Young Earth Creationism is Gnosticism Lite
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, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. He is currently interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, NY. His sixth book – The Immaculate Mistake: How Evangelicals Gave Birth to Donald Trump – has recently been published by Wipf and Stock (Cascades). And his newest book, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy, will come out in early 2023.
Here’s my argument: Creationism represents a mild form of Gnosticism, and suffers from the same heretical illusions as Gnosticism. That is to say, Creationism’s default setting is Gnosticism, not Christian faith.
The Gnostic form of creation depends upon a series of mythological tales that are beyond belief. And while Creationism rejects the Gnostic demigods and the Gnostic creation myths, it has managed to imbibe the tendency of depending upon mythological tales for verification of faith. This Gnostic lite movement asks us to believe in a young earth, a literal Adam and Eve, the sons of God having sex with the daughters of men, Noah and the flood, and the tower of Babel, all the while making Genesis 1 – 11 an equal of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
In the second century the Gnostics were winning significant converts within the Christian community of Lyons and other areas of the Roman Empire. They did so by distorting Christian forms of thought and theological ideas, thus allowing the Gnostic “heresy” to be accepted by many as the truth of the Gospel.
Creationists operate in much the same style, but with a lot more punch. Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (AiG) has, in addition to his Creation Museum and his Ark Encounter, a wide national network that allows him to spread his distortions of creation to millions. Ham is part of an American evangelical community that numbers over 100 million believers in what some have described as a “parallel culture” that is determined to establish its beliefs as THE true form of Christianity.
Gnosticism posits a system with three aspects. First there is the dramatic struggle within the “Pleroma.” The heavenly world is the Pleroma. This struggle leads to the fall of some of the deities into a lesser realm outside the Pleroma. These gods struggle to return to the higher realm. Second, there is the quasi-divine realm of the “Kenoma.” Third there is the Gnostic account of salvation. This includes the account of the “Cosmos.” This is the material realm below the Kenoma. This area is populated with numerous deities. This area is also populated by people who have chosen certain gods, some of whom represent the paths to salvation and some which do not.
The important question is: How did the creation of a Cosmos occur from all of this mythology? Desire partnered with a “Demiurge,” who it turns out is the God of the Old Testament, the God of Israel. Israel’s God is the one who actually crafted the material world of the Cosmos from the nothing. Israel’s God, in this view, looks remarkably like any garden variety pagan God – a capricious, foul-tempered, self-serving, easily bored deity. Having brought the world into existence, this God proceeded to expel humans from the Garden of Eden and then destroy the world in a flood, saving only Noah and his family. This God is portrayed as a wrathful god capable of destroying everything.
(Interestingly, this Gnostic God is very similar to the God who is presented at Ark Encounter, except AiG ramps up the divine destruction by suggesting the possibility that God slaughtered 20 billion human beings.)
Creationists avoid the complexities of Gnostic notions of creation by positing the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. God creating from nothing. There was God and six days later there was Earth. This is the central mythology of creationism.
Of course, to get there creationists must ignore Genesis 1:1-2: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” In other words, in the Genesis story of creation, there was already something.
But while this is in the Bible, the creationists cannot allow it. Instead, they assert that there was nothing and God spoke everything into existence. This is the primal myth that you are asked to embrace if you are to be a true believer.
More generally, becoming a creationist involves embracing a series of mythological moves that brought human life into existence, moves that are not indicated in Scripture, and that are contradicted by what we know of science.
The creation story of Genesis ignores the rest of the universe and only tells us how the Milky Way galaxy and the earth came into existence. There’s nothing in the biblical account of other galaxies, other planets, or the possibility of life in other parts of the universe. It is as if the universe appeared and was of no consequence to the development of earth. Science, of course, makes such an assertion laughable.
Even more laughable is the notion that God “sorted” all this out in six twenty-four-hour days.
The rather playful artistic creator of the Genesis creation myth in chapter 2 shows God and Adam engaging in the most basic principle of science: naming. “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.” Adam, the first scientist, named every living creature, but no mate was found to be his partner.
Science has always been nothing more than organized common sense. This early and promising beginning for the discipline of science disappears in the creationists’ attack on science and their determination to make evolution the devil theory of the universe. This despite the fact that, as cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller puts it, “The specific objections raised against evolution are easily answered.” Miller points out that “evolution has never been on stronger scientific ground than it is today.” Creationism, pushing aside all evidence to the contrary, insists that we place all our faith in a mythology that is as misleading and ill-informed as that of the ancient Gnostic heresy.
Ken Ham, like his Gnostic predecessors, prides himself on biblical exegesis. He invokes biblical authority for his creationist views, no matter how misguided. Ham rejects modern science, biblical criticism, and the faith of millions of non-fundamentalist Christians. He convinces his millions of followers that evolution is the “big lie.”
