One of the items in Barton's bag of historical tricks is a rare Bible printed in 1782 by Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken. This Bible has been a mainstay of Barton's presentations for years, and was, as expected, one of the featured pieces of Christian nation "evidence" whipped out on Beck's show. Barton's bogus claim about this Bible? It was printed by Congress for the use of schools -- proof that the founders never intended a separation between church and state. Needless to say, Beck and his audience are just eating this stuff up. Barton's appearances on Beck's show have propelled his fifteen-year-old book of historical hogwash, Original Intent, to bestseller status, reaching as high as #6 on Amazon. Right now, as I sit here writing this post, this masterpiece of historical revisionism is ludicrously, and alarmingly, holding the #1 spot in the category of "Constitutional Law."

I've addressed this Aitken Bible lie many times before -- in blog posts, in a YouTube video after Barton trashed me on his radio show last year, and, of course, in my book, Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History. In fact, because the lies about Congress and the Bible are the most popular of all the Christian nationalist history lies, I made this subject the very first chapter of the book. The chapter, titled "Congress and the Bible," debunks all the myths and lies regarding the printing, financing, distribution, or recommending of Bibles by our early congresses, most of which are variations of the same three stories -- two involving the Continental Congress, and one an act signed by James Madison. The chapter also includes some related lies that have, quite disturbingly, made it into the opinions of Supreme Court justices in a few First Amendment cases.

Now that Glenn Beck has started a weekly series of episodes called "Founders' Fridays," on which David Barton will no doubt be a recurring guest "historian," I've decided to begin writing a series of posts debunking the historical lies being disseminated by this dynamic duo of Christian nationalism, starting with the one about the Aitken Bible. For this one, I'm posting both a video debunking and the relevant excerpt from my book.

(Note: On July 6, 2010, Vimeo removed the video that was originally in this post, citing copyright issues, although this video is clearly well within the limits of "fair use." To keep this video available while I try to get it restored on Vimeo, I have temporarily uploaded it to my FaceBook page and embedded it from there.)

UPDATE: The issue with Vimeo has been resolved. They promptly reviewed my videos and have restored the ones that were removed. I will be updating everything and putting the original video back in this post as soon as possible.

A quick note before getting into the book excerpt below: Because I went in chronological order, the chapter begins with the myth that the Continental Congress imported Bibles in 1777. This other story, about an earlier unfulfilled request to Congress to import Bibles during the war, made by a Rev. Alison, is referenced a few times in the story of the 1782 Aitken Bible. This is because some of the revisionists, including Barton, attempt to connect these two stories, even though there is absolutely no connection between them. All you really need to know for the purposes of understanding these references in this excerpt is that the Continental Congress did not import any Bibles in 1777, but if you do want to read the whole 1777 Bible story, the entire "Congress and the Bible" chapter is available as a sample chapter PDF on my website. (And for any history geeks or skeptics who want to verify my sources, you can also view images of all the documents cited in my footnotes in my footnote archive. I've left the footnote numbers here as they are numbered in the book so they correspond with the numbers in the archive.)

Now, on to the story:

The second of the top three myths about Congress and the Bible involves the edition of the Bible begun by Robert Aitken in 1780, and completed in 1782.

According to William Federer, in his book America's God and Country:

"Robert Aitken (1734-1802), on January 21, 1781, as publisher of The Pennsylvania Magazine, petitioned Congress for permission to print Bibles, since there was a shortage of Bibles in America due to the Revolutionary War interrupting trade with England. The Continental Congress, September 10, 1782, in response to the shortage of Bibles, approved and recommended to the people that The Holy Bible be printed by Robert Aitken of Philadelphia. This first American Bible was to be 'a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools':

Whereupon, Resolved, That the United States in Congress assembled ... recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States, and hereby authorize [Robert Aitken] to publish this recommendation in any manner he shall think proper."

Elsewhere in the same book, Federer includes a second version of the story, in which Aitken was "contracted" by Congress to print his Bibles.

According to Federer:

"Congress of the Confederation September 10, 1782, in response to the need for Bibles which again arose, granted approval to print 'a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools.' The printing was contracted to Robert Aitken of Philadelphia, a bookseller and publisher of The Pennsylvania Magazine, who had previously petitioned Congress on January 21, 1781."

There are many versions of this story floating around, all worded to mislead that Congress either requested the printing of the Bibles, granted Aitken permission to print them, contracted him to print them, paid for the printing, or had Bibles printed for the use of schools. Congress did none of these things. All they did was grant one of several requests made by Aitken by having their chaplains examine his work, and allowing him to publish their resolution stating that, based on the chaplains' report, they were satisfied that his edition was accurate. The words "a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools" are taken from a letter written by Aitken,(8) not the resolution of Congress.

The actual resolution is edited in various ways. The purpose of this editing is to omit that Congress also had a secular reason for recommending Aitken's Bible, and, in most cases, to turn the resolution into a recommendation of the Bible itself, rather than a recommendation of the accuracy of Aitken's work.

This is the typical, and often copied, version of the resolution that appears on James H. Hutson's religion exhibit on the Library of Congress website:

"Congress 'highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion ... in this country, and ... they recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.'"

The following is the entire resolution.

Whereupon, Resolved, That the United States in Congress assembled, highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion as well as an instance of the progress of arts in this country, and being satisfied from the above report, of his care and accuracy in the execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States, and hereby authorise him to publish this recommendation in the manner he shall think proper.(9)

Aitken actually asked Congress for quite a bit more than they gave him. In addition to his work being examined by the chaplains, Aitken requested that his Bible "be published under the Authority of Congress,"(10) and that he "be commissioned or otherwise appointed & Authorized to print and vend Editions of the Sacred Scriptures."(11) He also asked Congress to purchase some of h