by William Trollinger

Sometimes this blog writes itself. Sometimes our friend Adam Laats writes it for us.

A few days ago, Ken Ham announced that Answers in Genesis (AiG) would be joining with another fundamentalist organization to open the Twelve Stones Christian Academy near the Creation Museum, a young Earth creationist school (K-12) that will “help curb the trend of young people walking away from the church by equipping them . . . with apologetics, using logic and critical-thinking skills.” Toward that end, AiG will provide students with passes to visit the museum and the Ark Encounter.

Of course, we were going to write about AiG’s school! Twelve Stones Academy will provide the perfect bridge between a young Earth creationist church and a Creation College like Cedarville or Liberty. No getting out of this hermetically sealed creationist bubble!

But as we prepared to write this post Adam Laats – author of the must-read The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education – published a wonderful blog post on this very topic, entitled: “What’s Missing from this Creationist School?” As Adam makes the case, Twelve Stones will be much more about “protecting” young Earth creationist children than about “outreach” to those who are not yet young Earth creationists.

Amen! We would only add that, as we argue in Righting America, Ham and AiG are not only interested in “protecting” young Earth creationist children from dangerous ideas. They also want to train them to serve as “crusaders for the ongoing culture war that polarizes and poisons U. S. religion and politics” (15).

This, then, is AiG’s outreach. Preparing the next generation of young Earth creationists to make war on the rest of us.