two fragments as one and the same.
Boone argues, strategic literalism attempts to finalize textual meaning and thus
literalists shift interpretive strategies to maintain the premise they seek to affirm in any
given instance.
470
She notes that the “plausibility of the literal sense of biblical passages is
471
linked to maintaining the inerrancy of the text.”
For example, Barton unflinchingly
contends that the Constitution directly quotes the Bible. He offers multiple examples
including the assertion that Article I: Section 8 quotes Leviticus 19:34, Article II: Section
1 reflects Deuteronomy 17:15, that Article III: Section 3 restates Deuteronomy 17:6, and
that Exodus 18:21 established the nation’s republican form of government (Article IV:
Section 4) to name a few examples. Although Barton uses terms such as “direct quote”
and “verbatim,” his claim relies upon an analogical understanding of these textual
fragments. Literalism grounds his examples in a presumed self-evident textuality, at once
denying interpretive license while illustrating its operations in praxis. For biblical
literalist, Barton’s statements are plausibly true not only because he presents himself as a
plain reader of “original sources,” but also because the presumption of literalism insists
that it furnishes empirical facts as expressed verbally. Literalism expresses its influence
in what it denies, erases, disavows, or masks. It denies the interpretive process altogether
since interpretation cannot also belong to the categorical self-evident plain reading. It
470
471
Boone, For the Bible, 78
Boone, For the Bible, 46
187
abandons its own hermeneutical directives when they become inconvenient to the
interpretive task at hand and when the preservation of some “inerrant truth” is at stake.
Applied literalism readily instigates the adoption of alternative interpretive strategies in
pursuit of verifying and maintaining target “truth” claims.
The basis upon which biblical literalists affirm the Bible as historically true rests
upon the self-evident argumentative element intrinsic to both theological inerrancy and
literalism. Protestant rejection of allegorical interpretation, especially since Calvin, led
to increasing insistence upon literal interpretations of biblical passage. Pietistic literalism
operates on the basis of faith alone, confirming the literal truth of biblical events, places,
and figures, as well as the inerrant sanctity of God’s Word irrespective of conditions of
production and reception through time. Biblical literalists regularly insist they are simply
iterating “what the Bible really says.”
472
Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca
observe that arguments that proclaim the status of being self-evident arise in matters
concerning validity and interpretation. And, indeed, literalism and inerrancy were
473
developed to place the validity of scriptural authority in an unassailable position.
Literalism and inerrancy function as theologies that ground themselves, and all they
encompass, in the presumption of the self-evident. Perelman writes of self-evident
argumentation,
That which is self-evident is simultaneously effective and valid and convinces
because it bears conviction in it. The self-evident, as the criterion of validity, is
the authority for totally discrediting all argumentation, on the grounds that it is
effective though it does not provide real proof and can therefore be
rooted only in
474
psychology, and not in logic, even in the broad sense of the term.
472
473
474
Boone, For the Bible, 64
See chapter two of this dissertation
Chaïm Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on
Argumentation, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 464
188
By suggesting that the argument of the self-evident relies upon psychology rather than
logic, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca point to the affective forces at play when human
beings ascent to this specific tautological gesture. It is not through rigorous
argumentation that claims of the self- evident gain adherence. Psychologically, selfevident premises rely upon the disposition of faith.
475
The self-evident argument seeks to
verify itself through disqualifying all arguments to the contrary.
Next, I turn to analysis of the Founders’ Bible commentaries that discuss the
biblical basis of “free-market” capitalism. While commentaries to scripture purport to
simply discuss scriptural meanings, elaborate commentaries like those within the Scofield
Bible “write” the scripture they purport to describe. Said another way, commentaries
become a formative element in creating textual meanings and directing textual
comprehension. Kathleen Boone notes that commentaries “patrol the boundaries of
discourse.”
476
I examine the manner in which the Founders’ Bible commentaries direct
scriptural interpretation and delimit possibilities of alternative understanding. In this
sense, the commentaries, as discursive practice, “form the objects of which they speak”
rather than reveal what is said to objectively reside within the text itself.
477
Projects and Projections: Reading Far Right Ideology into Scripture
475
It is important to note that self-evident arguments appear logical to those who have
faith in their assertions. As arguments, they present rationales for consideration and uptake.
Stephen E. Toulmin suggests, most arguments are not formal syllogisms. Rather inerrancy and
literalism as argumentative elements are self-evident arguments that are field-dependent. Stephen
E. Toulmin, The Uses of Arguments, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 15.
476
477
Boone, For the Bible, 78
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. By A.M. Sheridan Smith,
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 49
189
The Founders’ Bible commentaries argue that free market capitalism arose in
“biblical times” under providential direction and is based upon biblical writ. This basic
premise designates “free market enterprise” as the only economic structure sanctioned by
God. Matthew 20 serves as one of many proof-texts offered as evidence for this
assertion. In the Founders’ Bible, Matthew 20 is paired with a commentary entitled “Free
478
Market Enterprise” and it is placed in juxtaposition to “The Parable of the Landowner.”
The article “Free Market Enterprise” begins with a modified rendition of the parable,
stating, “In Matthew 20, Jesus told the parable of a landowner, or employer, who needed
workers for his vineyard.”
479
The Founders’ version states that he looked for workers
throughout the day, offering them a denarius for the day’s labor. The disquisition
continues, “he offered them the same wage; if they agreed, they went to work for him.”
480
At the end of the day, the landowner paid his laborers the same sum of money whether
they had worked all day or come to the job later in the afternoon. When those who had
toiled the full day complained that the landowner was being unfair, the owner replied “’is
it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious
because I am generous?’”
481
Barton’s version of the story emphasizes that the landowner
had kept his word and paid each worker what he had promised. At the same time,
Barton’s reworked tale omits a significant plotline. In the parable, the landowner hired
these laborers throughout the day because he kept encountering idle men in the vicinity
who wished to work. The full parable ends with the moralist phrase, “So the last will be
first, and the first will be last,” a seminal phrase that is missing in Barton’s
478
It appears as if there is an error with editing. Text under the heading “The Parable of
the Landowner” in the Founders’ Bible is actually “The parable of the Tenants.”
479
480
481
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1485. My emphasis.
Ibid.
Ibid.
190
482
commentary.
Barton’s rendition shifts the narrative to reflect a modern day contractual
interaction between a prospective employer and employee. This strategy will exploit
these terms later in the essay. The term employer creates a slippage that enables Barton
to liken the story to contemporary economic structures and policy formation, as if
capitalism, non-government interference (deregulation), and right-to-work policy are
predicated upon biblical wisdom. Its strategic placement redefines the linguistic
circumference of the parable.
With this new framing in place, the commentary moves directly into the political
lessons to be derived from Matt. 20. It opens with a reflection on economic fairness
noting,
At this point when the global economy is in shambles and there is so much debate
going on about what is fair, what is appropriate compensation, and how our
economy is to be regulated, it is not surprising that there is much truth to be
gleaned directly from scripture in regard to economic issues. Several clear
483
observations can be made from this passage.
The statement, “several clear observations” leads with implied literalism, instructing the
audience to recognize the assertions that follow as literally expressed within the parable.
Opening statements concerning economic fairness promise definitive biblical answers to
weighty issues. Barton lists these “clear observations,” starting with the initial premise
that “the employer and employee individually negotiated the terms of employment.”
484
Thusly, both parties had agreed on a specific wage. Barton avers, “This establishes the
right of the employer and employee to make a contract without interference from
482
483
484
Matt. 20:16 ASV
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1486
Ibid.
191
others.”
485
Second, this agreement was made between two individuals and had nothing to
do with the other laborers, hinting at the unbiblical nature of collective bargaining.
Barton’s third point reads, “The employer has the lawful right” to do what he wishes with
486
his own capital.
His fourth argument reflects modern day debates concerning
economic equity, labor unions, collective bargaining, and workers’ rights. Barton
contends, “As opposed to some mandated principle of fairness, the fact that the eleventhhour workers were also given a full day’s wage was a function of the employer’s freedom
487
to be generous, not a presupposed right of the worker.”
The last point stresses, “if a
worker does not like the amount he has been offered, he does not have to take the job; he
has the right to go down the road to a different vineyard and see if he can negotiate a
488
different situation and better wages.”
Barton concludes, “all five of these points are
central tenets of what is called the free market or the free enterprise system—the
economic system set forth in numerous passages of the Bible.” Barton suggests that
through “world history,” those who have adopted this market system have prospered
489
while those who have not have “consistently become poorer.”
This essay stresses that God’s provisions for helping the poor--as expressed in the
Bible--do not include government interference in the economy. Indeed, “the economic
system set forth in numerous passages of the Bible” called “the free market system, or
490
free enterprise system” represents God’s ordained economic system for humanity.
Drawing upon classic price theory to support his contention, Barton writes,
485
486
487
488
489
490
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1486
192
By definition, a free-market economic system is one in which ‘prices and wages
are determined by unrestricted competition between businesses, without
government regulation. It is ‘an economic system that allows supply and demand
to regulate prices, wages, etc., rather than government policy.’ In other words,
the free market
is regulated by the people and their choices, not by the
491
government.”
As an example of regulation and government interference, Barton sites the market-crash
of 2008, suggesting that the markets that were “heavily regulated by the government”
(real estate, banking, auto, and insurance) were the industries that required significant
bailouts. Thus from biblical times to the present, “the free market system consistently
produced the greatest levels of both prosperity and liberty.”
492
The commentary
concludes, “For the government to interfere in employer/employee contracts violates the
Biblical principles set forth in Matthew 20,” which includes misguided meddling such as
“so-called minimum wage” policy.
493
Barton’s parting thought recalls, “As Jesus noted
with the employer in the account above, when it comes to wages, ‘Is it not lawful for me
494
to do what I wish with what is my own?’”
Barton’s re-interpreted Matthew 20--as
taught by Jesus, no less--becomes the basis upon which our laws are to operate, and in
this case, they are called forth to protect capital owners against labor.
The commentary writes the parable in important ways that support the
presumption that modern far right political ideology is, in actuality, biblical, and
therefore sound policy, mandated for present day society. The five “observations”
highlight anti-union (collective bargaining) and neoliberal deregulation ideology
supposed to be plainly within scripture. Employees negotiate as individuals and do not
491
492
493
494
Ibid.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1487
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1486. My emphasis.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1487
193
have the right to negotiate as a collective. The employer commands his capital
completely and has the “lawful right” to conduct business and use his resources as he
sees fit. An employer has the “freedom to be generous,” if he so desires but workers
have no right to make demands that an employer is beholden to observe. In this
configuration, an employee possess the “right to sell” his skill to the highest bidder.
Moreover, the prospective employee is free to decline offers of work if the terms do not
suit him. Significantly, Barton’s parable effaces the plotline that underscores the
landowners’ generosity. The workers hired by the landowner throughout the day were
men who desired to work but had no offers. The landowner employed them. And at the
end of the day, he graciously gave all such men an equal compensation. In the Founders’
version, the prospective employee “does not have to take the job” if he does not like the
contract. In Barton’s version, there was, theoretically, work elsewhere -- “down the
road.”