For Ham, “the big lie” plays as large a part in his imagination as the “big lie” does in the mind of his beloved (still beloved?) Donald Trump. For example, in his book, The Lie, Ham quotes 2 Peter 2:1 – “there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.” Here’s Ham’s interpretation of this passage: “The Bible prophetically warns that in the last days false teachers will introduce destructive lies among the people. Their purpose is to bring God’s truth into disrepute and to exploit believers by telling them made-up and imagined stories. Such a lie is among us. That Lie is Evolution.”
Now, it is obvious that 2 Peter has nothing at all to do with evolution, but – professional proof-texter that he is — Ham has claimed biblical authority in this bit of scriptural misuse. And like a seasoned politician, Ham turns this argument — that he has introduced lies, brought God’s truth into disrepute, and exploited believers with made-up and imagined stories – against his accusers. An ancient Gnostic would revel in this sort of strategy.
Ham casts himself as a lonely warrior in a fight against all the assembled enemies of God. His movement takes on cosmic, apocalyptic dimensions. He becomes John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Luke Skywalker rolled into one strong man to save the universe from evolution and liberalism. Not bad for an Aussie who has so completely imbibed American mythology and stitched it into his daily defense of creationism.
From his lofty perch above the fray, Ham fires away at every person that dares criticize him and his creationist views. I am a nobody in Ham’s universe, but when I penned an article critical of Ham in Word & Way, he broadcast the article to his millions of followers. They responded with gleeful attacks on me, the schools I attended, the schools where I have taught, the churches I have pastored. Hundreds of hateful, inaccurate Facebook posts flooded my page.
As an ex-fundamentalist, well-trained in this sort of combat, I proceeded to respond on Ham’s blog to each vile post. After I had responded to the first twenty-five posts, my access to the post was blocked and my responses deleted. Only the Ham defenses remained intact.
Was Ham terrified that a few of his acolytes might be persuaded by the views of a Baptist preacher who thinks so little of his creationism?
The Gnostics believed that God selected a few special people when the Demiurge breathed out the psychic element into humans. This select few were a pneumatic, or spiritual element. These are the true elect or Illuminati. They represent a higher class of human being altogether and are the spiritual substance of the Pleroma itself.
Watching Ham on television, reading his books, and scanning his daily Facebook posts, he projects himself as one of the Illuminati. He has been given the special revelation, the truth, the biblical authority to lead the rest of the common horde of humanity into the light.
Unfortunately for those who have been sucked in, Ken Ham’s light is a Gnostic light of pure heresy.
Security Personnel at the Creation Museum: Rhetoric of the Persecuted Christian Right
Jules Carr-Chellman
Jules Carr-Chellman is an undergraduate student of Philosophy at the University of Dayton. Raised in Northern Idaho, he is now an honors student with research interests in psychoanalytic critical theory, social philosophy, and existentialism. As a high-school student, Jules completed his Eagle Scout award and received a golden congressional medal of service. During his time at UD, Jules spent a summer as Berry Summer Thesis Institute fellow and was awarded the emerging leader award for his activism in student government. When not studying or working as a writing tutor, Jules can be found spending time in the outdoors fly fishing, climbing, or cycling.
In May of 2007, Ken Ham and his young-Earth creationist apologetics ministry, Answers in Genesis (AiG), completed the construction of a $27 million, 75,000-square-foot Creation Museum without taking on a dime of debt. The construction of the Creation Museum marked the beginning of Ken Ham’s and AiG’s tenure as among the chief interpreters of God’s Word. AiG and other young-Earth creationists argue that not just the Earth but the whole universe is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. Why so young? Because, according to AiG, a literal reading of the Bible (which, for AiG, is the only proper reading) requires it. Ken Ham and AiG exert a great deal of influence among white conservative Christians in America. So, it is important to take a careful and critical look at the Creation Museum and what is going on in Boone County, Kentucky.
In the spring of 2022, I took Dr. Susan Trollinger’s class on the visual rhetorics of American evangelicalism and the Amish. To get a first-hand experience of those visual rhetorics, our class spent a day at the Creation Museum and another in the world’s largest Amish settlement which, it turns out, is right here in Ohio. Both trips were great, but I was especially struck by what I saw at the Creation Museum.
What stood out to me were AiG’s security measures. Whether or not the Creation Museum and its employees face threats to their safety, the very visible presence of armed security personnel at the Creation Museum encourages visitors to identify as a member of a persecuted religious people. More specifically, I argue that the security measures at the Creation Museum, from armed guards to lethal weapons to canine units, do not merely exist to protect visitors or property, but also send a powerful message that visitors invested in the central argument of the museum are a persecuted people.
