For the last two weeks, far-right anti-LGBTQ evangelist Andrew Wommack has dedicated his "Gospel Truth" program to celebrating "250 Years of Christian Liberty" with father-son Christian nationalist pseudo-historians David and Tim Barton.
Every program to date has featured the same misrepresentations and falsehoods that Right Wing Watch has spent two decades debunking, but on Thursday's program, David Barton made a new claim that is worth investigating.
Barton was lamenting that modern public education teaches students to memorize, but not to think, which has allowed educators and experts to brainwash Americans into thinking that the United States was never founded as a Christian nation.
In contrast, Barton claimed that during the Founding Era, students were encouraged to think for themselves and develop logical arguments in defense of their positions. As evidence, Barton pointed to an incident involving a young John Quincy Adams.
"He's an 18-year-old kid at Harvard," Barton claimed. "He's in his senior year, and they're having what's called a forensic and back in that day, that's a formal type of debate between two students; one takes one side, one takes [the other] and it doesn't matter what side you believe, you take for, you take against."
The actual subject of the debate did not matter, Barton said, as the purpose was simply to improve the students' thinking and arguing skills.
"It's a two-hour debate," Barton said. "Each of them get one hour. It's going to be the next night. It's going to be an 8 to 10 o'clock debate at Harvard. And so John Quincy has one side and he really just writes the other guy and just trash talks and he's like, 'I'm going to mop the floor with you. You don't stand a chance,' just trash talking. But what it is, the debate for two hours is over a stalk of asparagus. Asparagus is green on one end, it's white on the other. John Quincy Adams for one hour has to defend the thesis that God wants you to eat the white end first. The other guy has to defend the thesis God wants you to eat the green end first. What's that do? It makes a thinker out of you."
Barton's assertion, as usual, is wild exaggeration of what actually occurred. In 1786, 18-year-old John Quincy Adams wrote a letter to his cousin William Cranch in which he humorously proposed that the two engage in such a debate:
On Wednesday the 15th: day of February, of the current year 1786, do you William Cranch, between the hours of 8 and 10, in the Evening, write me a Letter, in which you will in a rational, Philosiphical, and Mathematical, (ay and a Logical) manner, prove that the green ends of asparagus, were designed by Nature, to be eat by man; and mind, upon what foundation your System shall stand, for as I mean to oppose it, with all the zeal, that the importance of the matter requires; I shall take every possible advantage, to support my plan: which is that the white ends were designed by nature for the food of man. However if you are of my opinion, I would not force you to maintain the Contrary; because I always stand up for Liberty of Conscience, and I exhort you, in the discussion of this Question, to be cool; because, violence never can do good to any System, upon a contested point. I might enlarge upon this subject, but will wait for your answer, first.
There was no two-hour debate on the topic of asparagus held at Harvard, nor did John Quincy Adams ever write a letter "trash talking" his opponent before hand. Barton simply took a bit of actual history and used it to spin a completely fabricated narrative.
Obviously, the issue of whether John Quincy Adams engaged in a literal debate over the proper manner of eating asparagus does not particularly matter, but Barton's disregard for the actual truth most certainly does because his indifference about presenting accurate history is obvious in the countless false claims that he makes regarding the supposedly Christian foundation of our country.
This especially matters because the pseudo-history Barton presents has been highly influential to powerful figures like House Speaker Mike Johnson and other members of Congress. Furthermore, Barton has been responsible for shaping Trump administration actions, especially surrounding the celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary, which has been steeped in precisely the Christian nationalist pseudo-history that Barton ceaselessly promotes.
