Last month, Christian nationalist pseudo-historians David and Tim Barton delivered a presentation at the TPUSA Faith’s “Believers’ Summit” in Florida, during which the father-son duo spread the sorts of disinformation for which they are known, including the debunked claim that the Bible was the most cited source by the Founding Fathers, the falsehood that the Due Process clause came out of the Bible, and the false assertion that John Locke’s “Two Treatises of Civil Government” contained more than 1,500 Bible references.
Like his father, the myths spread by Tim Barton have a tendency to evolve over time so that what began as a misrepresentation eventually become almost unrecognizable. In this case, it was a claim about an 1844 Supreme Court case called Vidal v. Girard’s Executors.
“If you go to 1844, the U.S. Supreme Court had a case that was known as Vidal v. Girard’s Executors,” Barton said. “In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a unanimous 8-0 decision that you could not be a public school [and] receive government funding and prohibit the Bible, gospel ministers, evangelism from taking place on school campuses.”
“If you tried to hinder those things,” Barton claimed, “you would lose your government funding because one of the things we were going to make sure our schools did in America was emphasize religion and morality, was teach the Bible.”
If we were being generous, we’d suggest that Barton simply doesn’t know what he is talking about because his description of this case bears literally no resemblance to the actual decision.
As Right Wing Watch has explained several times before, the case involved an extremely wealthy man named Stephen Girard who, as a childless widower, left in his will large sums of money to the City of Philadelphia for various civic improvements, as well as money to establish a school for “poor male white orphan children.” Among the stipulations Girard placed upon the school was that no religious leader was ever to hold a position there, nor could any specific denominational doctrine be taught.
Some of Girard’s heirs sued, arguing, among other things, that prohibiting clergy from working or teaching at the school was a violation of both the Constitution and the Common Law because it discriminated against Christianity.
The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this argument:
Looking to the objection therefore in a mere juridical view, which is the only one in which we are at liberty to consider it, we are satisfied that there is nothing in the devise establishing the college, or in the regulations and restrictions contained therein, which are inconsistent with the Christian religion or are opposed to any known policy of the State of Pennsylvania.
This view of the whole matter renders it unnecessary for us to examine the other and remaining question, to whom, if the devise were void, the property would belong, whether it would fall into the residue of the estate devised to the city, or become a resulting trust for the heirs at law.
Upon the whole, it is the unanimous opinion of the Court that the decree of the Circuit Court of Pennsylvania dismissing the bill, ought to be affirmed, and it is accordingly.
Contrary to Barton’s assertion, the Supreme Court in no way issued a “unanimous 8-0 decision that you could not be a public school [and] receive government funding and prohibit the Bible, gospel ministers, evangelism from taking place on school campuses.” In fact, the court unanimously upheld the stipulation in Girard’s will that “no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatever in the said college, nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated to the purposes of the said college.”
Barton obviously knows this, which is why we are not inclined to be generous in attributing his false claim to mere ignorance. Rather, it is far more likely that Barton was deliberately lying because, like so many other Christian nationalists, he doesn’t actually care about the truth because he believes that these sorts of myths are useful in bolstering his modern-day right-wing political agenda.
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