The Creation Museum itself is set back a bit from the main parking lot. Between that lot and the entrance, visitors encounter several concrete planters that serve as anti-car bomber obstacles. Upon entering the museum, visitors are screened by security personnel with a metal detector. Inside the museum, visitors will pass by two or three armed guards and canine handlers at Museum entrances/exits. Security personnel (all white men) are not positioned at the main entrance. That would probably not feel very welcoming to visitors. But they are posted on the exterior side of a huge section of glass windows near the entrance to the museum.
Security personnel inside the museum wear Creation Museum uniforms that resemble in color and style a state trooper class-A uniform. Interior guards wear a wide-brimmed campaign hat, a tan short-sleeved button up with a large metallic badge, black duty pants, combat boots, and a patch that reads “DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY // CREATION MUSEUM // PROTECT, SERVE, ENFORCE.” The security personnel at the creation museum are all equipped with a full law enforcement utility belt, resembling that of a fully sworn peace officer, that includes a .40 caliber Glock handgun, handcuffs, mace, two extra clips, and a taser. According to my observations, about every thirty to forty-five minutes a member of the security personnel is deployed from the security office to patrol visitors among the exhibits.
As we think about the visual rhetoric of security at the Creation Museum, it’s important to remember that Protestant fundamentalism has long cultivated an identity as a persecuted people. With the rising dominance of evolution in the scientific community, and with historical criticism that treats the Bible like any other historical text, fundamentalists have felt profoundly under siege. Indeed, by the first couple of decades in the twentieth century, modernity left a lot of conservative Christians feeling “alienated from their own culture” (Righting America 111). It would appear that the Creation Museum, through its very visible display of security personnel, is making the most of that historical experience of alienation.
The concrete planters in front of the entrance of the museum, the sniffing bomb dogs, the authority conveyed by the security personnel uniforms, and even the caliber of handgun carried by security personnel (.40 caliber handguns are primarily meant for defense against human beings) are all signs that the Creation Museum means to defend the persecuted fundamentalist Christian. Of course, most museums are protected by their own museum security. However, at the Creation Museum, there seems to be more going on than the simple effort to protect exhibits and visitors.
Each uniformed security officer at the Creation Museum wears a dark colored campaign hat with flat, wide brims that extend equidistantly from the band to form the shape of a circle. The campaign hat is an iconic form. On the one hand it is just a hat understood as something that one wears upon the heads to gain protection from the elements or additional warmth. However, the campaign hat at the Creation Museum has an additional rhetorical function, as it calls to mind the hats worn by state troopers, US Military drill sergeants, and federal border patrol agents – among others.
Whether or how much Creation Museum visitors need protection from hostile forces is unclear. The point here is that the Creation Museum does its level best to construct its security personnel as surrogates for the police. By making AiG security personnel look like state or municipality police, and by positioning them visibly outside and inside the museum, the Creation Museum is relentlessly indicating to visitors that they are under a real and present threat.
In short, security guards carrying a .40 caliber Glock at the Creation Museum send a powerful message to Creation Museum visitors that they and their beliefs are threatened and that they need protection from armored guards. Beyond that, AiG also utilizes canine units inside and outside the museum to underscore the point that “Bible believing Christians” are under threat.
Notably, as of 2020, AiG was home to the largest private explosives/detection canine team in the state of Kentucky. The team is comprised of six canine units: a Belgian Malinois, a Dutch Shepherd, Two labs, and two German Shepherds. Dogs who serve in this kind of capacity, whether at an airport or a museum, are supposed to detect threats beyond the sense perceptions of human beings. Thus, a canine working in the service of a security unit indicates that it is reasonable for the visitor to understand themselves as potentially facing an intricately premeditated threat at any moment they are in or around the Creation Museum.
The security personnel, their campaign hats, uniforms, .40 caliber handguns, and canine units all provide powerful visual evidence that visitors to the Creation Museum are under threat. From secularists, humanists, mainstream geologists, and from all sorts of people unseen but surely lurking somewhere nearby: they are persecuted, whether or not there’s any evidence beyond security personnel outfits and gear to support such a claim.
One of the great rhetorical strengths of AiG is their ability to create a sense of deep identification among their faithful visitors through the notion that they are a persecuted people. In a manner that seems not at all in keeping with the message of Jesus Christ (who was God and died on the Cross to save sinners like us), a visit to the Creation Museum invites believers to understand themselves as the persecuted — as victims of secular culture. The rhetorical impact of the visibility of security personnel, canine units, handguns, and campaign hats serve a crucial and troubling function at the Creation Museum. To underscore the reality of the culture war and to construct the young-Earth creationist faithful that they are under threat. And they had better be prepared to fight.
American Lament: Navigating the Apocalypse with Michael Flynn and Oliver North
by Dominic Sanfilippo
Dominic Sanfilippo is researching political and theological polarization, conspiratorial rhetoric, and emerging fundamentalist influences on American Catholicism while pursuing a master’s degree in theological studies at the University of Dayton; he intends to defend his graduate thesis in April 2023. He has variously worked as a high school civics and theology educator in California, Illinois, and Ohio; served in the mayor’s office of his southwest Chicagoland hometown; and published writing in several outlets, including the University of Dayton Magazine and Flyer News, the university’s award-winning student newspaper. In 2016, he represented Flyer News at the inaugural White House College Reporter Day.
