Reforming Academia From Within

A public university professor writes in with a question a lot of people quietly carry: if American academia feels captured by ideology and hostile to biblical Christianity, is it already too far gone or can it be reformed? We start with the history many classrooms skip, that early American colleges were overwhelmingly founded with explicit Christian commitments, then we get brutally practical about what change can look like when you’re the only one in your department who still believes it.

Our answer isn’t a shortcut. We talk about why real renewal in higher education is usually slow, relational, and generational. Instead of chasing quick debates, we focus on discipleship as a strategy for cultural change: investing in students, mentoring future professors, and thinking in decades, not days. If you’ve ever wondered how one person can matter inside a massive institution, the math of multiplication and the patience of long obedience show a believable path forward.

Then we pivot to two big history questions with modern relevance: the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and how South Carolina’s standoff with the federal government helped deepen the divide that later erupted in the Civil War, plus what’s true about Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Riot. We close by clearing up the story behind the “Jefferson Bible,” including what Jefferson actually compiled and why the popular version of the story often misses the point. If you value biblical worldview, American history, and constitutional literacy, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] This is the intersection of faith and culture is the WallBuilders Show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. So we look forward to answering as many of your questions as we can. It really sparks good discussion here on the WallBuilders program. When you send in your questions, so send those into radio@wallbuilders.com. Radio@wallbuilders.com. And then for those of you just maybe tuning in for the first time if you want to learn more about us, you can go to wallbuilders.com and of course, peruse the website there. See a lot of the cool stuff we've got available to you, everything from swag for the 250th birthday of the country and rebuilding and all of those things to constitution classes and all kinds of things you can learn. So check all that out at wallbuilders.com. And then our radio program at wallbuilders.show. All right, David, Tim, got a lot a great questions today. The first ones from a 29-year-old homeschool graduate who said: I now work as a professor at a large public research university. I have a firsthand view of the deep flaws of American academia driven in large part by the liberal ideologies of the faculty. I know that God has placed me here for a reason, though I certainly stand alone in my field. I've heard about the biblical grounding of early American universities, but it feels at times like the modern higher education system has become too far gone to fix, especially since it is powered by such an overwhelmingly liberal faculty base. Is it possible to reform American academia to its historical and biblical moorings as established by our founding fathers? What can I do as one person to help facilitate this change? Thank you so much for all the work you do to spread truth. Listening to your program every day helps me find sanity amid the world I work in. And I'd give you your name, but asked to remain anonymous, which I totally understand, considering the retribution on college campuses if you are seen as a conservative, or certainly if you're seen as a Christian, a biblical Christian at that. So really interesting question today guys and let's kind of couch just a couple a couple of questions that she gave one is just you know did these universities start off as Christian institutions? And then two, can they be saved? Can the academia you know what would be the remaking of academia that she could participate in? Go for guys where you want to go first? 