495
Barton stresses that employment agreements are “ private contracts, not public
ones,” a comment that strategically seeks to relegate labor relations to the realm of
quietude. That is to say, the traditional distinction between private and public realms
situated private matters -- things that happen in private space -- outside not just state
jurisdiction (theoretically) but, more importantly, out of play discursively. That which is
to remain the “private” business between parties stands as that which is off limits to open
deliberation, public scrutiny, and critical reflection. Such an ideological position effaces
how modern day business practices and structures such as multinational corporations or
the deregulation of the finance industry negatively affects the everyday existence of
countless people across the globe. Barton’s sentiments critically ignore the market crash
of 2008, subsequent global austerity politics, and their affects on general employment,
economic instability, and social discord. With this equation, Barton establishes the
495
Ibid. All quotes sequentially.
194
parameters of economic fairness, supplying talking points for contemporary
deliberations. His various essays function to defend economic inequality and labor
exploitation. His rhetorical gestures endue far right ideology with the aura of biblical
authority, while his commentary shapes, dictates, and frames meanings derived from
scripture. This discourse, in effect, affirms neoliberal capitalism and its anti-union
496
(“right-to-work”) ethic as biblically based.
In another example, the rhetoric of personal responsibility arises in a discussion
of Deuteronomy 24. The accompanying essay entitled “How Are We to Help the Poor”
rehearses the neoliberal assumptions about poverty and laziness. The commentary states
that God has made provisions for the poor, as evident in the proof-text Exodus 23:11 and
Deuteronomy 24:19-21. Deuteronomy 24 commands the faithful to leave whatever
foodstuff has been left behind from the harvest to the poor. It states “When you reap
your harvest in your fields and have forgotten a sheaf in the filed, you shall not go back
for it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the LORD
your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”
497
Exodus 23:11 commands that
on the seventh year harvested fields are to lie fallow “so the needy of your people may
eat.”
498
Following these citations, the commentary transitions quickly to the moral lesson
of the article, stating “In each of these many ways God has made provisions for the poor;
but notice that the poor always had to work for themselves to collect those provisions
496
Anti-union and right-to-work sentiments in the 2012 Republican Party Platform state
“We demand an end to the Project Labor agreements; and we call for the repeal of the DavidBacon Act, which costs the taxpayers billions of dollars annually in artificially high wages on
government projects. We support the right of States to enact Right-To-Work laws and encourage
them to do so to promote greater economic liberty. Ultimately, we support the enactments of a
National Right-to-Work law to promote worker freedom and to promote greater economic
liberty.” http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Restoring/
497
498
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 337
Ibid.
195
made available to them.”
499
Barton repeats, “God made opportunities for the poor, but
work was always required in exchange. He offers 2 Thessalonians 3:10 as an additional
proof-text and intertextual cross reference to Deuteronomy 20. Citing 2 Thess. 3:10,
Barton avers, “After all, the Bible commands, ‘If anyone is not willing to work, then he is
500
not to eat, either.’”
From this biblical lesson, the essay ties these divine dictates to the founders and
American history. Barton asserts that God’s provisions for the poor (e.g. Deuteronomy
24, Matthew 20, 2 Thessalonians 3:10, 1 Timothy 5:8) represent “Biblical policy” that
501
was “adopted in America.”
This didactic portion contends “The Founding Fathers
were very concerned about helping the poor, but were equally concerned about doing it in
502
a Biblical manner.”
Barton invokes the decontextualized words of Jefferson, Franklin,
and Washington to prove that misguided charity (read public welfare) to the poor
“encourages laziness and idleness.”340 Finally, he assures the reader, “God definitely
cares for the poor, and He tells us to do the same but He has also established clear
principles for how that assistance is to occur, and it requires some type of effort from the
503
poor.”
“How Are We to Help the Poor” presents a biblicalized recitation of modern
neoliberal rhetoric regarding poverty and economic equity. Disregarding and, in effect,
erasing the voluminous biblical precepts concerning poverty, justice, and the tyranny of
wealth, Barton’s essay implicates the poor by suggesting that they are apt to be idle and
unproductive. The overall moral to the story stresses that the poor must work, reinforcing
499
500
501
502
503
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 338
Ibid.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 339
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 340
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 340
196
the modern argument that charity and assistance foster disincentives to labor for one’s
daily bread. The implicit argument of this sentiment logically follows that those who are
poor are so due to their work ethic (or lack thereof) rather than due to institutionalized
forms of poverty that affect the opportunities and outcomes of those who find themselves
in impoverished circumstances. Indeed, this narrative intentionally frames the issue as
one of personal responsibility, which denies and discourages an analysis of systemic and
institutionalized elements that create, perpetuate, and exacerbate conditions of poverty.
Moreover, the discourse promulgates the misperception that those who are rich are
naturally hard working. In effect, it turns a blind eye toward the excessive and brutal
working conditions of poor people around the world, overlooking exploitative labor
practices around the globe. As a statement of ethics, this rehashing of neoliberal values
absolves Christians of their moral responsibilities in the face of systemic poverty. Such
values advocacy lets readers off the hook in a manner that the entire scriptural edifice
concerning poverty does not affirm, while implicitly condemning the poor for their
supposed moral failures.
Barton argues that 2 Thessalonians 3:10 established the “Free Market” system for
posterity. In the Founders’ Bible, this seminal passage is paired with an essay entitled
“Socialism Versus The Free-Market System.” The title suggests the answer. He states
that the Bible “discourages socialism while clearly encouraging and approving what is
504
now known as the free-market system.”
Barton’s commentary conditions the meaning
of 2 Thessalonians 3:10 while the literalist statement “clearly encouraging and
approving” rehearses the supposition that the verse speaks for itself. Readers are directed
to recognize that the verse advocates modern day capitalism. This disquisition, like so
many in the compilation, labors first to write the “fixed” meaning of the biblical verse at
hand, and then applies the derived “truth” to a pseudo-historical narrative of the founders
504
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1934
197
and biblical America. The verse itself comes from a Pauline epistle, a second letter to the
Church of Thessalonica. It reads: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this
command: If any one will not work, let him not eat.” Biblical scholars continue to debate
whether the letter should be attributed to Paul or regarded as pseudepigraphic in nature.
The basic context accorded to the epistle is that it represents a letter to a fledgling
congregation that arose in Thessalonica. As told in Luke, Jewish opposition drove Paul,
Silas, and Timothy out of the area before Paul could successfully oversee the
development of the community. Paul’s letter was meant to guide and encourage the
community from afar. Accordingly, Howard Marshall suggests that Paul’s admonition to
those who had ceased to mind their work was directed at congregational members who
believed that the end times where about to commence. 2 Thessalonians sought to correct
this erroneous assumption.
505
Barton states “Despite the Bible’s clear promotion of individualism and the freemarket system” some persist in the erroneous assertion that the Bible advocates
506
socialism.
After offering a reductive explanation of “socialism (also called
collectivism, communitarianism, progressivism, and social democracy),” Barton’s essay
launches into a long narrative about the first colonies falling into error by practicing
socialism. The story unfolds, “unprepared for the individualism required in the New
World, of the initial 104 colonists who arrived at Jamestown, two-thirds were dead within
six months.”
507
When the next arrivals came two years later, the story proceeds, the
505
See Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, ed., The Oxford Companion to the
Bible, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 741-2 and Herbert G. May and Bruce M.
Metzger, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973),
1438-9.
506
507
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1940. My emphasis.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1935. My emphasis. Note that Barton writes the rhetoric of
“American individualism” into his “historical” narrative of colonial existence, which
demonstrates the type of egregious contortions biblicists employ to code.
198
“Starving Time” came since the “people adamantly refused to work for themselves.”
508
Instead, the tale reports, these people relied upon the labor of others and all goods were
distributed equally amongst the whole colony.
509
John Smith saved the day by applying
biblical wisdom to the situation, teaching citizens that “they must rely upon their own
work, and if the individual did not work, they did not eat.” As a result of adopting this
biblical standard, the colony began experiencing a “positive effect.” Each time the
colonies fell into socialism, readers are instructed, they experienced cultural decline,
510
poverty, and death.
Here Barton writes “American individualism” into a fictitious
narrative of Jamestown colonial existence in order to demonstrate the deadly effects of
socialisms as a market structure. His use of the term individualism is strategic since its
presence and its implicit argument advocates and affirms contemporary libertarian
511
ideological values within American neoliberal rhetoric.
The disquisition advocates neoliberal values as biblical and constitutional,
projecting the contemporary rhetoric of “personal responsibility” and the argument that
social welfare creates disincentives to work onto scripture and founding intentions. The
508
509
510
511
Ibid.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1936
Ibid. All above quotes and paraphrasing.
The 2012 Republican Party Platform rehearses its own version of American
individualism, anti-welfarism, and free market fundamentalism. In “Restoring the American
Dream” the platform states, “We are the party of maximum economic freedom and the prosperity
freedom makes possible. Prosperity is the product of self-discipline, work, savings, and
investment by individual Americans. Prosperity provides the means by which individuals and
families can maintain their independence from government, raise their children by their own
values, practice their faith, and build communities of self-reliant neighbors.” The document
states that the Republican vision stands in stark contrast to “the current Administration’s policies
that expand entitlements and guarantees, create new public programs, and provide expensive
bailouts. That road has created a culture of dependency, bloated government, and massive debt.”
http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Restoring/ Notice how government debt is
characterizes as accruing from entitlement programs and social welfare policies. In the preamble
Providence is called upon to help end “big government entitlement society.”
http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Preamble/
199
moral to the commentary states “whenever we remove the demands of personal
responsibility in favor of collective security, offering ‘free stuff’ only invites some to
attempt to ‘game the system,’ unfairly taking advantage of what they will soon believe
512
they are entitled to have.”
Playing off of the term “entitlement,” this passage invokes
the values of neoliberal anti-New Deal politics. It makes the argument that
“entitlements” -- a restaged term for benefit programs and social net policies – promote
indolence and fraud. It implicates the least powerful within our society as those prone to
take advantage as if this were of monumental financial consequence, disavowing, by
sheer neglect, the pressing issue of rampant white-collar fraud and the significant impact
it has on domestic and international economies alike. It deems the poor morally deficient
for their economic struggles and absolves the system. It treats the indigent as if they
wielded tremendous political power and those with political might as if they were
blameless and beyond such folly.
In the essay’s concluding thoughts Barton invokes the words of Benjamin
Franklin to solidify the plausibility of his contention: that the founders drew directly from
“biblical principles” of free market capitalism when they established a Christian nation.
From this vantage point, readers learn that,
Perhaps Benjamin Franklin best stated the positive impact of the Biblical freemarket system when he declared:
[A free market is] the means, under God, of recovering and establishing
the freedom of our country entire, and of handing it down complete to
posterity.
Notice that Franklin acknowledged that a free market was the means under God
of producing maximum economic and material blessings. The Founders
understood that our economic system was not a secular one but rather one derived
from God and His principles, especially the principles of economic individualism
513
set forth in passages such as I Timothy 5:8 and 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
512
513
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1938. My emphasis.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1943
200
The above assertion begins with the term “Biblical free market system” setting the
conditions by which readers are prompted to interpret Franklin’s quote. As with terms
such as “Biblical Bill of Rights”, “Biblical Constitution,” and “transcendent Biblical
natural law principles,” the tactical placement of the term serves as its own tautological
proof. Moreover, this ubiquitous moniker (biblical) functions to characterizes Franklin’s
understanding of capitalism as biblical and God-given. As a proof-text Barton alters
Franklin’s statement by inserting [A free market is] to support the underlying argument.