As pundits and commentators parse the still-clearing smoke of the 2022 US midterm elections, one theme continues to echo across Twitter feeds, Substack newsletters, and global water-cooler conversations: voters from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic largely rejected elected officials and candidates advocating white Christian nationalism’s ascendance in American politics.
From my writing desk in wintry southwest Ohio, it seems rather early to draw any definitive long-term conclusions from the midterms about the future of white Christian nationalism’s rhetorical and organizational impact on our shared civic life. As sociologists and authors of the 2022 book Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States Samuel L. Perry and Andrew Whitehead caution in a post-election TIME analysis, although white Christian nationalists hold a “minority position in the United States” and many candidates who championed that label were defeated last Tuesday, it is clear from Perry and Whitehead’s recent national Pew Research Study that these nationalists do not believe they are in the minority. That is to say, “the more that white Americans subscribe to Christian nationalist ideology, the more they believe that most Americans share their views on religion in government and the more they think that percentage is growing.”
How should observers assess the disjunctive certainty offered by Christian nationalists in this country?
Moreover, what should Americans from all walks of life make of their neighbors, family members, and electoral candidates who publicly espouse:
- an end to a separation of church and state in (as they perceive it) a divinely chosen nation;
- the imminent return of Jesus Christ;
- Christ’s separation of Americans and all peoples into those belonging to the “light” and those in “darkness” who have “stolen your nation,” as Brian Kaylor recently reported that self-described prophet Julie Green told a “ReAwaken America Tour” crowd in Branson, Missouri the weekend before the midterms.
In trying to both absorb and contextualize this dizzying moment in time, I have found it worthwhile to reflect on a certain cross-generational American fascination with two self-styled Christian warriors: Oliver North and Michael Flynn. North is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and former National Rifle Association president; Flynn is a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who eventually resigned as Donald Trump’s national security advisor after less than a month on the job. North’s and Flynn’s long public arcs and personas are not identical, and I should note that at present, Flynn probably plays a more prominent role than North in trying to cultivate American Christian nationalism. However, there are too many striking parallels to ignore. Both men grew up in close-knit Catholic families, yet respectively embraced a late-1970’s born-again pivot into evangelical Protestantism (North) and continues to fuse QAnon doctrine and fundamentalist Christian rhetoric in his public speaking (Flynn); both were respected military leaders who ended up leaving their senior White House roles amid massive scandals (the Iran-Contra affair for North and lying to the FBI about contacts with the Russians for Flynn, for which then-president Trump pardoned Flynn in the last weeks of his White House tenure); and both occupy, in distinct ways within a larger historical moment, near-mythical status in the minds and hearts of an array of Americans from different socioeconomic and denominational backgrounds.
In her much-discussed 2020 book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Calvin College historian Kristin Kobes du Mez describes North’s “canonization” in the minds of a sizable contingent of conservative Christians even as his star power with the larger American public faded in the wake of his conviction on three felony charges in the Iran-Contra affair. “Jerry Falwell led the way in lionizing North,” du Mez writes; soon enough, with Falwell and other evangelical leaders’ support, North would find himself “standing before a 40-foot by 60-foot flag” at the 1991 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), urging over fifteen thousand Christian leaders from around the country to get politically involved to fight, as he said that day from the SBC stage, “’a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah on the banks of the Potomac.’”
More than thirty years later, while sitting on a sunlit bench last month on my university campus, I couldn’t help but think of North as I read the joint Associated Press and PBS special report featuring Michael Flynn leaping onto “ReAwaken America Tour” stages across the country to assert to tens of thousands of Americans they were fighting a “spiritual war [and] a political war.” Du Mez did not cover Flynn’s role in Jesus and John Wayne’s incisive analysis of white Christian American culture, but in a comment to the Associated Press, she called “ReAwaken” gatherings “pep rall(ies) on spiritual steroids.”
Why was history rhyming in odd ways? Moreover, why do so many of my fellow Americans continue to elevate men like North and Flynn to such laudatory spiritual and civic heights, even as they trade in violent rhetoric, continue to flirt with an emergent conspiratorial landscape, and encourage their listeners to sort neighbors onto different spiritual ‘teams’ which save or damn them in the eyes of their country and their Creator?
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For anyone trying to understand white Christian nationalists’ psychological and theological confidence that, despite the statistical trends against them, their work and beliefs align with a larger cosmic “victory [that] is in God’s hands and thus is assured,” as Perry and Whitehead put it, the “ReAwaken America Tour” is a good place to start. The frenetic, merch-table-crowded, conspiratorial Christian nationalist roadshow has garnered headlines, feature-story dispatches, and documentary footage by PBS, NPR, The Washington Post, and scores of other outlets over the last year and a half. (Just last week, Righting America featured a reflection on “ReAwaken” rhetoric by Rodney Kennedy).