David Barton [00:02:25] So let's answer the first question first. Yes, America's universities were started Christian. In fact, the first 106 of the first 108 were overtly founded on the Christian religion. Those other two were also Christian, but they didn't have the same declarations in their founding documents. So, as you go through the early history of higher education in America, unquestionably Christian. The second question I think is the most important question and that's the toughest one because here's where we are today. Can we do anything to get back to where we were? Or can we make this better or change it? And you know, good for her that she's in there and is still in there, having recognized what a cesspool it is and it's still being there and wanting to make a change. So, I think there's some parallels we can go back to in history that would help. Let's take the Church of Jesus Christ. After Jesus died, His apostles go out. We had a program about how the three of the apostles went over into Armenia and started there. And so how long did it take for Christianity to spread across the world until you finally had a Christian nation? Well, it took 300 years. 301 AD, Armenia becomes the first Christian nation. So, we're talking centuries at that point. Then if we go past that a little bit, how long does it take the Christian Church to get really screwed up? Well, that was another six, seven hundred years. And then you had all the kings kind of running the Church and the Church was kind of corrupt. So how long did it take it to fix it after it got corrupt? Well, you're talking another 300 years with Martin Luther and the Reformation. But you go back way before Martin Luther, and the Tyndale, and Wycliffe, and John Huss, and other guys, and you look at all these systemic problems that were there, it was never a quick fix on any of them, even with the American war for independence. How long did take us to become an independent nation? Well, we were working on it for the better part of a century. Trying to get Great Britain to do some things right and get her oppression off our backs. And even at that point, with the national attention focused on what led to the American Revolution, you're still looking at a minority of people that were involved. It's only about a third of Americans that supported and separated from Great Britain. Only about a third really adamantly objected and the other third didn't care. And only about 9% of Americans actually did anything to help America become free and independent. So, all that to say is, yes, it is definitely possible to fix American institutions, but it is not going to be a fast fix. It just never has been historically. And particularly with the technology we have today, where everything is instantaneous and you're talking in microseconds for things at our fingertips. This is, this has got to be the worst news ever to hear that something like that. So, what do you do to change it? I think one of the key things is we go back to what Jesus said in the Great Commission, what's called the Great Commission, the end of Matthew, at the end of the Gospel of Mark, whereas he's going back into heaven, he gives a charge to his kids, his people, and says, here's what you gotta do. And he talked about you go make disciples of all men. And that disciples of men, I think we get it wrong today, but making converts of all man, it's not enough to make a convert. You gotta come to Christ, but you have to know how to think once you get there, and that takes a while. How long did it take Jesus to get Peter straightened out in his thinking? It's every day for three straight years with Jesus working on Peter. It took him a while to get Peter's thinking straightened out. So, making disciples is making long-term relationships and gradually taking someone along and pointing them in the right direction. And I think that's one of the things that we have because when you look at America now, there are 6,000 colleges in America. There's a total of 210,000 professors. There are a lot of solid biblical Christian professors there but it's gonna be down in single digits for sure. So, you know, even if there's 20,000, that's only 9%. So, what happens is if all those 20,000 would say, you know I'm going to find one person and help them become a solid, biblically grounded, constitutionally grounded professor, then in 20 years we'd be looking at 40,000. And then if those 40,000 do the same thing, another 20 years we're looking at 80,000 and so now we're over. We're up to about 60% of the academies are back right, but it's gonna take 20, 30, 40 years and it doesn't mean it has to take 20 years. That's just a number. I'm throwing out you might be able to make a disciple in two years but it might take you 28 years but it's the thing if I'm going to commit to making not only a replacement for me but one extra person. Because when I retire somebody needs to take my place that has the same worldview I do. But I need to pick up somebody else along the way. And so, if you make that commitment to find someone to disciple them, help them get into it, maybe one of your students, you say, all right, you need to come back and be a professor. Now you need understand to get your PhD is gonna take you seven to eight years. And then once you get your Ph.D. to become a tenured professor, it's gonna take another six to eight years. So, I need you to make a commitment that you're gonna spend the next 16 years as a student in education, so that you can come back and have influence on other students, but influence them right. And over those 16, 18 years, I need you not to lose your faith or your world view. And so taking and even tapping someone that's a student right now and helping give them a vision of what it takes to become a professor and how that professor can influence hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of kids. I mean, this is all vision stuff, but this is so contrary to where we are in America right now, where everything is instantaneous. So, got to go back to history. We've had to do this a bunch of times, but every time it's been transgenerational. That is, not trans in the way of sexual, but it goes across the generations. It takes several generations to get this thing completely turned around, but it'll never turn around if we don't start doing something in this generation right now. And certainly, that's something, you know, Tim and Rick, all of us, we're all doing this. That's why we do trainings in the summer for young people. We want them to go into the academy and other things. We want them to go into lots of fields. And so we've been working on training for 15 to 20 years. And we're seeing some of those kids do what we, what we wanted even 20 years ago. So, it's a great question. I, I, man, I applaud her being there and I applaud her wanting to see it get back. And it's not up to you to get it all back, but you do everything you can to get one, two, five, 10, 12 back. And if we had those, those 20,000 say Christian professors doing that all across the nation this thing would go a whole lot faster. But that's kind of my perspective on it. I think it's a great question I think its got to be done and somebody has to start right now and good place for her to start. 

