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Three days before the Library of Congress's "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic" exhibit began a two-year nationwide tour, Librarian of Congress James Billington rebutted the allegations of two dozen academics and Americans United for Separation of Church and State that guest curator James Hutson was preaching a partisan perspective.
At particular issue is a scholarly paper Hutson released June 4 (the day the exhibit opened), which contends that Thomas Jefferson advocated nonsectarianism as a political expediency rather than a basic philosophy. Critics of the exhibit cited a June 2 Christian Coalition press release urging "all Americans" to see the exhibit because it debunks the "liberal myth" that Jefferson backed "expelling religious expression from the public square," according to the August 25 Washington Times.
Billington wrote to historian Robert Alley on August 19 that LC is not "a High Court of American scholarship, promulgating definitive judgments on controversial matters."
Posted August 31, 1998.
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