Bluffton senior Kenny Beeker presented the subject of his departmental honors project, “Deconstructing David Barton,” in the Reading Room March 13.
Kenny Beeker photo by Claire Clay
During the presentation Beeker, who is a double major in communication and history, discussed David Barton, an evangelical Christian political activist, author and self-proclaimed historian. Beeker opened the presentation by introducing David Barton as a prominent voice in the conservative evangelical community and is considered a credible historian among some conservative evangelicals, including Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann and Sam Brownback.
Beeker challenges Barton’s claim to being an historian by calling attention Barton’s lack of university history education. Beeker said history is a discipline with its own standards and conventions that help to make historical writings and interpretations as accurate as possible. Beeker said good history is “factual, objective and contextual” and that Barton rarely follows those guidelines.
The main focus of Beeker’s presentation was using the rhetorical analytical framework of “deconstruction” to help understand Barton’s book, The Jefferson Lies. Beeker deconstructs Barton’s work into three categories analyzing exigence (urgent need or demand created,) audience and binary oppositions (black vs white, right vs wrong etc.)
Barton creates exigencies or needs by setting up oversimplified arguments that are easy for him refute. The rhetoric of Barton’s book also relies heavily on creating oppositions that generally only have two sides to be a part of which creates a need for the reader to choose a side, Beeker’s research found.
When addressing the intended audience of the book, Beeker mentioned two groups.
“There is a main audience who read the book, but also a secondary audience that do not read the book,” Beeker said. “Barton arms his main audience with argumentative tools to combat arguments made by those who do not read the book.”
To conclude his presentation, Beeker said he is not deconstructing Barton’s rhetoric to “get him” or fact check him, but to understand Barton’s messages and his audience to better empathize with their worldview.