Rick Green [00:09:18] Yeah, it's an investment that, you know, requires the tilling of the ground, the planting of the seeds, the watering, all of those things. And of course, as we talked about these, you know, one-year programs that Summit Ministries is doing, Leaders Academy up in Hot Springs, the Patriot Institute at our Patriot Academy campus, the Turning Point Academy now. I mean, all these one- year programs, I think, will give students the chance to get grounded before they go into the university, if they choose to do so, and also help to really direct some of the young people that want to go into education to do exactly what this lady's doing. And be a positive influence on that campus as well. So good stuff and it will take time to turn around. But if we do these things, we can see that happen in our lifetimes. Okay, let's go to our next question from the audience. This is gonna be from Brinton. He said, this is out of Missouri. He said a couple of questions. Recently I read some religious material that mentioned near the end of 1832 South Carolina had defied the government and apparently was preparing for war. But then the material said that within a few weeks of this, the US and South Carolina reached a compromise and war was averted. This is all it said about this moment. Since the Civil War broke out roughly 30 years later, I'm assuming the 1832 incident is related to that. I know this is very vague information, but I figure if anyone knows about this 1832 moment, it's gotta be David Barton. And I was wondering if he has a rough idea, maybe he could share. Also, I can't remember where I originally heard about this, but I am getting ready to read a book about the Black Wall Street and Tulsa Race Massacre. I'm a little skeptical about the sources I heard from about this and was wondering if you've heard of this and know whether or not it's an actual event from history again, sorry for being a little vague, but I'm far too confident that David Barton knows exactly what it is, even with vague and ambiguous information. All right, Brinton, thanks for both of those questions. And of course, I always recommend people read an American story, the American story volumes one and two, and then volume three is coming out soon and that'll help get you up to date on a lot of things that are left out of the classroom. Now the South Carolinians in 1832, I have zero idea. So, David, I hope you do have something in your hip pocket here to pull out on that one. I know a little bit about the Tulsa situation. I don't recall the details. So anyway, guys, what do you think? 

David Barton [00:11:25] So, when you go back to South Carolina, put it in the context of the United States, go back to about 1820, and this is when the United States started polarizing over the issue of slavery. It had been an issue before, but now you're starting to divide into the North and the South, not just states, but you're getting sectional movements and you're taking sections of the country. And so, as they do the Missouri Compromise, they're allowing slavery to move into other areas where it hasn't been and you've got the evangelists of slavery pushing slavery should be everywhere It's such a great deal and you got the other abolitionist saying no God doesn't want that. So, what you have is throughout all of that probably one of the two most pro-slavery states in the United States was South Carolina. And that goes back even to the signing the Declaration of Independence. The reason that Jefferson's clause against our efforts in America in the slave trade, the reason it didn't make the Declaration was because two of the states said, well, we've never tried to end the slave trade, but 11 of the 13 had, but it was South Carolina and Georgia. And because of that, Jefferson's anti-slavery clause did not appear in the Declaration. 

Tim Barton [00:12:32] Or Dad, one point of clarity, at least 11 of the states supported that because I don't know that all 11 had actually tried to end the slave trade yet, but they were in favor of saying, yeah, we want to have the ability, the autonomy to say, we, we wanna be able to end this if we want too, and not have the king saying, no, you're British colonies, you're gonna do what we tell you. And it says we have the slave-trade as part of our practice, we're gonna keep it open and you have to too. Eleven states said, yeah, we want to go a different direction. And two states, Georgia, South Carolina, were like, you know what, that's not a problem we have. We're kind of OK with the position of Great Britain being pro-slave trade. Eleven states were against that position. And to your point, Dad, many of the states had already begun passing laws against that. The king had shrugged down those laws. 

David Barton [00:13:15] And so South Carolina very early on staked out this really ardent, radical pro-slavery position. And they kept that going. And so, as the nation grows and expands, and as more states come in South Carolina wants to see more states be pro slavery because they don't want to be outnumbered and they, they want a large and it became a sectional movement. It really did become the North and the South. Look, there were people up North that were pro-slavery people in the South that were anti-slavery. But geographically it became a sectional movement and that was kind of the sections you saw when we get to the Civil War. So, what happens is as, and by the way, where there was no slavery the economy was always much better and it was that way in the Northern States. So, as you go through Massachusetts and you go through New York and you got through others, even though New York was really a pretty strong pro-slavery Northern state, they weren't radical like South Carolina. But nonetheless, as you go through up there, their big income making is industry, it's manufacturing, it's milling, it's ship building, it's all these other things. And in South Carolina, their big industry was cotton. And traditionally for them, that requires slavery. And so, if they're gonna keep cotton going, they've gotta have more slaves and that's where they wanted to grow the slavery. Well, as this manufacturing stuff goes up north, they institute a tariff much like what you have now with Trump doing tariffs, this is to protect American manufacturing. Well, because the manufacturing is going mostly in the North and not the South, South Carolina said, that's not fair. We don't get any relief out of that. Well, if you want the relief, stop the slavery. No, we're gonna keep the slavery, and so South Carolina in 1832 officially notified the federal government that it was nullifying that federal act. We disagree with that act. We're nullifying it. It's called the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Andrew Jackson was president who was a very strong pro-slavery president, but he was at least constitutional savvy enough to say, no, no, you don't get to pick and choose the laws you follow federally. You don't to nullify what you don't like. We can't have, at that time, 25 states deciding which federal laws are gonna follow and not. We are a union. The Founding Fathers made us a union, and so what happened is Jackson, to his credit, had a standoff and, and John C. Calhoun actually was his vice president and John C. Calhoun was the spokesman for South Carolina saying we're nullifying this law. And so big falling out between Jackson and Calhoun and Calhoun was a mouthpiece for South Carolina. And so, Jackson says, okay, I'm sending federal troops. You're going to do it. You're not gonna separate. We're not going to have this. And so, South Carolina backed down. Congress went in and changed the tariff rates to give some more relief to South Carolina so they wouldn't be completely singled out. And South Carolina said, see, we were right all along, we won. Well, that wasn't the end of the story though. 

