Historical Revisionism

Historical revisionism is usually based on challenging orthodox views, most commonly accomplished by modern day academics who have studied all of the original documents and understand contemporary issues that relate to a particular point in history. The premise is generally that traditional opinions are sacred and that modern historians are better able to scrutinize history than others. Generally, revisionism is targeting contemporary issues of great importance and one of these is the religiosity of our nation's founding fathers. Is this a deliberate attempt to distort the historical record?

What is an example of this?

Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore decided to defend the American principle of the separation of the church and state by writing a book called "The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness." It is a college classic on many campuses today. If you read in the beginning of their book, you will find a "disclaimer" of sorts - one that says they have dispensed with using footnotes (normally used in historical academic works). Interesting isn't it?

Not that I am an expert in historical research, but I do know something about scholarly writing. Kramnick, a 30-year faculty member who serves as the Richard J. Schwartz Professor and chair of the Department of Government at Cornell, writes a book used in classrooms around the nation and doesn't document his conclusions with "facts" or evidence? Does it raise suspicion about his motives? Did you know that R. Laurence Moore's wrote the book "Selling God" and that makes him qualified to write this work? Moore's basic premise is that religion has used the principles of marketing to manipulate people into "buying" religion. Sound like a bias to me. But, I could be mistaken since this book is adopted in college classroms I am sure presents a fair and balanced viewpoint.

I have some more examples of objective writing. Steve Morris claims the early presidents and patriots were generally deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal God, but not Christianity.

We also have Bob Massey of the Sun Herald who says that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were "enemies of Christ."He notes that Thomas Paine, who drafted the Declaration of Independence, was also the author of "Common Sense" (none of these facts are untrue) and most likely not a Christian (also true). However, the only thing he wants you to know are that the 2 signers of the Declaration were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Were these men Christian? No. I agree. But, how did he arrive at the general statement about "deists" and "Unitarians" and do these conclusions match up with the facts?

OK, now everyone reads this stuff and takes it as the "god-awful" truth, right? Our founding fathers were somewhere between atheists or at least semi-religious?

Did you know there were 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence? Of these, 29 had seminary degrees (David Barton). Yep, sounds like they all had the same opinion as Franklin and Jefferson.

Did you know that in the Treaty of Paris (1783) when we signed with Britain following the revolution, at the very top it says "In the name of the most Holy and undivided trinity" (top image here, click on it for a detailed view). Does that sound like they were enemies of Christ? Does that even sound like they were "Unitarians" or dieists? The signers were David Hartley (ambassador and member of the British Parliament) and Ben Franklin / John Adams? You can view this document on your next visit to Washington, DC if it hasn't been redacted.

Did you know that in 1782 congress published the "Bible of the American Revolution" and that one of the signers was John Witherspoon - signer of Declaration of Independence as a representative of New Jersey. He was probably the most noted Christian evangelical of his day? Ever hear of Charles Thomson? How about Robert Sherman? Benjamin Rush? Yes, these men all of historical records of agnosticism. I am certain they agreed 100% with Thomas Paine.

Come on, let's get real. Why don't people just come out and say they are anti-Christian in the preface of their books when they want to write about history? Be sure and strike out the fact that Benjamin Rush, who is considered the father of American medicine and established the American College of Physicians was a devout Christian and has a well-documented historical record of that fact. Charles Thomson, immediately chosen secretary of the Continental Congress at its first meeting, was a believer in Jesus Christ. This is also well documented. How do we know this? In 1808 he translated both the old and new testaments from Greek and published it!

Note that John Adams never said "there is no authority, civil or religious, or no legitimate government, but what is administered by the Holy Ghost." Please strike from the history books that Roger Sherman, also a signer of the Declaration, read through the entire bible each year he was in congress and wrote notes in the margins. Why? He gave the bible to each of his children so that they could have their own copy. Roger Sherman had 15 kids.

Now really, the liberals - probably inflate things a little bit - especially when they claim the bible is full of errors because of historical revisionism. They claim, the bible has been copied over and over and is full of transcriptions errors. For example, what the bible says about homosexuality is really been misunderstood according to Daniel Helminiak, who is incidently a Catholic priest and way more educated than the rest of us.

Radical revisionists are also ignoring the Dead Sea Scrolls (a collection of 850 documents written between 21 BC - 61 AD) that include the texts of Isaiah and quite possibly the earliest known document of the Gospel of Mark (fragment 7Q5 - José O'Callaghan). Some liberal theologians are so certain the Dead Sea Scrolls are false that they've gone to the extreme saying these were not written by the Essenes (religious community about the time of Christ), but rather this was nothing more than a pottery factory (Norman Golb).

After all these scholarly opinions, it makes your head spin doesn't it? I for one, but my faith in the accuracy of the scriptures. It is the one rock solid foundation in my life. As for faith-connection of the founders of my country, well I am certainly not leaving that to the scholars. At least in that case, I can go to the National Archives and Washington, DC and examine the original documents for myself.