by Rodney Kennedy
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. He pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years, after which he served as interim pastor of ABC USA churches in Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is now a full-time writer, and lives in Louisiana. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, was the focus of this rightingamerica interview. And check out Rod’s new webpage!
Science has been America’s “golden goose” since the last half of the nineteenth century.
Science, not the stock market, made America great. Science, not corporations, made America the greatest nation in the world. Just to give one example, Dayton, Ohio brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, without benefit of college taught the world to fly and invented the science of aeronautics. Their original wind tunnel can be seen at the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. Companies Market Cap lists 71 publicly traded companies in the commercial aviation sector with a total market cap of $393.79 billion. Atlanta-based Delta Airlines has a value of $42.23 billion dollars. And Delta started as a crop dusting outfit in Monroe, Louisiana.
I believe God created the goose who lays the golden eggs. God, creator of heaven and earth, made this planet for us. The physicist, Freeman Dyson, says ours is a “universe that knew we were coming.”
But someone is starving the goose. In 2020, for example, 708 billion dollars were invested in science research in the USA. In 2025, the amount was approximately $201.9 billion – a reduction of over $500 billion.
There’s more than money at stake. America has a scientific soul. But our soul is under attack by anti-science evangelicals.
Science has been the Target of Evangelicals for Over a Century
From the beginning of their movement in the 1920s fundamentalists have opposed science. From the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 to the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial in 2004, these fundamentalists attacked science in every possible way. Books defining evolution as the work of Satan poured from evangelical publishing houses. Preachers raged against the horror of evolution. Fundamentalist kingpin, J. Frank Norris, preached a sermon against evolution where he brought a group of chimpanzees into the pulpit and attempted a conversation.
The legion of preachers and evangelical Christians had little impact on the ongoing progress of science. Not even the glitzy, Disney-themed Creation Museum of Ken Ham seemed to make a dent in America’s scientific spirit.
But something changed in 2016. Conservative evangelicals forged an alliance with President Donald Trump. Now, political power has taken direct aim at America’s scientific spirit. Cell biologist, and biology textbook co-author, Kenneth R. Miller warns, “America’s scientific soul, its deep and long-lasting embrace of discovery, exploration, and innovation, is truly at risk.” No longer limited by the inadequate weapons of sermons, books, and emotional appeals, evangelicals have a new arsenal of executive orders, Trump administration cabinet members, and a compliant Congress.
America had been the leading scientific nation for more than a century and a half, but now MAGA evangelicals threaten this status. To give one example, despite decades of climate and geological research that have coalesced in consensus the precarity that threatens humanity as a species, MAGA evangelicals mock the notion of global warming.
One is tempted to say, “This is what stupidity gets us.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The Spearhead of Anti-Science
The Department of Health and Human Services is seriously considering eliminating childhood vaccines. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a notorious antivaxxer and conspiracy theorist, is now in charge of our nation’s health. Kennedy has already been the wrecking ball of the Trump administration’s anti-science war. Here are only a few of Kennedy’s devastating moves:
- Canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money for mRNA vaccines.
- Fired or forced into retirement scientists at the Food and Drug Administration.
- Fired the 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with other conspiracy theorists and ideologues.
- Rescinded recommendations for flu shots containing thimerosal. This is a preservative used effectively for a century and it has the data to prove it has kept vaccine bottles free of bacteria.
- Revoked the CDC recommendation for children under four to take the MMRV vaccination. This opens the door for the return of measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox.
- Told new mothers to decide whether to have the hepatitis vaccination at birth.
- The Food and Drug Administration has moved to restrict Covid vaccines because of unverified reports of 10 children dying from the vaccine.
Donald Trump and the Pandemic
Robert Ivie says, “The Trumpian marginalization of science has deprived society of crucial knowledge needed to address climate change, pandemics, and other threats to collective wellbeing.”
Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic should be enough evidence to turn America away from the outbreak of an anti-science spasm. Brandy X. Lee, in Profile of a Nation, has a penetrating analysis of Trump’s response to Covid:
The utterly disastrous handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic illustrates Donald Trump’s dangerousness, not just through commissions but through deadly omissions, repeatedly, brazenly, and recklessly. In addition to depleting or disbanding every aspect of pandemic preparedness, he ignored ominous, classified warnings about the danger through the first critical months, allowing the disease to spread freely throughout the U.S. by actively downplaying the threat, falsely stating: “we have it totally under control,” calling it the Democrats’ “new hoax,” and “like a miracle, it will disappear.” Trump pulled out of the World Health Organization, in his attempt to shift blame for his failures, undermining critical global cooperation and defunding the world’s pandemic response capability. His devaluation of science, fight with reality, reckless disregard for human life, and neutering of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are responsible for depleting pandemic preparedness, ignoring intelligence and sidelining the experts, and politicizing a public health issue.
Science before MAGA
America has been the greatest scientific nation in the world. When the US rose to prominence in the last two centuries, it became a country uniquely hospitable to science, and science has flourished here as never before. American universities and research institutions have led the world in nearly every category of science.
American scientists have dominated the Nobel prizes in every field of science. American scientists in the decade between 1994 – 2004 won 71% of the Nobel prizes in physics, 61% in medicine or physiology, and 58% of the chemistry prizes. Science graduate students from other countries came to the US to pursue their careers. America has been where science happens.
And now, an insidious and dangerous force, forged out of the ancient remnants of anti-evolution creationists, is systematically attempting to reduce science to a secondary status. The scientific soul of our nation is at risk.
Miller makes clear the stakes: “Something has arisen [signaling] a change in our national character. It reveals a deep and profound split in the American psyche, an unease that threatens the way we think of ourselves as a people, the place we hold for science in our lives, and the way we [will live in the 21st century].What is at stake, I am convinced, is nothing less than America’s scientific soul.”
And I point the finger at MAGA evangelicals for the destructive spirit they unleashed in supporting the Trump administration. The wrecking ball they are taking to our anchor institutions, especially science, has a visual metaphor: the destruction of the East Wing for a ballroom. Only our president would conclude that “what this country needs is a gaudy ballroom” instead of more federal dollars for scientific research in our universities.
Scientists Desperate to “get out of Dodge”
The current anti-science move has reversed a century of the best and brightest scientific minds immigrating to the US to study in our graduate universities and pursue scientific careers. Now scientists are leaving or considering leaving America. In a recent poll by Nature, 75% of the more than 1600 scientists who responded said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada.
Googling “scientists leaving America” reveals more than 70 news articles. Here are a few examples:
‘It’s a nightmare.’ U.S. funding cuts threaten academic science jobs at all levels, Science, July 7, 2025
U.S. Budget Cuts Are Robbing Early-Career Scientists of Their Future, Scientific American, July 3, 2025
A Lost Generation of Researchers, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 3, 2025
How China is vying to attract the world’s top scientific talent, Nature, June 9, 2025
The great poaching: America’s brain drain begins, Axios, June 7, 2025
While the Trump administration and MAGA evangelicals shout, “Good riddance,” a different response resonates from others: “Oh, my God.” The goose that lays the golden eggs is in danger of extinction. Forces, pretending to be righteous, are in the process of turning the USA into one of Trump’s favorite expressions: “Shithole country.”