He finishes his demonstration by concluding that Franklin acknowledges the free market
as God-given and superior in its ability to “maximize economic and material blessings.”
From here Barton makes a sweeping generalization stating that the founders understood
the sacred nature of the market economy, and that God mandated biblical principles of
“economic individualism” for the nation’s benefit.
Indeed, Franklin is made to proclaim that the “recovery” and “freedom” of the
nation rest solely upon God-given free enterprise.
514
Franklin’s actual statement--
recorded in a personal letter to a committee of merchants in Philadelphia (9 July 1769)-reads: “But I hope, that, by persisting steadily in the measure you have so laudably
entered into, you will, if backed by the general honest resolution of the people to buy
British goods of no others, but to manufacture for themselves, or use colony
manufactures only, be the means, under God, of recovering and establishing the freedom
of our country entire, and of handing it down complete to posterity.”
515
Franklin’s
514
This neoliberal, Christian nationalist discourse equates freedom with God’s law and
free market ideology. Christian nationalists argue that freedom and liberty are God-given. Thus,
to erase God’s law as the standard for American law is to destroy liberty and freedom. Free
market tropes functions as a subspecies of this general argument.
515
Benjamin Franklin, Letter to the Committee of Merchants in Philadelphia, “To
Recommends Perseverance in the Resolution not to import British goods, till the Acts of
Parliament imposing Duties in America shall be repealed,” in The Works of Benjamin Franklin;
ed., Jared Sparks, Vol. 7 (Boston: Tappan & Whitemore, 1838), 445-6. Accessed February 26,
2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=GHwAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA446&dq=ben+franklin+%22the+means,+under+God,+of+recovering%22
201
remarks encouraged a continuation of a general boycott against buying British goods.
The stance, economically speaking, is one of protectionism, as well as an act of
resistance. A general boycott of goods as such rejects the free flow of capital to achieve
other political and economic goals at hand.
Barton’s rhetorical invention of biblical capitalism works to deny the validity of
challenges to contemporary neoliberal market structures. Within his framing, its stands
to reason that considerations of alternative systems, including contending with systemic
poverty, is misguided, and worse, against God’s will. Barton’s elaborate efforts to
proffer evidence of biblical capitalism aims to foreclose upon opportunities for
understanding and debate. It works to naturalize economic conventions that are manmade and historically contingent under the guise of God’s will for the nation.
Extending this neoliberal values advocacy to the Constitution and the Founding
era, the essay entitled “Tax Wars” argues that God prefers a flat tax system, as mandated
in the Constitution and the Bible. “Tax Wars,” paired with Deuteronomy 14:22 (“You
shall surely tithe all the produce from what you sow, which comes out of the field every
year”), asserts that a flat tax, as God’s “impartial justice” treats everyone the same and
does not single out the rich for unfair treatment.
516
Thus, Barton continues, “under the
biblical plan, everyone paid the tax at the same rate, whether someone was rich or poor,
the percentage was the same.”
517
It concludes, “under this uniform tax, the rich paid more
&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UkoOU87_GYWN2gW5p4GACQ&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=
ben%20franklin%20%22the%20means%2C%20under%20God%2C%20of%20recovering%22&f
=false
516
517
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 307-8
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 307. With regard to tax reform, the 2012 Republican Party
Platform states, “Our goal is a tax system that is simple, transparent, flatter, and fair.” The
platform continues, “We reject the use of taxation to redistribute income, fund unnecessary or
ineffective programs, or foster the crony capitalism that corrupts both politicians and
corporations.” My emphasis. http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Restoring/. The
2012 Republican Party of Texas echoes, “We urge that income tax be changed to a flatter,
broader, lower tax.” It declares, “we believe that the minimum wage law should be repealed.”
http://www.tfn.org/site/DocServer/20...pdf?docID=3201
202
than the poor in actual amount, but each was treated exactly the same under the law,
518
which is the definition of justice.”
This discourse assumes that a progressive income
system treats the rich unfairly. It ignores that flat taxation places a larger burden on the
poor, and fails to mention that the nation currently relies upon a modified regressive
income taxation system. Moreover, the ahistorical narrative of a “biblical tax system”
mobilizes the language of equal treatment under the law to mislead readers with a false
mathematical characterization of a flat relative to progressive and regressive tax
structures. On face value, the notion that rich and poor are “treated the same” appears
equitable. In fact, those with small incomes relative to those with enormous incomes pay
disproportionately more than there rich counterparts when total purchasing power for
goods and services and a base cost of living enter the equation.
519
The moral of the story
argues that progressive taxation is not only unbiblical, but it is fundamentally unfair.
Barton seizes upon the term “capitation” to link the Bible with the Constitution
affirming God’s plan of taxation. He writes, “The tithe was one-tenth-then percent-of the
518
519
Ibid.
Income tax systems can be progressive, flat (proportional), or regressive. A
progressive tax system is structured according to ability to pay. Therefore, those in the top
brackets pay a higher percentage than those in lower brackets. A regressive tax system illustrates
a system that takes relatively less income as income rises. Therefore it is not based upon the
ability to pay. In 2014 the highest tax bracket within the United States stands at 39.6 and the
lowest bracket equals 10 percent. Our current tax structure represents a modified flat design that
exacts low taxes from the wealthiest income earners relative to the poor. A flat tax, such as an
excise tax (sales), is a proportional tax where all patrons are charged that same tax for the same
product. A sales tax of 8.5 percent is an example of this. In macroeconomic theory, a sales tax
on grocery items may also be considered somewhat regressive. This is because “the proportion of
an individual’s budget spent on food declines as income rises” and thus a flat tax may be a
regressive tax even where the tax does not decline as income rises. A flat income tax reduces the
amount of revenue the State collects from those with the ability to pay, especially if it is set as a
low percentage of total income. Applying a 10 percent flat tax illustrates the situation
dramatically. An income of 30,000 would theoretically be reduced to 27,000. This total is left
for all other expenditures including utilities, housing, food, transportation, and the like. An
income of 1,000,000 would be theoretically reduced to 900,000 dollars. This proportion remains
as monies to be spent on basic necessities. The amount of disposable income relative to the two
cases illustrates that a flat tax poses a larger burden, at least theoretically, to low-income earners
disproportionately. Ryan C. Amacher and Holley H. Ulbrich, Principles of Macroeconomics, 5th
ed., (Cincinnati: South-Western Publishing Company, 1992), 252
203
annual income of every citizen, and it functioned as a tax, or a levy on the people.”
Barton avers, “Significantly, under this Biblical plan, everyone paid the tax at the same
rate, whether someone was rich or poor, the percentage was the same.” Accordingly,
God’s flat tax system represents the epitome of justice. He states,
God was impartial. This Biblical system of taxation is known as ‘capitation
taxation,’ which is ‘an assessment levied by the government upon a person at a
fixed rate, regardless of income or worth.’ This system was placed into the U.S.
Constitution:
No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportions to the
census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken. (Art. I, Sec. 9)
The Founders required that federal taxes be applied evenly to every person,
divided equally based on the census population numbers. The Constitution like
wise required:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts,
and excises…but all duties, imposts, and excises
shall be UNIFORM
520
throughout the United States. (Art. I, Sec. 8)
The extended quote demonstrates significant rhetorical maneuvering that is worth
discussing in detail. The signifier biblical again serves as the grounding by which objects
and ideas are linguistically subsumed and subordinated within the domain of the divine.
Characterizing objects and ideas as biblical places God within and as the center of an
object’s “essence.” It is a rhetorical move that proffers an ontological argument about the
nature of the beingness of these objects and policies. Barton makes the point that the
founders consciously placed God’s capitation taxation into the Constitution. Here he
offers a definition of capitation taxation extracted from an online free dictionary and ties
it to the Constitution. The ultimate aim of Barton’s essay is to promote an income system
based upon flat taxation. He creates a scenario where the founders appear to have
implemented such a federal system within the Constitution based upon biblical writ. He
520
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 307-8. Barton’s capitalizes UNIFORM in his quote of the
Constitution without indicating his emphasis.
204
plays off of the ambiguity of terms like “federal taxes,” “every person,” “uniform,” and
“tax” in general to support his case for modern tax policy, occluding the fact that federal
income tax as we understand it today did not exist before 1861. Finally, the above
discussion of “rich and poor” functions as a veiled defense of top tier earners in a time
when income inequality, a direct result of neoliberal policies to free capital flows
globally, is at an historical high.
521
It positions the “rich” as recipients of unfair treatment
under the implementation of misguided fiscal policy.
The article embarks on a short lesson in American history, albeit a fictional one at
best, recounting the moment when God’s tax plan was supplanted by a new system. The
narrative states that “progressives and poststructuralists” began attacking the “biblical
system” in favor of progressive taxation. The commentary declares,
“But in the late 1800s, a dramatically different system of taxation was advocated
under the rise of Progressivism and Poststructuralism -- two parallel anti-biblical
paradigms that teach citizens to view themselves not as a part of the country as a
whole but rather as a part of some group, whether black or white or brown, gay or
straight, rich or poor, young or old, union or non-union – a worldview that
regularly pits one group against another --as when Congress passes hate crimes
laws protecting some groups (gays and lesbians, or minority races, such as Jews
or African Americans) but not others (veterans and seniors) rather than having all
522
laws apply equally to everyone.
521
For detailed statistics and excellent analysis of the economic effects of neoliberal policies on
the distribution of wealth see David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, (Oxford: Oxford
Press, 2005) and Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism,
(Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011). Harvey argues that neoliberalism constitutes
“a political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power
of economic elites.” Harvey, History of Neoliberalism, 18. For additional resources see Ashley
Davis-Hamel, “Successful Neoliberalism?: State Policy, Poverty, and Income Inequality in
Chile,” International Social Science Review 87 (2012) 79-101, Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of
the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics, (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 2012) Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short
Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), and Jamie Peck, Constructions of
Neoliberal Reason, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
522
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 308
205
The passage plays upon the idea of equal treatment under the law. It singles out gays,
lesbians, Jews, and African Americans as recipients of special treatment (“special rights”
rhetoric). This premise inverts the experiential reality of underclass struggles in the
nation’s history. Readers know from the previous excerpt that the rich have suffered
from unfair treatment. Now his audience learns that veterans and seniors are victims of
unequal treatment under the law as well. This narrative instigates public forgetting, an
amnesia or disavowal of the social struggles of various peoples who have fought and
continue to fight to be treated equally under the law. Kristin Hoerl suggests that
narratives of this kind invite “communities to forget histories of injustice and dissent,”
523
and such practices “create an impoverished discursive landscape.”
As a site for public
memory, this narrative ignores injustices perpetrated on racial, sexual, and religious
minorities in U.S. History, as well as the struggle of working peoples.