Initially coined the “ReAwaken America Tour” by its founder and organizer, former Tulsa, OK mayoral candidate Clay Clark, the roadshow evolved out of initial “Health and Freedom” gatherings convened during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic last spring. As has been widely reported, Michael Flynn helped Clark scale up and organize the smaller “Health and Freedom” gatherings into their current large-scale, barnstorming form; indeed, Flynn is often seen pacing on stage at each “ReAwaken” stop in a neat sport coat and slacks, railing against the “deep state,” offering prayers, and inviting attendees to be publicly baptized.
The roadshow is resplendent with vendors hawking everything from Trump 2024 shirts and “Let’s Go Brandon” hats to, as NPR correspondent Lisa Hagen observed at the October 21st “ReAwaken” stop in Manheim, PA, “vibrating platforms you can stand on instead of exercising” that sold for over three thousand dollars. In Manheim, a bolo tie-sporting man named Everett Triplett handed out free print copies of his prophecies about an apparent global conspiracy against freedom; in the back of his booklet, Everett recommends further research from a variety of sources, including, Hagen notes, “Alex Jones’ InfoWars, a John Birch Society speech and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious, century-old antisemitic hoax.”
The “ReAwaken” website directs visitors to a website where they can request religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates. At nearly every “ReAwaken” gathering, scores of pastors, preachers, and political gadflies take the stage to preach, prophesize, and warn attendees about various national and global plots to both subjugate Christians and destroy the American way of life. Trump-orbit fixtures Roger Stone, Kash Patel, and Mike Lindell regularly appear as “ReAwaken” speakers; in Branson, Missouri, the tour’s final pre-election weekend two-day stop on November 4th and 5th, presidential son Eric Trump put his cell phone on speaker from the stage to relay a live message from his father and, as Ed Pilkington of The Guardian reported, asked the crowd whether they were ready to do “it all again.”
From repeated references from speakers on stage to banners draped over merchandise booths, “ReAwaken” organizers seem to infuse the ongoing “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump into every “ReAwaken” gathering space, somewhat akin to the ways many casino operators pump pleasant scents into the air and utilize flashing jackpot lights to prime their gamblers’ dopamine triggers. As New York Times correspondent Charles Homans wrote this past April, “the performances wrap the narrative of election fraud in a megachurch atmosphere, complete with worship music and prayer.” Pastor and journalist Brian Kaylor, who holds a doctorate in communication from the University of Missouri, visited the Branson roadshow for his most recent Word & Way “A Public Witness” newsletter; in the course of detailing the multitude of ways the Branson roadshow mirrored the affect, style, and symbolic gestures of a Christian worship service, he reported Flynn’s presence on stage prompted a curious form of public “litany” midway through the day’s proceedings. As Kaylor recounts:
Clark: “How many of you believe that Jesus is King?”
People: “Yeah!”
Clark: “How many of you believe that President Donald J. Trump is, in fact, our president?”
People: “Yeah!”
Clark: “And how many of you believe that General Flynn is America’s general?”
People: “Yeah!”
At the height of the day’s proceedings in Branson, the preacher and self-anointed “prophet” Lance Wallnau exhorted attendees to consider themselves as part of a revelatory moment of eschatological significance:
“What’s coming down in the last days — and all the theologians fight me on it, but so what,” Wallnau said. “When Jesus comes back, the Bible says he’s going to gather all the nations in front of him and separate them into sheep and goat categories. Understand something, the sheep nations, by instinct what you’re doing is preserving the sovereignty of the United States from being broken down and assimilated as a beat-up junior partner in a global empire. We will always be separate from that system.”
Wallnau then jumped to Luke 2:34 to offer a “prophecy.” In that verse, Simeon is making a prophecy about the baby Jesus being one that will “be spoken against.” To connect the dots from Jesus to ReAwaken, Wallnau interjected, “This movement is in its infancy, but it’s about to grow very quickly.” And, Wallnau added, they are being spoken against, a framing that puts the movement in the place of Jesus in the words from Simeon. Wallnau then noted that on the Jewish calendar this is the year 5783, which he decided offered another clue.
“If you go to Strong’s Concordance, there’s a word in Greek and a word in Hebrew next to all these different words,” Wallanu said. “What word in the Concordance actually corresponds with 5783? And it means to expose that and make it naked, to reveal what has been hidden.”
The congregation cheered and many nodded their heads in agreement.
Afterward, Kaylor writes, Flynn took the stage to deliver a closing benediction and told the gathered faithful: “Our Constitution is a, it’s a fulfillment of a promise that we make to each other as Americans, just as the Bible is a fulfillment of the promises that we make to each other as Christians on this planet.”
