Thomas Nelson pulls David Barton's controversial best-seller, citing historical errors

Despite Thomas Nelson canceling David Barton's controversial best-seller about Thomas Jefferson, the conservative historian has continued to sell the book through WallBuilders. It has now reportedly been picked up by Mercury Ink, the publishing imprint of Mercury Radio Arts, a multimedia production company owned by conservative talker Glenn Beck, who wrote the foreword to the Jefferson book.

"We find it regrettable that Thomas Nelson never contacted us with even one specific area of concern before curtly notifying us they had dropped the work," Barton, named by TIME magazine as one of the 25 most influential American evangelicals in 2005, wrote on his WallBuilders website. “Had they done so, we would have been happy to provide them with the thorough and extensive historical documentation for any question or issue they raised; they never asked. The Jefferson Lies has not been pulled from publication and it will continue to sell nationally.”

Released in April, The Jefferson Lies claims to expose common myths about Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president.

“The purpose of the book was to show that the current portrayals of Jefferson as an ardent secularist guy are not accurate,” Barton said in an Aug. 16 podcast on WallBuilders' website. “And so we go through and show how all the things that he did, how that he would never separate, [never subscribe to] today’s version of separation of church and state because we just show, literally, just numbers and numbers and repeated numbers of his actions, including faith in the public arena, that he didn’t want a secular public square, that he wasn’t hostile to Christianity.

“In the last 15 years of his life, he became hostile to specific doctrines, but never to Christianity itself and never worked to expunge Christianity, and so if we take that away from the left, they’ve got nothing left to stand on,” he added.

But after a group of conservative scholars claimed that Barton’s take on Jefferson was factually incorrect, Nelson decided to pull The Jefferson Lies at the end of July.

“The company was contacted by a number of people expressing concerns about the book, which we took very seriously,” said Casey Harrell, director of corporate communications for Thomas Nelson. “The company tried to sort out matters of opinion or interpretation, and in the course of our review learned that there were some historical details included in the book that were not adequately supported. Because of these deficiencies we decided that it was in the best interest of our readers to cease publication and distribution.”

Harrell told Christian Retailing that Nelson would not release “specifically how many people expressed concerns—only that there were several who expressed concerns about the historical accuracy of the book.”

“We are not releasing any additional information other than the publishing relationship has ceased and between Thomas Nelson and Mr. Barton, and we do not expect to publish his works in the future,” she said.

However, Barton has defended The Jefferson Lies, stating that Nelson never mentioned any concerns about the book, which made the New York Times best-seller list after its April release.

“While Thomas Nelson may have 'lost confidence' in the work, others have not and the book has already been picked up by a much larger national publisher and distributor,” wrote Barton, a graduate of Oral Roberts University. “Even at the time Nelson dropped the work, [the company] admitted that it was still selling very well.”

At press time, The Jefferson Lies was still the top-selling book about Jefferson on Amazon.com, the New York Times reported. It also remained for sale on the website of WallBuilders, a pro-family organization founded by Barton that presents America’s history and heroes with an emphasis on its moral, religious and constitutional heritage.

“The tragedy is that right now you have taken a New York Times best-selling book that presents a side of Jefferson most people haven’t seen in 50 years and they are just squelching that debate, which is what they want,” Barton said during the podcast. “They don’t want that side of Jefferson coming out. The good news is they haven’t done it. …

“It’s going to be real clear this was an agenda-driven attack, and as more and more evidence is coming out on who this guy is, people are going to see that this is like an attack from The Huffington Post, this is like an attack from MSNBC, this is a philosophical worldview apart from the rest of us.”

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