Tim Barton [00:16:16] Well, Dad, this is one of the things, too, why Jackson is always kind of fascinating to some extent that in the midst of him doing some really bad things as president, he had some really good moments, too. But the reason Jackson maybe arguably wasn't a great president is because he was a he was built for war. He was built from military. What he said when he was senator and he was being recruited to run for president. And he said, I would not make good presidents. I was made to lead men into battle. Right. I would need to win wars is kind of his answer. And I love that thought because if South Carolina is like, we're not going to do it. And Jackson says, I'm about to send troops and we're going to solve this problem. Jackson's the one guy like, don't call his bluff. It's a little like Trump with some of these, you know, foreign terrorist leaders that he's eliminated. You don't call Trump's bluff on this, this dude's just crazy enough he might actually push that button, you might actually, right, not wake up tomorrow, well that was Jackson. Jackson was a guy you didn't want to cross, and so there's so many interesting things surrounding this, of course we covered in the American Story II, Building the Republic, Jackson being the last president we cover going through from the Constitution through the first seven presidents, but... It's stuff like this where you look back and go, man, he really did some good things as president. It didn't outweigh all the bad things he did as president, but he did have some good moments. And certainly, his resolving this crisis was a good moment. 

David Barton [00:17:37] Yeah. And it unfortunately didn't end just with that, but it did stop it. And there wasn't a conflict. And then they came back later with another tariff and South Carolina threatened to do it again. So, but this is what really started kind of the, the real divisional block between the South and the North is that Nullification Act and then what South Carolina tried to do and, and Jackson's response, this is where you start seeing the two sections become more and more sectional. Because you've got such a slavery industry in the South that is not in the North, and this is kind of like the precursor to what led to the Civil War. 

Tim Barton [00:18:14] It's also worth noting that South Carolina was the first state to actually secede leading it right after Lincoln's elected before he's even inaugurated, South Carolina secedes. And this, I would say, if you back up, these were the seeds that were planted that led to them finally seceding because they got it in their mind. If we don't like it, we're just leaving. We're not going to put up with things we disagree with. We're going to let somebody else tell us what to do. And I think this is where a lot of those seeds have been planted that kind of grew birth at the Lincoln election that led them to seceding. It is interesting the kind of larger the big-picture story growth and some what happens leading up to, Dad, as you're pointing out the nation being more divided. But this is where you see some of those early roots of it 

David Barton [00:19:06] And the Tulsa story is really interesting because Tulsa had a very, very strong black community and businessmen, entrepreneurs, millionaires. It was a great area and it was called Black Wall Street. There was segregation in Oklahoma and those years was a very pro-slavery state, very race conscious. And so, with that part of Tulsa prospering and doing so well, there was a point in time where that it's kind of like, and Oklahoma was one of the states that was active in the Klan back in the early 1900s. But they said, we're not having this from you guys and you don't know your place and we're gonna put you in your place. And so, they started with some violence against that black community in Tulsa. Ended up that fires got started and it burned down a lot of the city. It was called a massacre. Well, there were some deaths, but it wasn't a massacre in the sense of what you'd think of a massacre, but there were deaths and so it's a, it's a really dark spot, if you will, in Oklahoma history, because Oklahoma has become good in so many other ways and they, they really got out of that kind of racism, but you know, it, it just part of the story of what happened there. And so that it's fascinating to see all the heroes. We were actually doing some pieces for black history. On so many of the heroes and individuals out of that black Wall Street area in Tulsa. And Tulsa, it was a very, very prosperous part of the city. A lot of contributors there from the black community, a lot of names that should be known but aren't known. But it is a good story from history that's very positive. But then the riots and the killing that went with it is obviously a very negative part of this story. But yeah, there definitely was a Black Wall Street. And Tulsa was the seed of that and it was there was so much prosperity in the black culture at that time in that part of Tulsa. 