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Against the backdrop of the 2022 midterm election results and a larger, worldwide conversation about how to grapple with surging antisemitism, politically violent rhetoric, and certain public officials’ advocacy of Christian nationalism from Washington, D.C to Budapest, it would be naïve to try and unpack all the forces that both Flynn’s “ReAwaken America Tour” and Oliver North’s rhetoric (from SBC and NRA stages to cable news appearances) have unleashed. Rather, my closing thoughts are about relationships.
Anthea Butler, chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the 2021 book White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, told NPR’s Hagen “ReAwaken” contains “all the elements of Christian churches, except it’s not in the church. Right? So all of those things that people get sociologically from church connection, validation, affirmation, all of those things are happening in these sorts of places.”
I think Butler’s point is important. In reflecting on the tens of thousands of our neighbors, coworkers, and family members who have attended “ReAwaken America” gatherings and their offshoots in 2021 and 2022, it is important to remember many attendees are consciously or unconsciously seeking belonging, validation, and a way to make sense of a messy, complex world.
Former Republican speechwriter Peter Wehner puts it this way in his October 2022 article in The Atlantic, “The Desecrations of Michael Flynn”:
Today, the people in politics who most often invoke the name of Jesus for their political causes tend to be the most merciless and judgmental, the most consumed by rage and fear and vengeance. They hate their enemies, and they seem to want to make more of them. They claim allegiance to the truth and yet they have embraced, even unwittingly, lies. They have inverted biblical ethics in the name of biblical ethics.
This doesn’t mean these people aren’t good friends or reliable neighbors or beloved family members. It doesn’t mean they are without virtue in other areas of their lives. And it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t show personal kindness to those in need. I know such people; you might too. And even those who hold toxic political views deserve some measure of grace and understanding. Many of them are being misled.
I do not always agree with Wehner’s public prescriptions, but the measured empathy he articulates here is crucial to navigating the still-unfolding civic tempest looming on the horizon.
To be crystal clear, I am not condoning the actions or words of Flynn, his fellow “ReAwaken” travelers, and their most virulent disciples. In my ongoing graduate thesis work on the intersections of a polarized American Catholic landscape and a twenty-first century Christian fundamentalism that continues to utilize digital tools and social media to extend its theological and political influence, I problematize many of the ways that physical spaces like the rented convention center ballrooms of the “ReAwaken America Tour” (and their digital spatial counterparts) heighten the potential for religious and political violence. More than this, I meditate on potential actions governments, religious authorities, and public-facing entities like colleges and universities can take to simultaneously rehabilitate extremist worldviews and increase legal, ecclesial, and communal accountability.
Rather, in both a scholarly and personal sense, I lament the irrefutable fact that men like North, Flynn, and scores of other ostensibly devout Christian leaders have both supported and spread decades worth of bloodstained rhetoric about an eschatologically and materially imminent “battle” to which American Christians must resign themselves. Such rhetoric frays the social, familial, and civic bonds and trust we all need to sustain daily life. Their hyper-masculine, militant approach to the world that scholars like Kristin Kobes Du Mez painstakingly detail turns every person one encounters into a potential enemy. It forces commerce, politics, and nature into malleable, cold levers to manipulate in the service of some rending, destructive End, not complex realities to learn from, sustain, and celebrate. Such wide-eyed, fearful imagery does not comport with the nuanced, still-evolving understanding of apokálupsis (or revelation) that I continue to try and develop as a millennial Catholic who is still trying to figure it out, so to speak. My own conception of God has been shaped by so many extraordinary people who look, think, and believe differently than I do; they’ve helped me experience mediated, partial glimpses of the ineffable Mystery we all seek in our own idiosyncratic ways over the course of our ever-too-brief lifetimes on this beautiful, fragile planet.
Last winter, I participated in a graduate seminar on scriptural exegesis with my cohort of fellow master’s students. We are a close-knit community, and we all work from diverse theological standpoints and worldviews. I’ll never forget our professor’s thoughtful observations, built out over an entire semester, that many ancient Jewish and early Christian interpreters would have understood apocalyptic imagery as representing moments of personal transformation and discovery. Said differently, moments of crisis in our public and private lives that might bring to mind, for instance, Christ’s very human fear and recognition of his own corporeal mortality in the Garden of Gethsemane can be construed as invitations to enter more deeply into both the “temple” of one’s self and the freeing knowledge that, for Christians and all peoples of good will, a divine spark lives within us and in the hearts of all those we stumble across.
Diverse sources such as Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato sí and the work of the early twentieth-century Jewish philosopher Martin Buber remind us that the continual choice to be receptive to encounter and relational mutuality (particularly with those different than us and those on the margins) is crucial on the journey toward the Infinite. In a tempestuous modern era where a loud contingent of white Christian nationalists want to define God’s image, likeness, and will for all of us, we would do well to remember that humble spirit of encounter in journeying together down the winding road we all walk.
