An Interview with David Barton Part 2

When and why did you start WallBuilders?

As I began to read those early Supreme Court decisions, I found that earlier Courts had ruled on many of the same issues we faced today (e.g., Bible in schools, pornography, religious expressions, etc.) but had reached opposite conclusions. For example, in a unanimous 8-0 Court decision in 1844, the Court ruled that a government-funded school must permit the teaching of the Bible in school. That decision was written by Justice Joseph Story (called a “Father of American Jurisprudence), placed on the Court by James Madison (called the “Architect of the Constitution”) – certainly no legal lightweights.

As I read the early decisions, I found the courts quoting from works and individuals with whom I was completely unfamiliar – such as Judge Wilson and his Commentaries on the Law. Who in the world was Judge Wilson? I had never heard of him. I looked him up and it turns out that he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and of the Constitution in 1787. In fact, he was the second-most active member of the Constitutional Convention, speaking 168 times on the floor of the Convention. In 1789, he was made an original Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court by President George Washington. While sitting on the Court, Judge Wilson started the first organized legal training in America and wrote America’s first student textbooks on law.

Judge Wilson truly was a very significant individual, yet I had never heard of him. But I saw from the court decisions that he did have legal writings, so I began searching for them – and found them: a three-volume set published in 1801. I read those works and was shocked, for they were completely contrary to what I had been told about that era and about how those individuals viewed government and the law; they were not in any modern sense “secular.”

As I read those old works, they would often cite other old works – such as the works of Francis Hopkinson. Who in the world was Francis Hopkinson? I had no idea. I looked him up and it turns out that he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, designer of the American flag, and a federal judge appointed by President George Washington. (He was also a church music leader and choir director who edited America’s first purely-American hymn book, a work in which he set the entire book of Psalms – all 150 of them – to music.) Here was another significant leader with writings, so I searched and found his writings from 1792.

One old work often led to another – and another, and another. It was like a spider web with many lines working outwards from the middle, all connected in one way or another. And each discovery tended to refute the charge that they sought and enforced a secular public arena.