Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Dept. of Unsourced Signs and Wonders
The conjuratus over at the Presidential Prayer Team are back at it again with another unsourced (and of questionable attribution) founding father quote. This time with a snip that was more than likely gulped from David Barton's bottled 1989 brew of historical moonshine titled America's Godly Heritage.
The so-called "Presidential Quote of the Week" - attributed to John Quincy Adams - goes as such: ~ "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration...they were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct."
cached link here
Barton trumpeted this very same alleged quote in America's Godly Heritage, a video concoction of junk history that had actually been shilled off on public schools to instruct students on matters historylike, including, of all things, Middle East History. In 1996 a U.S. District court judge ruled against use of the material; agreeing that it was "little more than a ruse to teach fundamentalist Christianity."
Alas, in 1995, Barton and Wallbuilders, (the Christian Nationist hokum peddling operation founded by Barton), finally fessed up to the truth and admited publically that his AGH video and 1989 companion book titled The Myth of Separation contained a dozen quotes either patently phony, falsely attributed to founding fathers, or of questionable origin and authenticity. The John Quincy Adams quote being currently cited by the Presidential Prayer Team is one such specimen of questionable merit.
In other words, the passage does not appear in any sourceable document authored by John Quincy Adams himself, but rather, appears in a book titled The Pulpit of the American Revolution by John Wingate Thornton, first published 1860. Whats more, JW Thornton doesn't even clearly indicate that the passage belongs to Adams, since the words are neither footnoted, dated, or placed in quotations by Thornton, as researcher Jim Allison points out here.
Allison also notes that the passage does not even appear to belong to Adam's at all, but rather Thornton himself, speculating on what he (Thornton) believed Adam's may have said or thought with respect to such matters of church and state.
Not that any of this would make a lick of difference to the web-wowsers at the Presidential Prayer Team or their crusading throngs of enraptured disciples. Hell no.
In fact, I fully suspect that if I were to scrawl some pronouncement praising the "indissoluble bond" of higher Providence to the temporal supervision of county highway depatment road maintenance projects circa 1800 on the back of a brown paper bag, splash some cold coffee over it, sign it John Adams - PS: Thomas Jefferson is an atheist fruit - and send the whole damn silly thing flapping off to light upon the altar of a Presidential Prayer Team desktop, I would expect it to be plopped smartly, and without haste, onto the glowing PPT billboard under the heading "Presidential Quote of the Week". They'd probably claim that the thing had been dispatched to them by the Great Undisclosed Source hisself, carried aloft by doves and fluttered in through an open window.
Then again, maybe not. Best not bother with that whole pesky source reference bid'ness.
And oh, by the way, don't forget to pray for large advance bulk sales of "Ten Minutes From Normal".
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The so-called "Presidential Quote of the Week" - attributed to John Quincy Adams - goes as such: ~ "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration...they were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct."
cached link here
Barton trumpeted this very same alleged quote in America's Godly Heritage, a video concoction of junk history that had actually been shilled off on public schools to instruct students on matters historylike, including, of all things, Middle East History. In 1996 a U.S. District court judge ruled against use of the material; agreeing that it was "little more than a ruse to teach fundamentalist Christianity."
Alas, in 1995, Barton and Wallbuilders, (the Christian Nationist hokum peddling operation founded by Barton), finally fessed up to the truth and admited publically that his AGH video and 1989 companion book titled The Myth of Separation contained a dozen quotes either patently phony, falsely attributed to founding fathers, or of questionable origin and authenticity. The John Quincy Adams quote being currently cited by the Presidential Prayer Team is one such specimen of questionable merit.
In other words, the passage does not appear in any sourceable document authored by John Quincy Adams himself, but rather, appears in a book titled The Pulpit of the American Revolution by John Wingate Thornton, first published 1860. Whats more, JW Thornton doesn't even clearly indicate that the passage belongs to Adams, since the words are neither footnoted, dated, or placed in quotations by Thornton, as researcher Jim Allison points out here.
Allison also notes that the passage does not even appear to belong to Adam's at all, but rather Thornton himself, speculating on what he (Thornton) believed Adam's may have said or thought with respect to such matters of church and state.
The words attributed to John Quincy Adams appear on page XXIX. None of these words are placed in quotation marks. Rather, the sentence reads as if Thornton is making his own conclusion about what John Quincy Adams believed. Thornton's sentence reads as follows:
The highest glory of the American Revolution, said John Quincy Adams, was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principle of Christianity (italics in the original). No footnote for these words is given. Nor are the words attached to a date. Hence, if these words are a quotation from Adams, it is impossible to trace them back from Thornton's book to an original source. Elsewhere in the book Adams' father (John Adams) is quoted properly, i.e., with footnotes and quotation marks.
Not that any of this would make a lick of difference to the web-wowsers at the Presidential Prayer Team or their crusading throngs of enraptured disciples. Hell no.
In fact, I fully suspect that if I were to scrawl some pronouncement praising the "indissoluble bond" of higher Providence to the temporal supervision of county highway depatment road maintenance projects circa 1800 on the back of a brown paper bag, splash some cold coffee over it, sign it John Adams - PS: Thomas Jefferson is an atheist fruit - and send the whole damn silly thing flapping off to light upon the altar of a Presidential Prayer Team desktop, I would expect it to be plopped smartly, and without haste, onto the glowing PPT billboard under the heading "Presidential Quote of the Week". They'd probably claim that the thing had been dispatched to them by the Great Undisclosed Source hisself, carried aloft by doves and fluttered in through an open window.
Then again, maybe not. Best not bother with that whole pesky source reference bid'ness.
And oh, by the way, don't forget to pray for large advance bulk sales of "Ten Minutes From Normal".
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