“Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things. … Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans; we are all federalists.” –T. Jefferson

During a recent trip to Washington, I took in two exhibits on Thomas Jefferson at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History: one on slaves at Monticello and the other on the cut-and-paste version of the Gospels known as the Jefferson Bible. In the first exhibit, I was informed that our third president likely fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings. In the second, I was told that the Jefferson Bible was a “revolutionary document.”

Faith. Religion. Spirituality. Meaning. In our ever-shrinking world, the tentacles of religion touch everything from governmental policy to individual morality to our basic social constructs. It affects the lives of people of great faith — or no faith at all. This series of weekly columns — launched in 2005 — seeks to illuminate the national conversation.

This is the sort of stuff that drives David Barton mad. Barton is an evangelical minister and the founder of WallBuilders, a “pro-family” organization dedicated, according to its website, to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious and constitutional foundation on which America was built.” Like many of his fellow travelers on the Christian right, Barton is convinced that his heroes are under attack, and he has no intention of turning the other cheek.

In his new book, The Jefferson Lies, Barton argues that academics have spread a series of falsehoods about Jefferson — that he was a racist, a secularist and an advocate of strict church/state separation. Barton thinks he knows better. His Jefferson, who died (appropriately enough) on July 4, 1826, wasn’t just an “American hero.” He was an orthodox Christian, too.

‘Unblemished hero’?

Lionized by Glenn Beck and other social conservatives, Barton is a culture warrior driven by desire rather than by evidence. As a result, his writing is more “truthy” than “truthful.”

To be fair, Barton is right to observe that Jefferson was no atheist. He also correctly points out that Jefferson gave money to churches, attended worship services and revered Jesus as a great moral teacher. But does that make him an “orthodox” Christian? Not by a long shot.

Jefferson called the biblical book of Revelation the “ravings of a maniac.” He rejected the divinity of Jesus and the virgin birth. He characterized the Trinity as “hocus-pocus phantasm.” And in Bibles on display at the Smithsonian, he cut out the resurrection. To call Jefferson a Christian is to demonstrate disdain for either history or Christianity (or both).

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