How did I become a “Godless Globalist?”
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, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. He is currently interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, NY. His sixth book – The Immaculate Mistake: How Evangelicals Gave Birth to Donald Trump – has recently been published by Wipf and Stock (Cascades). And his newest book, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy, will come out this December.
St. Thomas More once commented that searching for errors in the Tyndale Bible was similar to searching for water in the sea.
I feel that way when searching for outlandish comments that preachers make when they associate with the ReAwaken America Tour. This is the traveling circus and revival circuit of the Christian Nationalist Movement. Mostly, it’s a fund-raising ploy. At one recent rally, a “prophet” claimed the “death angel” would kill 30 prominent Democrats – names given and pictures shown on screen – before December 31, 2022.
Oklahoma pastor and failed U.S. Senate candidate Jackson Lahmeyer has accused folk like me of being “godless globalists.” The charge, taken from the bottom of the barrel of usual evangelical tropes, expands on exactly why he thinks we are a godless bunch.
Obviously, it is hard not to be impatient with disquisitions on the awfulness of religious beliefs uttered by preachers who have made no effort to ascertain what those beliefs are. My impatience means that a word fell from my lips before I could close them: gobbledygook. The word means language that is meaningless or is nonsense.
Biblical Background
The words of King Solomon at the dedication of the Temple clamor for attention:
Likewise when foreigners, who are not of your people Israel, come from a distant land because of your name —for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm—when foreigners come and pray toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place and do whatever the foreigners ask of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built (1 Kings 8:41-43).
Imagine a place of worship for “all peoples.” One can’t be more global than that.
Then there are the words of Jesus at his ascension:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20).
Jesus – the globalist!
And, in case the disciples missed the message, there’s this in Acts 1: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Christianity wasted no time becoming global. While there is lamentable, horrific baggage in the march of Christianity across the world – slavery, colonialism, nationalism, economic exploitation, genocide, and war – there’s never been a time when the faith was considered provincial. Christianity has advanced at the tip of bloody swords and wallowed in a crusader mentality no doubt. “Onward Christian soldiers” has too frequently been literal, but the zeal to spread the gospel gave birth to Catholic orders like the Jesuits and evangelical revivalists. During the first nineteen centuries of Christian existence, there’s a sense that evangelism – taking the word of Jesus to the world – mattered more than life.
And now, sadly, tragically, evangelicals only wish to stick it to the liberals.
As a child, I thrilled to the stories of missionaries that came to my country Baptist church each year from India, China, Europe, Africa, and South America. The Lottie Moon Christmas offering ranked as the highest and holiest offering of the year. We gave money we had saved to support foreign missionary work – evangelical work.
But Christian Nationalism mocks the Great Commission.
To launch an attack on a global Christianity is to attack the theological foundation of the book of Acts – the book that charts the spread of the faith. Suppose, as Kavin Rowe argues, we read the book of Acts as “a highly charged and theologically sophisticated political document that aims at the construction of an alternative way of life, a new kind of politics.”
Global Christianity is not a politics that desires to take the state. In the book of Acts, Christians do not want to replace the emperor. Today, unlike the Christian Nationalists, they don’t wish to elect a president who will give them a theocracy. They don’t need the president to be a Christian. Or to prop up their secularized faith with prayer in schools. Or live in the fantasy world of an amazing America that has no flaws. Or be in charge of absolutely everything.
The politics of Jesus unravels the very fabric of Christian Nationalism. One desire controls Christian Nationalists: How do we gain control of political power? One question dominates the politics of the Church opposing Christian Nationalism: What does it mean to be a living body of witnesses to the reality of the resurrected Jesus?
The key Christians of our time are not famous mega-church pastors with Fox News appearances, multi-million dollar television shows, or preachers turned political agents. Instead, it is the humanitarian workers/community organizers/witnesses whose purpose is to give the voice of Jesus to the precarity visited upon those subjected to various forms of violence and oppressed by ideologies like free market capitalism, fundamentalistic ideologies, aggressive militarism, and a growing authoritarianism that suggests a coming fascism. Global Christianity is the only thing that can save us from Christian Nationalism.
The church is meant to be the social, political, and material embodiment of the lordship of Christ. Not by lording it over others, but as suffering servants for the common good. We are to be God’s sacrament to the world. We must not allow the misplaced zeal of Christian nationalism to “bastardize and pulverize” (Cornel West) the preciousness of Christian faith as they engage in open idolatry.
Christianity can’t commit “adultery” with Nationalism. All the prophets cry out when God’s people drift into such perverted relationships. Christianity and secular culture are competing realities. The Christian call to repentance involves a turning away from the secular political world, a different way of life.
