Open Letter to David (and now Tim) Barton from a Christian Historian

david-barton-2Many people are unaware that controversial Christian historian David Barton (more on the controversy here) holds some highly unbiblical views.  His beliefs are largely from the apostate New Apostolic Reformation. Barton also has a close association with New Age Mormon Glenn Beck and appears regularly on Word of Faith heretic Kenneth Copeland’s Believer’s Voice of Victory.  So it’s no surprise that liberals like Warren Throckmorton regularly use their blogs to discredit David Barton — and rightly so. In a recent blog post over at Patheos, he quotes from an open letter to David and Tim Barton penned by Grace College history professor Jared Burkholder.  According to Throckmorton the letter was written:

[I]n response to the Barton’s claim that Christian historians don’t rely on primary sources (see these links for more on the Bartons’ claim). The letter begins:

Dear David (and now Tim) Barton,

Maybe you can clarify something for me. Why do you continue to insist that because you read primary sources you have a unique voice when compared to professional Christian historians like me, who you say fail to make use of original sources?

I am hardly the first to be annoyed by this, but suffice it to say this is utterly incomprehensible to me. Primary sources are to historians what hammers are to carpenters; what keyboards are to composers; what language is to writers. They are the tools of our trade, the most basic implements we learn to use.

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