In week four of our ongoing Beck University lecture series, Professor David Barton returned for “Faith 102” — the second of his lectures — and set about trying to prove that church and state are totally meant to be together by debunking the “myth” that many of our founding fathers were “agnostics, atheists, deists.”
When we last saw Barton, he explained that he knows church and state have been apart for a while now, but if they could just give it one more chance he knows they can make it work this time…
And last night, he again tried to show how church and state are perfect for each other by using some strange roundabout logic about how some of our founding fathers liked to go to church.
“We’re told that they’re secular,” Barton said, but this is “revisionist history.”
He began by defining what a founding father is: basically anyone who was “pretty significant in helping us become who we are.” By his count, there are 250 of them, but “people don’t talk about 250 founding fathers,” they only “pick one or two.”
“Look at Franklin. Look at Jefferson,” these crazy people say. They are just showing “the exception, and not the rule.” This is called “deconstruction,” Barton said, and will be hilariously important later.
“Of the 56 guys who signed the Declaration of Independence,” Barton said, “more than half had seminary degrees.”
Thomas Jefferson, Barton continued, is often known as one of our most “secular” founders.
Or was he?!?
Barton described how in November of 1800, Jefferson gave his “approval that every Sunday we’re going to have church in the U.S. Capitol.” When he became President, Jefferson went to church every Sunday.
“Wait, what’s Thomas Jefferson doing going to church?” Barton asked. “Doesn’t he understand separation of church and state?”
“We get taught Thomas Jefferson, but we don’t even get taught the real Thomas Jefferson,” he said. “There’s no way he’s secular. There’s no way he wanted a secular public.”
Then Barton moved on to Benjamin Franklin, who is known to have been a practicing deist.
Or was he?!?
Barton described how when Franklin returned to his state of Pennsylvania to author the state Constitution, he wrote “I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe,” and included belief in God as a “requirement to hold public office.”
As governor, Franklin also started a campaign to increase church attendance, according to Barton, and once even “chew[ed]” others out “for not praying enough.”
“They’re not atheists, agnostics, deists,” Barton emphasized, that is “pure revisionism.”
“Were the Founding Fathers secular?,” Barton asked. “No,” he said, before adding “I could take you through all the others, but just Jefferson and Franklin is enough to prove the point.”
Oh! Oh! I know this one! Showing “the exception, and not the rule” — that’s called “deconstruction!”
Class dis-missed.