Rick Green [00:21:03] Alright guys, we're going to take a quick break, we'll be right back with a final question on our Foundations of Freedom Thursday. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:22:17] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Last question of the day is about Thomas Jefferson. Gary sent in a question. He said, someone mentioned Thomas Jefferson's Bible, the life and morals. What is the truth behind that book? So, guys, of course, we want to recommend the book, Jefferson Lies, which goes deep into all of these questions about Thomas, Jefferson, but in our few minutes left today, how would y'all respond to this? 

Tim Barton [00:22:43] Well, I would say, real quick, you can go look up online, the Jefferson Bible. There were two Bibles that Jefferson is connected with kind of in the big picture story. One was 1804 while he was president. He actually did an abridgment of the Gospels for missionaries that were going to try to reach the natives with the Gospel. And Jefferson said, guys, you're trying to take a whole Bible of these people? And if you give them a whole Bible and they start reading it, they're going to read things in there and be like, what is happening? Or, you know, if you're reading Leviticus and you don't know anything about Jesus, you're like, why, why is this happening? I don't understand. And they said, you need to give them the simple gospel message. And so, he went to the four gospels did an abridgment from the four gospels, and it was for the use of missionaries for natives. That's why he was president in 1804. There's another one that's the 1820 version. This is the one that most people are talking about. Again, there's two different Bibles that Jefferson kind of has overlapped in his story, but in 1820 he now was retired from all public political life. This is just a couple years before he dies. He dies on the 4th of July 1826, so roughly six years before he dies, he does a portfolio and in this portfolio he goes to the New Testament and he cuts out passages of the New testament that were from the life or they were the moral teachings of Jesus, by the Bible what became known as a Bible and truly not a Bible, but it became known as a bible It was A Life and Moral Teachings of Jesus. He did this in four languages. And so, in this portfolio, every night, or sometimes during the day, he would study from this moral teachings of Jesus, now Jefferson, for those who remember, loved moral philosophy. He was an avid reader. And he said, Jesus is the greatest moral teacher there ever was. So, he wanted to study the moral teachings of Jesus after he died the grandson finds it in the writings. Ultimately, decades later, it ends up in the Smithsonian. When it's in the Smithsonian, late 1800s, the member of Congress, he sees it and goes, man, this is incredible. We should reprint this thing that Jefferson studied and we should give one to every member of congress and this congressman is a Christian thinking man this would be awesome if we had more congressman studying from the moral teachings of Jesus learning about a little bit more about his life this would be great. So, they printed about 5 000 of those they came out in 1902, I believe, and it was known as the Jefferson Bible when it came out because that's what the title, they gave to it even though the front cover says The Life and Moral Teachings to Jesus. So, the way the story's been told today is that Jefferson cut out everything he didn't believe in because people would say today he didn't, Jefferson didn't leave in the supernatural, so he cut out all the miracles, he cut out heaven and hell and angels and demons because he didn't believe in all that kind of stuff. And largely the portion that Jefferson has in the Bible that that is kind of correct He did cut out the majority of the supernatural miracle stuff from Jesus's life and ministry because those weren't the moral teachings, which was the whole point of what he was studying. But here's where people have totally missed it. In the actual life and moral teachings of Jesus, it actually includes moments where there were healings, there were miracles, there's angels, there are demons, there is heaven and hell. So, the things that people say, Jefferson cut out because he didn't believe in, they're actually in the Bible. So, if Jefferson didn't believe in those, it seems like he would have cut all of those out. But when that's not the point of what he was doing, his point was a little bit of the life of Jesus and mostly the moral teachings of Jesus. That's what was known as the Jefferson Bible. Today, it's been widely misrepresented of what it is where people say he just cut out what he didn't believe in the bible. That's not correct at all. What he did was compile a list of the moral teaching of Jesus, that's why it was a life and morals of Jesus. That's the one most people know as the Jefferson Bible. 

Rick Green [00:26:28] Well, again, Jefferson Lies to go a little deeper on that one and talk about some of the other things that have been said about Jefferson. That's available at wallbuilders.com again, wallbuilders.com for all those great resources and then wallbuilders.show to catch up on some of the radio programs. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.