David Barton accuses modern historians of America with turning history into a “dreary academic subject” and of deliberately misrepresenting the past in order to promote secular public policies. As he develops his charge in an essay titled “God Missing in Action from American History,” two things become clear. First, what he really opposes is not modern academic history’s alleged dreariness, but modern academic history itself. Second, he knows very little about modern academic history.
David Barton’s assertion that history should focus on biography and express a discernment of God’s Providence superintending over it all reveals the kind of history he prefers: that written before the advent of professional academic history. Barton apparently finds appeal in the sermons and journals of colonial ministers and patrician-historians of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The most well-known journal was that of William Bradford, the perennial governor of Plymouth colony. Later published as On Plymouth Plantation, Bradford narrates the story of the Pilgrims using biblical motifs and attributing the direction of their affairs to the providence of God. In this type of history, the Pilgrims are cast in the role of a New World Children of Israel, as God’s chosen people arriving in their own New Canaan. Through their triumphs and their tragedies, God’s hand sustains and strengthens them.
The patrician-historians were men of leisure who produced historical narratives as quality literature for a growing reading public. Some of the earliest examples include Robert Beverley‘s History and Present State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson‘s Notes on Virginia , and Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay. Perhaps the best known work of this kind was George Bancroft’s History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, published in 12 volumes between 1834 and 1882. Bancroft saw in American history not as an especially religious enterprise, but as the unfolding of God’s plan for establishing freedom and democracy in the world.
During Bancroft’s work on his last volumes, Johns Hopkins University laid the foundation for modern academic history beginning in 1876. Johns Hopkins graduate school pioneered the training of professional historians in research, analysis, and interpretation. The American Historical Association was organized in 1884. The American Historical Review began publishing in 1895. Since that time, professionally trained historians have produced the bulk of historical writing. It is their ideas that reach the classroom.
The advent of professional history did not mean an end to popular history. Freelance writers, journalists, and even some professional historians continue to publish histories for the general public. But the hard work of original research and writing for professional journals that makes these books possible is done by academically trained historians. And this is what Barton does not understand.
History is more than biography. If Barton laments the narrow focus of works on economics, or politics, or whatever, he must learn that historical research must take place within established parameters. No man or woman has enough years in lifetime to research, analyze and, write the “grand theory” of everything. (Texts for survey courses attempt this and are usually the product of several authors.) Consequently, historians narrow their research in time or a place. They may focus on economics, ideas and ideology, politics, organizational theory, demographics, ethnicity, gender, or even religion. (Barton is apparently even unaware of the rich tradition of historical writing on Christianity). It is the study of change over time that provides historical context for the era in which we live, something that biographies, however interesting, really cannot do.
And that fact has Barton stumped. He loves this country and is troubled by its crime, its vice, and its secular outlook in which Christianity plays a diminishing role. It is very different from the colonial and early national period in which he directs most of his interest. Because he lacks even basic familiarity with the conclusions of American historical writing,however, he does not understand the era in which he lives and how our nation came to be this way. Consequently, he reaches for the latest Christian conspiracy theory -- America is more secular because historians have failed to include God in their explanatory models and that God is missing in action from American history. Modern American remains a riddle for him.