Barton’s argument in “Tax Wars” illustrates a significant departure from the
previous linguistic circumference that advocated American individualism. Here, the
critical vocabulary shifts to a quasi-communitarian stance since “progressives and
poststructuralists” are characterized as anti-biblical self-serving figures, divisive to
community cohesion and unity. Where the vocabulary of free-market individualism
required a necessary linguistic disassociation from conceptual terms like unity, the above
discourse reorients the reader to take up a cause for the sake of national (and religious)
belonging that works in favor of rich citizens. With this critical framing established, the
commentary concludes that “this is just one of many areas in which the Constitution
specifically incorporated Biblical principles. We would do well to return to the wisdom
that God established for how to order our society. Forsaking it only invites
523
Kristen Hoerl, “Selective Amnesia and Racial Transcendence in News Coverage of
President Obama’s Inaugural,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98 (2012): 181
206
destruction.”
524
To institute any other form of taxation, according to this essay, is to act
contrary to God’s authority and constitutional law. Such actions invite God’s judgment.
The above biblical verse, far from offering textual evidence of God’s preference
for flat taxation, serves as the fragment that is defined and derives its meaning from both
intertextual placement and extra-biblical exegesis. The disquisition’s arguments rest, in
the final appeal, upon divine authority as structured through the presumptions of biblical
literalism. In this instance, divine authority and biblical writ affirm the biblical
soundness (and basis) of modern neoliberal philosophy and policy as the only universally
correct choice for social organization and economic exchange. The above examples
underscore Christian Smith’s reflections, namely that biblical literalists bend texts to “say
things that they in fact do not say” while insisting that they are faithful to the plain
reading of documents. Barton creates elaborate scenarios to transform neoliberal ideology
into scriptural principles.
As a collection of memory texts, the Founders’ Bible encourages readers to
understand scripture, American history, and founding documents as mandates for far
right policy in the contemporary moment. The materials are propagandistic, faithful
neither to scripture nor to the history of the nation. The commentaries cover every
contemporary topic relevant to far right political interests. The collection is vehemently
prolife and pro-gun in its stance, anti-gay rights, against secular public education, and
anti-separation between church and state. I chose to focus this first section on Barton’s
scripturalizes of neoliberal capitalism since this stance is perplexing and
525
underrepresented in research literature.
While the “biblical worldview” imagines itself
as grounded faithfully in scripture, in praxis it espouses interests and ideals that reflect far
524
525
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 309
It is widely understood that conservative evangelicals are vehemently anti-gay and
prolife. It is far less documented but not surprising that Christian nationalists demonstrate a
commitment to libertarian and neoliberal principles.
207
right political ideology rather than biblical precepts. Pro-market ideology constitutes a
core value for Christian nationalists since they share with fellow Republicans the larger
set of values that characterize conservative Republican Party politics. Biblical literalism
enables Christian nationalists to read these political values as if they resided within
scripture, historical records, and founding documents. With this in mind, I turn to
Barton’s scriptural reading of the Declaration and Constitution. I delve into the
argumentative structures that ultimately enable Barton to rationalize the suspension of
constitutional law altogether, drawing upon the figuration of God as the standard by
which American law is authorized.
“A (Biblical) Republic, If You Can Keep It”
I turn to a representative sample of commentaries meant to prove the inspired
nature of the nation and its founding. As previously stated, the Founders’ Bible touches
upon an enormous constellation of ideo-political commitments that affirm far right GOP
ideology as biblical and representative of the founders’ original intent. Arguably, the
most significant commentaries within this volume link the Declaration of Independence
and Constitution with biblical writ in a manner that appears to furnish empirical evidence,
and justification for a biblical nation. The commentaries form the critical intertextual
vehicle that bonds scripture and state documents together, shaping the contours of
meaning and structuring interpretive practices. Undergirded by a literalist paradigm and
called into being within the same intertextual milieu, these “inspired” documents of state
benefit from the aura of divine authority. As Lawrence Venuti suggests, intertextuality
“presupposes the existence of a linguistic, literary, or cultural tradition, a continuity of
pre-existing forms and practices, even as a particular intertextual relation establishes a
continuity, and, in effect, crafts tradition, affirming or questioning it as the case may
208
be.”
526
This linkage speaks of historical and textual continuity even while this intertextual
527
construction produces the tradition in the present tense.
Exodus 18:21 forms an important element in the overarching body of arguments
crafted to furnish empirical evidence of a Christian nation. Barton argues that Article 4:
Section 4 of the Constitution directly quotes the Bible (Exodus 18:21). He claims that the
founders established our representative republic based upon this verse of scripture, and
by extension of this logic, that representative republicanism began in “biblical times” as a
directive of God. In a public talk Barton asserts,
We are told in the Scriptures, Exodus 18:21 and God says ‘Choose out from
among you leaders of tens, fifties, hundred, and thousands.’ Leaders of tens,
fifties, hundreds, and thousands? That’s electoral local, county, state, and federal
leaders!
Scripture says ‘Choose able men’ such as fear of God, men of truth, hating
bribery men, who will rule in the fear of God, set up the elections at the very
beginning! They fell into a monarchy later on but God established elections.
When our Constitution was done, Article 4: Section 4 of the U.S Constitution, the
Founding Fathers who wrote that cited Exodus 18:21 as the basis because Article
4: Section 4 says that when we have elections in America, we get to choose
leaders of tens, fifties, hundred, thousands. We get to choose local,528
county, state,
and federal. That’s a biblical precept. That’s why they put it there.
Barton argues that the founders purposely drew upon 18:21 to serve as a model for the
new Republic and that “God established elections.” Barton configures an analogical
relationship by likening “tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands” to local, county, state,
and federal government. He positions the wording within Exodus as intertextual linkage
to Article 4: Section 4 and strategically leaves the Constitutional passage unspoken. By
526
Ibid
527
Lawrence Venuti, “Translation, Intertextuality, Interpretation,” Romance Studies, 27
July, (2009): 157
528
transcript
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-god-established-elections. My
209
itself, Article 4: Section 4 appears anything but biblical. It states, “The United State shall
guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and shall protect
each of them against invasion; and on the application of the legislature, or of the
529
executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.”
Barton states that God said, “Chose out from among you” creating an open opportunity to
imagine this command as given to the people by God himself. In this case, he substitutes
Moses and Jethro as interlocutors for God and his people. Given this substitution, the
term “choose” appears as a reference denoting representative elections. Hence, the
Hebrews in Exodus held elections and our electoral system reflects a divine innovation as
recorded in the Bible.
The commentary entitled “American’s Political Form of Government” cites
Exodus 18:21 as the guiding precept by which the founders fashioned the constitutional
republic. After reviewing seven types of government structures including pure
democracy and totalitarianism, the commentary indicates that only a representative
republic is divinely ordained and desirable.
530
This essay highlights the singular phrase,
“you shall elect out of all the people able men” followed by the commentary, “We thus
531
elect out own leaders at the local, county, state, and federal levels.”
Barton notes that
God gave Israel this framework for government, and that America followed suit. He
avers,
Our Constitution, based on God’s higher law—what the Founders titled ‘laws of
nature and of nature’s God,’ which they also describe as the Moral Law – is the
framework to govern our nation. It is a law higher than any elected officials [sic]
532
and a law to which every citizen and government representative must conform.
529
530
531
532
U.S. Constitution, art. 2, sec. 4.
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 146-7
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 149
Ibid.
210
Barton gestures toward the endorsement of representative republics, particularly in the
beginning of his essay where he lists various forms of government styles and condemns
all but representative republicanism. Yet, his argument rapidly devolves into declaring
God’s law the definitive exception to Constitutional law. Barton’s vocabulary slips
between characterizing the Constitution as God’s law and establishing the basis of its
suspension according to God’s law.
The implications of the politics of memory relative to the above construction seek
to justify the suspension of law predicated upon God’s higher authority. It guides and
influences readers prompting among them a malleable disposition toward exceptions to
law when these exceptions are identified as God’s will. Erin Runions makes the case that
treating legal texts as scripture aims at establishing “double textual authority” which
borrows its persuasiveness from the “assumed transcendental truth claims” that reside
within the Bible. Such scripturalizing tactics serve to justify “states of exception” to law
where divine warrant is invoked.
533
With the scripturalization of law, the attitude and
practice of affirming the Bible as a repository of transcendental truths is projected onto
legal texts marking them as sacred. According to Wilfred Smith, scripture is not a textual
quality but rather a human practice of treating texts in specific ways that mark them as
534
sacred.
He argues, “Scripture is a human activity.”
535
Human attitudes toward texts
form the basis upon which various manuscripts, over time, become regarded and revered
as scripture. Smith highlights the importance of remaining mindful of the historical
process by which texts become elevated by human invention and activity. He suggests
533
Erin Runions, “Empire’s Allure: Babylon and the Exception to Law in Two
Conservative Discourses,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (2009): 700
534
535
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What is Scripture? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 18
Ibid.
211
that our perception of texts is critical, and that “we must recognize that without a human
response to it, without community reception, and preservation of it, it is otiose.”
536
Treating texts as scriptural and sacred, much like treating texts as infallible and inerrant,
points both to human activity and its erasure, as both premises rely upon the argument of
self-evident truth (i.e. sacred, inerrant) and, if efficaciously persuasive, are taken as
articles of faith.
Runions’s analysis of American conservative far right and theonomist discourses,
scripturalized law, and the state of exception proves significant in the examination of
Barton’s Exodus claim. Runions states that far right conservatives and theonomists
“romanticize the original U.S Constitution and vision of democracy as somehow
537
exemplifying God’s Law.”
Barton’s strategy relies upon this maneuver. This
“scripturalized relation between text and truth,” apparent in both conservative legal and
biblical interpretations, raising the status of the texts in a manner that suggests that the
“unifying principle” seems to “come from without.”
538
That is to say, the inspiration of
God accrues both within the text and beyond the text, marking it as grounded in the
transcendental authority of the divine. Runions suggests that invoking double textual
authority renders the “production of power invisible.”
539
She suggests that focusing on
biblical authority functions to hide the “scripturalized functioning of law” whereby the
law is “raised to the status of truth and then read back on itself.”
540
She argues that
marking law as an expression of God acts as a guarantor for decisions that invoke
536
537
538
539
540
Smith, What is Scripture? 21
Runions, “Empire’s Allure,” 702
Runions, “Empire’s Allure,” 684
Runions, “Empire’s Allure,” 702
Ibid.
212
“exceptions” to law.
541
Significantly, Runions notes that G. W. Bush’s administration
relied upon the dual authorizing power of the Bible and “legal-transcendent authority (the
Constitution) in making decisions to make exceptions to law.”
542
In cases of
scripturalized law, she contends, “Christians must decide what laws should be kept and
what should be broken on the basis of biblical revelation. In short, on the basis of a
higher authority, Christians can and must make exceptions to unrighteous civil law.”
543
It
is upon this basis that Barton suggests that abortion is unconstitutional, since God is said
to be against the practice. Therefore, it is argued, law should not allow for the practice.
Accordingly, the law should not permit same-sex marriage or legal protection for queers,
a stance predicated upon the notion of biblical values. Attempts to restructure the law
come in the form of measures such as Colorado’s Amendment 2, California’s Proposition
8, and attempts to write fetal protection and traditional marriage into the Constitution as
amendments. These efforts exist along side the above rationale that draws upon God’s
authority to summarily dismiss any legal or constitutional provisions antithetical to
“biblical values.”
God’s law, in this case, represents the standard by which law and policy are to be
formed and judged. Barton relies upon this formula placing God’s law above
government officials and citizens alike. The basis of judgment for the soundness of law
then requires Christians who ostensibly speak for God (like Barton) to decide what is or
is not “biblical” in Constitutional law, and to proceed according to the presumed dictates
of God. The strategy of scripturalization works by way of God as the authorizing
principles. In this sense, endorsements of neoliberal policies, an inspired Constitution,
and the suspension of constitutional law draw upon the same source for validation.
541
542
543
Runions, “Empire’s Allure,” 685
Runions, “Empire’s Allure,” 701
Runions, “Empire’s Allure,” 691
213
In a commentary entitle “When Laws Violate Scripture,” Barton prompts readers
to consider “What happens when the laws of the land violate the tenets of Scripture?”
Barton’s answer follows, “The Founding Fathers, when confronted with that reality
changed the laws of the land to conform with the wisdom of God.” To illustrates the
importance of this lesson the commentary is paired with Ezekiel. Ezekiel is a story about
the restoration of Israel and God’s impending judgment upon kings (shepherds) that lead
his people astray. The story of Ezekiel, according to Barton’s introductory abstract,
reveals the “terrifying realities of just how far the people of God fell,” which speaks to
the judgment God exacts on those who break his covenant. Barton states, “Ezekiel likens
her [Jerusalem’s] scandalous idolatry to that of a spiritual nymphomaniac and catalogues
her sin in near pornographic detail.”
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Ezekiel suggests that following man’s law when it
does not conform to God’s law results in sin and ruin. Here Barton suggests that in the
face of this conflict, God’s law must reign supreme. In his commentary, the founding
fathers offer an example of putting God’s law first. Readers are invited to be amenable to
such acts of obedience, ready to sacrifice “man’s law” for God’s sake.
Ezekiel is paired with a second commentary entitle “Inseparable: The Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution” as a reminder that founding documents must be
comprehended and treated in the manner that God intended them to be applied. With the
Ezekiel’s lesson in mind, this essay sets forth the standard by which the faithful can
restore the nation, reinstituting the original intent of the nation, a reflection of God’s
wisdom as recorded by the founders. Whereby the first commentary, “When Laws
Violate Scripture,” condoned the abrogation of any law deemed unbiblical, the second
longer disquisition asserts that the Constitution must be interpreted through the biblical
lens of the Declaration and cannot be read apart from it without incurring God’s
judgment. The commentary states that the “bylaws [Constitution] have no basis without
544
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1199.
214
545
the authority of the charter or mission statement.”
Tethering the Constitution to the
Declaration of Independence, readers are informed that life, liberty, and private property
(the pursuit of happiness) “were not the invention of the great minds of the
Enlightenment; they originated with the source of light Himself, God. They were
revealed truth our forefathers found in the pages of the Scriptures.”
546
This ahistorical
claim strategically places God as the authorizing force that governs American law. At
the same time, it affirms God primacy above these sources of law.
The placement of these two commentaries within Ezekiel makes the implicit
argument that we must not forsake God’s way and God’s directives. Stated another way,
the Constitution must be interpreted through the Christian principles said to reside in the
preamble of the Declaration. The piece emphatically proclaims, “One thing was very
clear, stated in the document itself – it rested on the Declaration. The bylaws do not exist
without a charter; as such, the Constitution makes little sense apart from the Declaration
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it was meant to uphold.”
Readers learn that “to conclude otherwise is to ignore the
548
basic history anchored in fact.”
These assertions include literalist declarations, which
conditions the appearance that such claims represent objective facts. The facts presented
affirm that the “the basis of law in our civil society is Christian, as based upon the Word
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Of God.”
Accordingly, “the Declaration is American’s birth certificate and legal basis
550
that is bedrocked in Christian principles.”
545
546
547
548
549
550
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1246
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1244
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1249
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1248
Ibid.
Ibid.
Within this formulation, “the Constitution’s
215
function is to secure and protect the rights defined in the Declaration.”
551
Here the
ground shifts to present “inalienable rights” (termed “creation rights”) as that which the
Constitution was drafted to uphold. Stated another way, the Constitution protects God’s
law as expressed within the preamble’s inalienable “creation rights.” Readers learn that
these original rights were defined in the Noahic Covenant and “subsequently confirmed
in the Declaration.”
552
Creation rights come from God and as such, the essay states,
“government acknowledges that it is not the source of all things necessary for man.”
553
The idea of “creation rights” sets the preamble as merely one of many expressions
of God’s law. The presumption of this universal law and legal standard thus pre-empts
and supplants Constitutional law in several key ways. It establishes that “we cannot have
551
552
553
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1249
Ibid.
Ibid. In Barton’s The Bible, Voters, and The 2008 Election he writes, “American
government was established on the thesis that certain rights come from God rather than men and
that government is to protect those rights inviolable. So long as the recognition remains that
God-given rights cannot be infringed, those rights will remain safe.” Barton, The Bible, Voters,
and The 2008 Election, 16. My emphasis. The 2012 Republican Party Platform offers its own
rendition of these ideas. In “We The People: A Restoration of Constitutional Government,” a
provocative title in and of itself, the platform begins “We are the party of the Constitution, the
solemn compact which confirms our God-given individual rights.” It states, “In a free society,
the primary role of government is to protect the God-given, inalienable, inherent rights of its
citizens including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This idea is extended in
the “Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life.” The platform reads “Faithful to the ‘self-evident’
truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and
affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be
infringed…We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the
sanctity of innocent human life.” My emphasis. http://www.gop.com/2012-republicanplatform_Restoring/. Barton affirms the rights of unborn children come from the Declaration in
The Bible, Voters, and The 2008 Election (15). He argues elsewhere that the founders understood
that “the creator gave us a certain set of rights, that are God-given inalienable rights ….The
Founding Fathers recognized abortion as a crime way back in the beginning, that’s why it’s in the
Seventh Amendment of the Constitution, part of the common law, you’re not allowed to do
abortions because God gives life, not humans, humans can’t take life that God gives, so it’s real
simple stuff.” Brain Tashman, “Barton: Seventh Amendment Bans Abortion,” Right Wing Watch.
Last modified August 27, 2012. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-seventhamendment.
216
554
rights without the Biblical basis of our foundation.”
Such a premise effaces the
Constitution as a source that defines and enumerates political rights for the nation. The
article states
We have established a governing document of bylaws and due process: the
Constitution; but it is not a law unto itself, and we are not free to just interpret it
as we will, it too has an author it must answer to, which is not the will of the
people nor the majority opinions of nine people in black robes, but rather the
Word of God. If God has spoken in His Word regarding a legal issue such as
abortion, which He most certainly condemns, no
one has the right to somehow
555
turn the Constitution into a ‘living document.’
In the above assertions, the Constitution is stripped of the status of being a “law unto
itself.” Readers are warned that “we are not free to interpret it as we will” but that its
interpretation is beholden to the Word of God. The audience learns that God is against
abortion and therefore any provisions that supports legalized abortion is unconstitutional
in nature and must be summarily rejected. This command seeks to delimit interpretive
practices to those that function to support the Word of God and God’s law as assumed to
be expressed in the Declaration. Said another way, it invalidates any interpretive method
other than the ambiguously defined application of biblical principles as the legitimate
hermeneutical standard. The Constitution must “answer” to a higher author, God. The
nullification of the “will of the people” obliterates the legal standard of the document and
overrides the concept of representational republicanism, even as many commentaries in
the Founder’s Bible labor to pretend fealty to such ideals. The simple equation produces
the following standard: If it is not biblical, it is not constitutional. If the Constitution
supports unbiblical laws then those laws must be overturned and summarily rejected.
554
555
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1252
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1251-2
217
The commentary concludes that failure to account for God’s authority leaves
human beings at the mercy of “the rule of man rather than the rule of law.”
556
This
distinction is vital to the overall claim. We are told that the basis of authority behind the
Constitution is the Declaration. The Declaration, accordingly, “claims the Bible as its
foundation,” a literalist presumption as if it were not only factually true, but a gesture
emanating from within the document itself. We are urged to obey the rule of law, and
forsake the rule of man. The audience is prompted to remember, “The Word of God
trumps the will of the people and the opinions of men and women.” The term “trumps”
sets an absolute standard by which God’s law overrides the entire juridical edifice of the
Republic. Readers are reminded that they “are not free to pick and choose.” The authors
warn that when the Declaration is “separated” from its bylaws, “the nation is torn
557
asunder.”
The essay proclaims, “America is a Christian nation! -- whether we like it
558
or not. It is a simple fact of history.”
Once again literalism frames the argument and
the declaration of fact proves itself tautologically. The commentary concludes that
citizens are left with the “ultimate choice of whom we will serve -- the god of self or the
559
God who is.”
Readers know what choice they are expected to make as a God-fearing
people. Although this essay labors to establish the biblical basis of the nation and
American law, it does so by allotting for the suspension of the same. The formula
enables readers to retain their sense of being loyal patriots to the nation while preparing
556
The 2012 Republican Party Platform plays off of this common refrain: “A Republican
President and Republican senate will join House Republicans in living by the rule of law, the
foundation of the American republic.” Though this offers a more ambiguous rendition of
Barton’s assertions, it contains all of the discursive elements to impart an implicit argument that
distinguish between man’s law and the “rule of law.” Barton uses the term to denote God’s law.
He also situated the “rule of law” as that which was established by the founders and based upon
biblical writ. http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Restoring/
557
558
559
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1252
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1251
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1252
218
them to dismiss, when and where necessary, the legal provisions that constitute the nature
of representational republicanism.
“When Laws Violate Scripture” and “Inseparable: The Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution” function to create a distinction between God’s law
and man’s law that enforces and amplifies the imperative to follow God’s law in each
case. It offers a hierarchical tripartite structure: God-Declaration-Constitution where the
Constitution is situated as the least important legal structure. Two schematic structures
stand side by side as ready arsenals for the political prerogatives of Christian nationalism.
“Inseparable” asserts that, “We are a nation to be guided by the rule of law, not the rule
of men, and that law has a Source and an anchor, God’s Word.”
560
Within the first
instantiation, God’s law is said to be the universally binding standard above all humanly
created legal structures. This sentiment also seeks to affirm the inspired nature of the
nation’s founding documents. By doing so, Christian nationalist may appeal to God’s
law to override the Constitution and public policy. They may also appeal to an inspired
document, interpreting God’s will through its provisions regardless of its actual content.
This second option enables Christian nationalists the confidence to assert that they are
faithful to republican style government, constitutional laws, and the ideals set forth by
such vehicles. The first option allots for occasions where the power to justifiably
suspend the law altogether is sanctioned in the name of God’s will for the nation. These
commentaries assist the reader in clarifying the political tasks at hand if the nation is to
be redeemed for God.
Barton’s rhetoric characterizes a Biblical Christian worldview. For Biblical
Christians, the nature of truth is absolute, revelatory, ahistorical, propositional, and
unchanging.
560
561
561
As Fritz Detwiler states, biblical Christians approach understanding and
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 1250
Fritz Detwiler, Standing of the Premises of God: The Christian Right’s Fight to
219
interpretation pertaining to every aspect of human existence by way of the above
“presuppositions.” Truth is not sought in debate or deliberation, neither is it derived by
the process of analytical investigation.
562
It is incumbent upon biblical Christian students
to learn and memorize “what is true and what is not” predicated upon the Bible as the
563
final test for all truth claims.
For Biblicists, proper understanding is God centered.
Epistemological and ontological propositions are true only if they conform to “biblical”
values. Barton’s work demonstrates this viewpoint as deftly explicated by Detwiler and
expressed in doctrinal proclamations produced by the Coalition on Revival (COR).
Concerning government, COR’s “Statement of Affirmation and Denial” posits, in part,
“We deny that true government is established by man or sustained by any of his activities
except obedience to Biblical Laws and laws soundly deduced therein.” It continues, “We
deny that any final authority outside the Bible (e.g. reason, experience, majority opinion,
elite opinion, nature, etc.) [sic] ought to be accepted as the standard of government for
any individual, group, or jurisdiction,” and “We affirm that the Bible is the authoritative
564
and inerrant standard by which all aspects of civil government are to be conducted…”
Both Detwiler and this doctrinal statement of government affirms the underlying message
and intent of Barton’s endorsement of a biblical government, as well as his insistence on
God as the first and final arbiter in all aspects of civil government. Within his Founders’
Bible, Barton’s narratives simply bend all aspect of human existence, including
Redefine America’s Public Schools, (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 9297
562
563
564
Detwiler, Standing of the Premises of God, 94
Detwiler, Standing of the Premises of God, 94 and 86 respectively
Coalition on Revival, “The Christian World View of Government: Statement of
Affirmation and Denial.” Last modified 2008.
http://www.reformation.net/COR_Docs/Christian_Worldview_Government.pdf
220
government and economics, into a God-centered epistemology. And it is upon this basis
that his claims pass the truth standard of biblical Christianity.
565
The Founders’ Bible, Divine Mandate, and the Politics of Public Memory
As a site for public memory, the Founders’ Bible attempts to influence public
opinion and political action. This chapter argues that the commentaries within the
Founders’ Bible do not merely comment upon American history, founding documents,
and scripture, but rather, they write the texts anew and direct interpretive practices.
These commentaries illustrate elaborate reading instructions aimed at shaping and
delimiting possibilities for understanding scripture, Constitutional provisions, American
history (including Protestant history), and even capitalism. I chose to illustrate how
literalist strategies are employed to champion ideas as diverse as neoliberal ideology,
constitutionalism, and the suspension of law under the guise of God’s law. The
Founders’ Bible leads the witness through voluminous far right political interpretations
of scripture and “founding documents.” The commentary stands as the central textual
material in the compilation that gives form to scripture and state documents by writing
their meanings and utilizing intertextual placement as a means to render the texts
historically related and bonded to each other. These lengthy extra-biblical disquisitions
produce the edifice of empirical evidence for a Christian nation, while in praxis they
describe and affirm far right political ideology as biblically based and incumbent upon
the nation to uphold.
565
Detwiler’s Standing of the Premises of God offers an outstanding explication of the
Biblical Christian worldview and the Bible as truth standard. Note that Biblical Christianity is
characterized biblical literalism and inerrancy. It is thoroughly predicated upon and informed by
Princeton theology (inerrancy), as well as the intellectual contributions and influence of Francis
Schaffer and R. J. Rushdoony. as I stated in detail in earlier chapters. (80)
221
Barton reads market fundamentalism into scripture and the Constitution to create
the plausible appearance that neoliberal capitalism is biblical, constitutional, and a direct
reflection of God’s will for humanity. Barton mobilizes biblical literalism as an
interpretive strategy, draws upon the familiar behavior of evangelical proof-texting to
produce a body of evidence ostensibly in support of his contentions, and radically alters
and recontextualizes these fragments in a manner that conforms to the claims he wishes
to substantiate. Moreover, he leans upon the edifice of historical storytelling to anchor
his assertions in time and space. Barton’s disquisitions rehearses contemporary
narratives that brand the poor as irresponsible and lazy, that casts the rich as victims in a
class war unfairly leveled against them, and that characterizes social welfare policies as
contrary to God’s will. Taken together, Barton’s four essays function to invalidate
challenges to neoliberal market fundamentalism, marking today’s historic inequality in
wealth distribution, wage suppression and stagnation, austerity politics, and
institutionalized high unemployment and underemployment as a sacred economic system
mandated by God. Equally, these narratives efface the egregious misconduct of the
finance industry that prompted the crash of 2008. Instead Barton erroneously cites
excessive regulation as the cause of the financial crisis, reading market deregulation into
scripture as if it were biblically mandated. Barton’s interpretation of scripture produces a
story of biblical capitalism and God’s expressed will against public sector, social welfare
policies. Neoliberalism, as read into scripture, reflects God’s economic “justice”
instituted as equality under the law for all. To deny this fact, Barton assures his audience,
is to act against God and to court His wrath.
While the concept of biblical original intent arises from the construction of
founding documents as inspired, the Founders’ Bible’s commentaries equally grant the
right to suspend constitutional law if deemed unbiblical in its interpretation or
application. This discourse prompts readers to stand ready to disregard, ignore, or forget
Constitutional provisions in favor of God’s law when such situations arise. Barton
222
instructs his audience that the Constitution is “worthless” in the hands of the Wicked
(Proverbs 29:9) and the “key to good government” is to banish “the Wicked” from
566
office.
Such language throughout the Founders’ Bible characterizes fellow citizens
outside the religious right as more than agonists or antagonists. They are delineated as
evil, Satan inspired usurpers of nation, a discourse that magnifies the call to arms and the
dire imperative to suspend law, as necessary, in order to preserve God’s law.
I revisit the Declaration and Constitution, among other items, to demonstrate the
manner in which Barton’s Bible provides readers with an understanding of scripture, state
documents, and history meant to precondition comprehension. Barton means for his
followers to take his Bible as the “mind of God.” His Bible commands obedience from
its readers. While his essays offer an invitation for his audience to imagine themselves as
faithful patriots of the nation, he labors to influence their disposition toward the
suspension of constitutional law by invoking the threat of divine retribution. It is an
epistemological arsenal inducing faithful adherents to understand that “to do nothing” in
the face of evil is tantamount to failing God.
567
The substance of the tome impoverishes
his audience’s understanding of history, scripture, social policy and issues of social
justice, economics, and state documents in so far as it mobilizes methods of intentional
deception, as well as exploits the trust of its readers, as a means to achieve Christian
nationalist political ends.
566
See the commentary paired with Proverbs 29:9 entitled “The Key to Good
Government.” Barton, Founders’ Bible, 987-992. In the Founders Bible, Proverbs 29:9 states,
“When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked man rules, people groan.”
(992) In the same essay readers are reminded again of Exodus 18:21. Barton asserts that Noah
Webster instructed students that, “God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule
in the fear of God. (988)
567
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 992
223
CONCLUSION: GOD, PUBLIC MEMORY, AND NATIONAL POLITICS
This dissertation investigates how the theology of inerrancy, its subspecies
liberalism and inspiration, and providence function as fundamental structuring elements
in Christian nationalist figurations of the nation. These discourses of nation aim to
shape, direct, and inform public remembrance, historical understanding, political attitudes
and behavior. This study undertakes two tasks. First, I theorize that the theologies of
inerrancy, inspiration, providence, and biblical literalism function as constitutive
discursive components that condition and craft social reality within Christian nationalist
discourses of remembrance and nation. Second, I conduct a rhetorical criticism of David
Barton’s “remembrance” of a Christian nation by applying these theoretical insights. His
elaborate historical and scriptural conventions invariably lead to two assertions. First,
God’s law founds and authorizes American law, and second, God’s law may rightfully
suspend American law in the name of biblical soundness. Barton’s memory texts
undertake political work oriented toward influencing and structuring present and future
political beliefs and action. Under the guise of historical remembrance, these memory
tracts advocate contemporary religious right Republican values and policy interests,
naturalizing them as if they were biblical and constitutional.
In this final chapter I review the many ways in which the strategic mobilization of
biblical literalism underwrites and authorizes Barton’s rhetoric of national remembrance.
With this structural edifice firmly in mind, I discuss the political work Barton’s memory
texts attempt to undertake, and the political ramifications of his claims. Last, I consider
future research possibilities in the field that incorporate religious discourses and theology
as constitutive components in the formation of public memory and national identity.
224
Theology as Constitutive Rhetoric in Christian Nationalist
Constructions of Nation
This study builds upon the theoretical work of Kathleen Boone who deftly argues
that inerrancy and biblical literalism constitute literary strategies that precondition textual
understanding and comprehension prior to reading. Biblical literalists believe scriptural
meaning to be inerrant, infallible, universally applicable and binding as the direct Word
of God. They come to scripture with an expectation that its meanings are self-evident,
internally consistent, and self-sufficient. Boone demonstrates how meaning is derived
within an interpretive community, and generally directed and disciplined by the religious
authorities of a constituent body. As a strategy, biblical literalism occludes the
interpretive process since Biblicists imagine that they are reading the text literally,
faithfully, and without mediation.
The theology of inerrancy arose as a nineteenth century apologetic meant to shore
up threats to Biblical authority. The ideas of inerrancy, literalism, and inspiration work
jointly to direct, shape, and commission beliefs concerning the nature of biblical
authority. As such these doctrines proffer “reading instructions” that bear upon textual
understanding. Since its inception, the doctrine of inerrancy has presumed a scientific
rigor, while affirming common-sense criteria for comprehending biblical meanings.
568
Drawing upon the appeal of the scientific revolution, early apologists argued that biblical
literalism offered factual exegeses in contrast to rivals who interpreted scripture
figuratively.
568
569
569
This belief persist today, where biblical literalists appeal to the “facts” of
Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism, 110
Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism, 108
225
a text, even as, Christian Smith argues, such practices remain mired by “pervasive
570
interpretive plurality.”
Biblical literalism and the notion of an unerring and infallible text draw upon the
supposition of textual realism and universal law to affirm the authority and stability of
scripture. Barton extends these assumptions to state and historical documents. He crafts a
series of sub-arguments that support the premise that he is merely reading texts for what
they say. Barton’s ethos and trustworthiness relies upon the appearance of being an
impartial and faithful literal reader of scripture, documents of state, and historical
records. One critical argument in Barton’s arsenal charts a distinction between primary
and secondary documents. Here primary documents are treated as texts that express an
author’s intended meaning clearly and directly. Such documents require no
interpretation, of which textual expression is regarded as absolute, singular, and
unchanging. Barton crafts secondary material as representing mere opinion-- fallible and
potentially erroneous. Thus, Barton’s treatment of primary documents renders them as
partaking in the traits of inerrant, infallible manuscripts. He exploits this further by
designating key founding texts as inspired in nature. With this argument in place, Barton
lauds his published work as reliable due to his extensive use of primary documents. He
accuses notable scholars of revisionism based on their “almost universal failure to use
primary documents” in their research. Barton makes a performance out of presenting
“facts” through faithful literal readings of original source materials. Barton draws upon
biblical literalist’s expectation that literal readings of primary documents yield
indisputable facts. In this same vein, Barton promotes the twentieth century conservative
hermeneutic known as originalism as a literal reading practice for the Constitution. His
rendition of originalism, while vastly simplified, nonetheless undertakes the work of
persuasion, prompting readers to regard originalist judges as plain and close readers of
570
Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, 17
226
the nation’s charter versus their opponents, “activist judges” said to ignore the
Constitution’s provisions altogether in favor of their own contrivances and political
interests.
Barton argues that the Constitution is an inspired document. Although Barton’s
reliance upon the visage of textual realism may reflect a common contemporary
understanding of textuality held by the population at large, Barton’s mobilization of the
theology of inspiration situates his usage of textual realism within the linguistic
circumference of biblical literalism and inerrancy. Barton argues that the Constitution is
founded upon biblical writ, and that the concepts of government it expresses reflect
biblical precepts and principles rather than ideas developed during the Age of
Enlightenment.
571
According to his narrative, the founders actively chose to write
constitutional provisions based upon God’s law. As such, they called into being a
decidedly Christian nation under the direction of Providence. The branding technique
Barton applies to the Constitution aims to shape and influence his readers’ expectations
and understanding of the charter’s nature and content. Inspired documents in the
tradition of inerrancy and biblical literalism denote texts touched by God. The Holy
Spirit creates, directs and enlivens the content of the text, and assists in its proper
comprehension and use. As an inspired document, the Bible is inerrant and infallible. It
is God’s Word made manifest in the world. An inspired Constitution by operational
definition represents God’s Word as drafted by his vassals to undertake the Lord’s plan
for human history and universal redemption. I demonstrate that Barton purposely treats
the manuscript in this capacity as a means to capture its meaning and juridical authority
for the Christian nationalist cause. Barton’s reading instructions direct his audience to
recognize constitutional statues as direct quotes from scripture. I use the term recognize
here in the sense of visual recognition. He invites his audience to literally see a truth
571
David Barton et al., Founders’ Bible, 1244
227
about textual expression that is visually not present or tenable without a literalist
572
perspective.
Barton uses the designation “biblical” to subsume objects and ideas under the
linguistic circumference and legal jurisdiction of the divine. He frames the preamble of
the Declaration of Independence as “transcendental Biblical natural law principles,” by
which he transforms the preamble’s contents. This rhetorical maneuver is significant for
Barton since it enables him to accomplish two tasks. The first task is one of linguistic
appropriation. The biblical Declaration Barton constitutes becomes the definitive
founding document representative of God’s direct wisdom and will. The second task
situates the Constitution as secondary to the Declaration’s “biblical law.” By instructing
readers to construe the Constitution as the bylaws of the Declaration (the articles of
incorporation), Barton guides his audience to regard the Constitution as a subordinate
legal document, one that is not authoritative by itself. Moreover, he solves the textual
dilemma of a secularly worded Constitution. By way of reading the Constitution through
the biblical preamble, Barton argues that the founders saw no need to reiterate the
preamble’s biblical laws in the Constitution.
In One Biblical Nation Under Our Far Right Heavenly Father Barton writes far
right republican political ideology into scripture, American history, and founding
documents, bringing all of his previous idea together in one comprehensive volume.
Here Barton endorses political commitments that are consummate with far right
Republican policy rhetoric and formation. Though far too comprehensive to be covered
in a single chapter, scripture, history, and founding documents are reinterpreted to read as
prolife, pro-deregulation, anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-marriage equality, anti-union, and
anti-workers’ rights. The first tracts I investigate scripturalize neoliberal market
572
As Christian Smith observes, one major literalist strategy in the face of textual
problems is to simply make texts say what they do not say. Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, xii
228
fundamentalism, marking collective bargaining, labor rights, and public assistance
programs as contrary to God’s will. As such he renders neoliberal market
fundamentalism as biblical and representative of God’s law. He constitutionalizes the
same precepts asserting that the founders understood the biblical nature of this economic
system and consciously incorporated it into the provisions of the Constitution. The extrabiblical commentaries establish founding documents as biblically inspired and predicated
upon God’s law. In particularly, Barton’s rhetoric makes a point to distinguish between
God’s law and man’s law. Barton stresses that the nation is one run by the rule of law
(God) and not the “rule of men.”
573
God’s law underwrites inalienable “creation” rights,
authorizes founding documents, and “trumps” the will of the people, government
officials, and the Constitution itself. If a constitutional provision or application is
deemed contrary to God’s law, it must be abrogated. Barton’s extra-biblical exegeses
grafts scripture and constitutional provision together as if they were unified. Moreover,
he creates narratives that naturalize far right ideology and policy interests as if they were
biblical and constitutional. Simultaneously, Barton establishes the basis by which
Constitutional law may justifiably be suspended. He situates the figuration of God as a
totalizing standard by which all things must conform. Supported by the presuppositions
of inerrancy, inspiration, and literalism, Barton’s commentaries are offered as facts
supported by proof-texts.
Providence functions as a formal name for God and a theological premise that
presumes that God actively drives the events of human history. This study traces the
manner in which Barton deploys the moniker and concept of theological Providence to
identify and mark the boundaries of legitimate knowledge from illegitimate knowledge.
This strategic move is critical to Barton’s overall aspiration to shape public
573
Barton, Founders’ Bible, 2050
229
remembrance, and by extension, to influence and motivate political behavior and
attitudes in favor of far right Republican political interests.
Barton invokes Providence as the marker by which illegitimate knowledge,
otherwise termed revisionism, may be identified. Here, the theological belief that God
actively participates in human history functions to authorize specific renditions of
American history and expertise over and against epistemological paradigmatic rivals.
Barton’s conceptualization of Providence incorporates an elaborate conspiracy narrative
that indicts liberal leaning academics, judges, pundits, and politicians of falsifying the
American historical record. He accuses them of hiding the “facts” that prove the
founders’ intended America to be a Christian nation. Barton’s narrative argues that
revisionist conspirators have duped an entire nation for the last half century. As such
Americans suffer from mass amnesia, forgetting the truth about the nation’s history and
God’s plan for the American people.
Barton’s rendition of Providence offers implicit reading instructions, inviting
adherents to summarily disregard any accounting of the nation (and its history) that fails
to structure narratives around a providential story line. Barton relies upon ad hominem
attacks to discredit oppositional voices. He characterizes revisionists as mendacious and
politically motivated. Barton tends to either dismiss his opposition through ad hominem
gestures or he attacks straw man configurations of his opponents’ arguments, which he
easily defeats. Either way, Barton’s work encourages readers to disregard “anti-biblical”
experts and sources of knowledge as duplicitous and erroneous. Significantly, Barton
rebukes the scholarship of Mark Noll, George Marsden, and Nathan Hatch, evangelical
historians who are assiduous chroniclers of American Protestant history, encouraging his
readers to regard their work as so much “psychobabble.” As such Barton’s writings on
Providence and revisionism serve to reinforce his trustworthiness as an “historical and
constitutional” expert and man of God who stands committed to bringing the truth to light
by educating the nation’s people about America’s “Godly heritage” and “inspired
230
Constitution.” Strategic Providence, like literalism, structures the reader’s expectation of
a text prior to reading. Material deemed biblical is preconditioned to be received as
truthful in the same manner that texts branded as unbiblical are to be preconceived as
nefarious in intent and untrustworthy as content.
The Politics of Public Memory, God’s Law, and Legitimate Knowledge
As memory texts Barton’s discursive outpourings perform distinct political and
epistemological work. He aims to mold his audience’s understanding of scripture,
American history, and founding documents. Such memory tracts attempt to influence
and delimit conceptual vocabularies and direct political behavior. I explicate how the
concept of Providence functions to (de)legitimate knowledge whereby the figuration of
God operates as the truth standard upon which all knowledge is to be judged. From this
standpoint, all ideas, policies, sets of knowledge, and arguments deemed “unbiblical” or
“anti-biblical” are to be summarily rejected. It is this lesson that Barton works hard to
instill in his audience. This “biblical perspective” serves as a “regime of truth” by which
formulations of knowledge must conform.
574
Moreover, the discourse of Providence
orders relations of power. It establishes the basis of who may speak, with what authority,
and to what end. It orders a hierarchy of expertise that excludes voices considered to be
secular and liberal. This stance encourages adherents to maintain sectarian
communicative, political, and educational practices.
Barton’s tracts promote far right political values as if they were biblical and
constitutional. In his 2008 voting guide, and subsequent speeches on voting biblically, he
encourages his constituents to disregard caring for the poor, and eschews supporting
government assistance programs. The poor, he argues, do not make God’s non574
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selective Interview and Other Writings, 19721977, edited by Colin Gordon, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 131-133
231
negotiable list of political priorities. Instead, biblical voters are instructed to vote for
candidates who oppose “the ennoblement of homosexuality,” who acknowledge God
575
publically, vote prolife, and appoint originalist judges.
Barton characterizes
government assistance programs as creating a disincentive to work. He characterizes the
poor as apt to be lazy and unwilling to work for their subsistence. He instructs his
audience that the poor must work if they are to receive community (not government)
help. In another tract he advocates a flat income tax policy and implies that the rich are
being discriminated against by our current system of taxation. He characterizes New
Deal welfarism as socialism, advocating free market capitalism as God’s biblical
economic structure for humanity. By extension, Barton assures his readers that the
founders understood the sacred nature of God’s biblical economy and implemented it
within constitutional provisions. In one public appearance he stresses that adherents need
to make hatred a virtue “again” and tolerance a sin. In this refrain Barton asserts that
allowing liberals political latitude is tantamount to self-annihilation and acting against
God.
Barton’s restaging of the Constitution and the Declaration enables him to claim
American law for the Christian nationalist cause. More importantly, it offers a
prerogative by which law may be suspended to conform to God’s law. Branding the
Constitution as inspired represents a technique of rhetorical appropriation. To augment
this tactic, Barton subordinates the Constitution’s authority to that of a biblicalized
Declaration of independence. This move enables Barton to account for the lack of
religious language in the Constitution by tethering it to the god terms within the
Declaration. The preamble is reconfigured to represent God’s biblical principles. With
these rhetorical inventions in place, Barton substantiates God’s law as preeminent and
binding on American law. As with his deployment of Providence, all of Barton’s
575
Barton, The Bible, Voters, and The 2008 Election, 30
232
arguments affirm God as the truth standard by which policy is to be formed, judged,
promoted, or abrogated. As an example, Barton argues that abortion cannot be
considered constitutional or legal since God is against the practice. As memory texts,
Barton’s instructions encourage readers to be receptive to the idea of Constitutional
suspension as a means to obey God’s will. Barton’s rhetoric allows his audience to
image themselves as true patriots and protectors of the Constitution and original intent.
At the same time, his narratives legitimate its suspension in the name of God’s law,
calling upon the faithful to accent to such measures in obedience to God’s dictates.
The political and epistemological consequences of Barton’s teachings, while
strengthening the convictions toward Christian nationalism and GOP politics,
impoverishes the intellectual landscape of his followers in significant ways. Christian
Smith argues that Biblicist violate they own desire to read scripture faithfully.
576
In the
many ways that Barton embellishes, ignores, or contorts scriptural meanings and
American Protestant history, evangelical scholars like Mark Noll, Martin Marty, John
Fea, Kenton Sparks, and Smith argue that these tactics foreclose upon critical
engagement with scripture, political thinking, and history. Moreover, the faithful are
absolved from confronting their own “intellectual and doctrinal errors” made in the name
of biblical literalism.
577
My study confirms that Barton’s thorough reconstitution of scripture, founding
documents, and American history serve vested political interests. The “knowledge” he
imparts in the name of public remembrance is antithetical to engaged, critical learning. It
is equally anathema to ethically and intellectually responsible political participation. As
576
See Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly
Evangelical Reading of Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012)
577
Kenton L. Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of
Critical Biblical Scholarship, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 13
233
a “pernicious form of forgetting,” Barton encourages his readers to recognize—to
literally see--neoliberal market fundamentalism as biblical and constitutional.
578
This
directive by default turns a blind eye toward the human costs of advanced neoliberal
policies including global privatization and massive redistribution of wealth to top tier
earners worldwide. He prompts his audience to understand that God’s law dictates
American politics and jurisprudence. His tracts work to eviscerate his audience’s basic
knowledge of Protestant and constitutional history, constitutional law, the Declaration of
Independence, the Rights of Man philosophy, and countless other aspects American
history, government, and culture in its full complexity. Moreover, his polemics work to
structure an erasure of racial, gender, and sexuality injustice in American politics and
history, marking minority groups as recipients of special rights and characterizing
conservative Protestants (read: white, wealthy, and male especially) as victims of unequal
treatment under the law.
579
While he encourages his audiences to read founding
documents for themselves, he labors to shape their understanding and reading practices
prior to engagement with the texts at issue.
Future Research Considerations
This study takes a detailed look at David Barton’s construction of nation and
public memory in support of a Christian nation. More preliminary research into the
shared discursive constellations within religious right Republican Party presents an
important future area of investigation. Christian nationalist (Republican) rhetoric has
578
579
I borrow this poignant phrase from Brad Vivian.
My thinking here is greatly aided by Kristen Hoerl’s “Social Amnesia and Racial
Transcendence.”
234
gained mainstream prominence forming a vital part of Republican Party political
ideology. This cross circulation of ideas and narratives within the GOP will remain a
ubiquitous and influential feature of the American political landscape. Christian
nationalist rationales form the basis of justifications for policy measures that cover a
range of issues. For instance, the narrative of “religious freedom/Christian Persecution”
has gained significant traction in mainstream political discourse over the last decade,
underwriting legislation such as Arizona’s vetoed SB1062. The “religious freedom”
rationale has long served as the primary narrative undergirding anti-gay legislation.
580
Republican politicians continue to draw from the playbook of Christian nationalist
conceptions of State, providing talking points for constituents that are meant to foreclose
upon possibilities for understanding.
581
The transformation of the Republican Party over
the last four decades illustrates not simply a shift toward far right conservatism, but also a
wholesale absorption of Christian fundamentalist intellectual traditions and “habits of
580
Note that this rationale also underwrites sexual and reproductive regulatory legislation
including the right of employers to deny birth control as part of healthcare coverage on the basis
of “religious conscience.” See Didi Herman, Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Visions and the
Christian Right, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) and Stephanie L Witt, and
Suzanne McCorkle, eds. Anti-Gay Rights: Assessing Voter Initiatives, (Westport: Praeger, 1997).
For examples of primary evangelical sources see in particular Janet Folger, The Criminalization
of Christianity, (Sisters: Multnomah Publishers, 2005), David Limbaugh, Persecution: How
Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity, (New York: Perennial, 2003), “Criminalizing
Christianity,” Whistleblower Magazine 14 (2005), and Kyle Mantyla, “Barton Says More
Christian Were Killed For Their Faith Last Year Than In the Previous 2000 Years Combined,”
Right Wing Watch. Last modified March 10, 2014.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-says-more-christians-were-killed-their-faith-lastyear-previous-2000-years-combined.
581
In 2014 Stephen Fincher (R-TN) cited 2 Thessalonians 3:10 as the definitive rationale
for cutting food stamps. Another important example is Gov. Bob McDonnell who chaired the
2012 Republican Platform and is known by the moniker “Governor Ultrasound.” McDonnell is a
prominent graduate of Regent, Pat Robertson’s University. His law degree thesis (1989) from is
entitled “The Republican Party’s Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue for the Decade.”
235
582
mind.”
Remembering an inspired Constitution that is authorized by God forms an
undesirable and intellectually impoverished precedent for policy formation and debate.
It should be of no surprise that nationalist like Barton sell neoliberal policy to
conservative evangelical constituent. Neither should it seem surprising the Republican
politicians employ the language of Christian nationalism to court and capitulate the
religious right voting block of the Party, a constituency that has become a vital center of
the Party since the rise of the New Right. A content analysis and comparison between
transcripts from the Value Voters Summit and the Conservative Political Action
Conference would demonstrate these shared discursive habits, and illuminate the political
interconnectedness between right wing think tanks, religious right organizations,
Christian nationalist figures heads, and Republican legislators. They are not mutually
exclusive groupings within the Party or the larger conservative movement of the last four
decades. A content analysis of the most recent Values Voters Summit would
dramatically illustrate how high profile Republican politicians explicitly adopt Christian
nationalist figures of speech to appeal to voters. Such speech is veiled but nonetheless
present within Republican Party platforms. David Barton will most likely continue to
contribute to the writing of both the national and Texas Republic Party platforms.
Religious right Republican conceptions of nation matter. Their language is specific and
unique, brandishing a decidedly fundamentalist, biblical literalist disposition, which
continues to shape mainstream political discourse (and policy formation) in an everincreasing manner.
Christian nationalist discourses and the formation of public knowledge is
important since the religious right has enjoyed significant victories in erecting parallel
institutions that authorize sets of knowledge meant to resist “secular” and “liberal”
582
I borrow this term from Mark Noll. See Noll, Marsden, Sandeen, Fea for works on the
fundamentalist tradition and its influence upon contemporary conservative evangelical “habits of
mind.”
236
organizations and ideas. Sandeen stated it best, observing that “For virtually every
professional and scholarly group in the United States, there exists a Fundamentalist
equivalent. He also states that this “phenomenon of parallel institutionalism has been a
matter of common knowledge.”
583
Sociologist, historians, and religious studies scholars
have documented the general success of the homeschooling movement and the rise of
fundamentalist universities and law schools as two institutional means to bypass public
“secularized” education and the view points that correspond with these liberalized
academies. School choice rhetoric and public school voucher politics has aided
significantly in systematically defunding public schools and redistributing these funds to
support private religious educational institutions. Universities and colleges like Patrick
Henry, Liberty, and Regent expressly favor placing evangelical homeschoolers in a
position where they can bypass communication with and exposure to liberal arts learning,
focusing on placing graduates in key positions within government, education, and media.
Cynthia Dunbar, a former Texas Board of Education director and current professor of law
at Liberty University, states, “This battle for our nation’s children and who will control
their education and training is crucial for our success in reclaiming our nation.”
584
The
efforts to Christianize public textbooks (Texas School Board of Education), to defund
“secular” public education (including higher education), and to funnel the “next
generation” through organizational structures that boycott liberal arts academies and
opposing points of view function to bolster epistemological commitments that aim to, in
the words of Francis Schaeffer, reestablish a national “Christian consensus.”
585
For
583
Ernest R. Sandeen, “Fundamentalism and American Identity,” Annuls of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 387 (1970): 61
584
Cynthia Dunbar as quoted in Russell Shorto, “How Christian Were the Founders?”
New York Times, February 14, 2010, 10. Accessed February 14, 2010.
http:/www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14textbooks-t.html.
585
See Michael W. Apple, “God’s Educational Reform,” Educational Policy 14 (2000):
703-710, Michael W. Apple, Educating the “Right” Way: Markets, Standards, God, and
Inequality, “New York: Routledge, 2001), Mark A. Chancey, “A Textbook Example of the
237
Schaeffer, “Christian memory” has been “radically transformed” into a “humanistic
consensus” and must be reversed.
586
This phenomenon of “parallel institutionalism” with
its related discourses points to untold opportunities for further research in rhetorical
studies, attending to the rhetorical and political significance of constructions of
competing epistemological paradigms and their mobilizations within the larger culture.
While some may construe creationism or biblicalized renditions of American
history as knowledge denial, I would suggest that they represent a parallel
epistemological structure that maintains a biblical worldview and de-authorizes outside
epistemological scientific, governmental, and historical paradigms. For those interested in
the social construction of reality, constitutive rhetoric, democratic deliberation, political
rhetoric, public memory, discursive power, and public advocacy, Christian nationalist
discourses of nation and the epistemological paradigm it reinforces offer compelling
places to undertake critical scholarship.
Christian nationalist discursive practices also raise questions concerning public
advocacy, political deliberation, and religion in the public square. Like Mark Noll, I
contend that religious convictions, ideas, and language have a place in political thinking
587
and policy debate.
While Noll, Marsden, and Hatch support the notion of being
Christian Right: The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools,” Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 75 (2007): 554-581, Mark A. Chancey, “Reading, Writing and
Religion II: Texas Public School Bible Courses In 2011-2012. (A report from the Texas Freedom
Network Education Fund), Texas Freedom Network, 2012 and Fritz Detwiler, Standing of the
Premises of God: The Christian Right’s Fight to Redefine America’s Public Schools, (New York:
New York University Press, 1999) and Rick Hammer, “What Happens in Texas Doesn’t Stay in
Texas: The Battle Over Science Textbooks,” Sojourners, October 2, 2013. Last modified
October 2, 2013. http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/10/02/what-happens-texas-doesnt-stay-texas-battleover-science-textbooks, and Chris McGreal, “Texas School Board Rewrites US History With
Lessons Promoting God and Guns,” The Guardian, May 16, 2010. Last Modified May 16, 2010.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history.
586
Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1981), 54-
55
587
Mark Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (Grans Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1995), 71-74
238
informed by biblical principles, they conclude “Nonetheless, when bringing these
decisions to bear on civic debate and legislation we must agree to the rules of the civic
588
game, which under the American Constitution are pluralistic.”
They continue, “for the
purpose of civic debate and legislation we will not appeal simply to religious
589
authority.”
A fundamentalist God as truth standard is inadequate to the task of
enabling Americans to address and solve social issues in an intellectually responsible,
590
critically engaged, and egalitarian manner.
While I do not wish to romanticize an ideal
public sphere where the best argument wins the day, it is equally true that the
fundamentalist tone and sectarian stance within far right Republican Christian nationalist
discourse poses a dilemma for productive and cooperative public policy debate. With
God as their standard, Christian nationalist like Barton demonstrate every interest in
resisting communication with American others who differ with or challenge the validity
of their biblical worldview, as well as the resultant political claims and prerogatives made
in the name of God. They practice strategies of affirming their own position as truth
holders by any means necessary while dismissing knowledge and expertise that is
contrary to their beliefs and interests.
588
Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, and George M. Marsden, The Search for Christian
America, (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1989), 134
589
590
Ibid.
Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 71-74
239
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