Christians are not meant to be “in bed” with secular politic,s because Christians are supposed to represent a real threat to empire, to culture, to status quo. Notice in Acts how many times pagans are riled by the Christians. Read the stories from Lystra, Philippi, Athens, and Ephesus. Christians are a threat. Christian Nationalists have rallies where they succeed only in riling up their own insecurities, fears, and outrage.
A key characteristic of the politics of Jesus is a cross that marks the rejection of messianic violence as a means of national liberation. Remember the haunting lines of Strang in the Broadway play, Equus: “The cross can mark a person for life.” Christianity offers a suffering and servant Messiah, the expansion of the community of faith to include Gentiles, and the ascription of the divine identity and lordship to the human Jesus. Miss this and you have missed what it means to be Christian.
Here is a political imagination that summons people, not to direct revolt, not to an insurrection, but to a form of life that promotes an antagonism about the secular political power. Jesus didn’t call his people to Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, for an insurrection. The people of the resurrection are not in the business of political insurrection.
Idolatry Pure and Simple
Real Christians want a new culture, not a coup. The term “Christian Nationalist” is a false description – there’s nothing Christian in this messianic outburst of anger and violence. It’s idolatry arrogant enough to call real Christians a bunch of “godless globalists.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has given Christian Nationalism her full-throated approval. “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists,” Greene said in an interview while attending the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida. Her self-avowal of Christian nationalism follows her claim last month that Christian nationalism is “nothing to be afraid of,” and that the “movement” will solve school shootings and “sexual immorality” in America.
I think they are sincere people, but the problem is that what they are sincere about has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is, quite frankly, not Christian. It is idolatry. That means that Christian Nationalism violates the first commandment. It doesn’t get any more perverse and wicked than a failing to obey commandment number 1 – the most important of all the commandments.
I suggest that Christian Nationalists stick out like the famous bronze serpent that Moses sculpted to save God’s people from death. The bronze serpent was a sign of healing and salvation, much like the early evangelical movement. Slowly, the serpent slithered its way into the imagination of the people as an object to be worshiped and found a place in the Temple. Nothing says idolatry in the Old Testament like Nehushtan, the subtle snake on a stick which was cousin to the snake in the ancient Garden.
And nothing says Christian idolatry like the American flag decorating sanctuaries by the hundreds. That a group of American Christians would insist that the American flag has a place of honor next to the cross, maybe in place of the cross, “is a sure sign that Christians no longer know how to recognize idolatry” (Stanley Hauerwas).
I am not fooling around here. In the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, I insist that Christian Nationalists do not know who they are messing with. Ignorant of the the idolatry that shapes their lives, they are the blind leading the blind into the ditch. Putting aside the reality that we are created to love God, Christian nationalists have ended up loving what they think will make them strong and powerful and in control.
If these Christians, up to their steeples in gobbledygook, don’t put down their flags and raise up the cross of Jesus, they are doomed to the fate of all idolaters. “Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations.” “Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, and the sound of your harps; maggots are the bed beneath you, and worms are your covering.”
Note: Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood have penned a brilliant response to the gobbledygook of “godless globalism”: “How Most Christians Became Godless Globalists.”
The Gospel According to Ken Ham: Chapter Two
by William Trollinger
One of the distinctive ways in which fundamentalists make use of the Bible is proof-texting, i.e., pulling a few verses or verse or part of a verse out of context, and then using this text as “proof” for a particular theological or political or cultural position.
The folks at Answers in Genesis (AiG) are masters of the art of proof-texting. As Susan Trollinger and I noted in Righting America at the Creation Museum,
Visitors find bits of Genesis in the form of individual verses and snippets from verses on various placards, murals, columns, and screens throughout the museum . . . [with a] lack of ellipses indicating where text has been removed from a passage [as well as] the failure to provide relevant context for the passages that are displayed (116, 136).
Then there’s the AiG “Statement of Faith,” which every person who works at the museum or at Ark Encounter must affirm. After almost every one of the 46 separate propositions – 46 propositions may be a new record for fundamentalist faith statements! – there are references to specific Bible verses.
For example, here’s proposition #29 in the AiG Statement of Faith:
The concepts of “social justice,” “intersectionality,” and “critical race theory” are anti-biblical and destructive to human flourishing (Ezekiel 18:1-20; James 2:8-9).
Leaving aside the fact that this proposition is further evidence that white American fundamentalism has simply devolved into a form of toxic Christian Right politics, there is nothing in these verses that establish that social justice, intersectionality, and critical race theory are anti-biblical and destructive. Not a thing. AiG could have used Hezekiah 11:26, for all it matters. This is proof-texting on steroids.
In his Facebook posts Ken Ham uses Bible verses in much the same way: individual verses or parts of verses yanked completely out of their biblical context. (I assume he does the same in his Gab, Gettr, MeWe, Parler, and Truth Social posts, although I can’t say with certainty, as I am not able to deal with the antisemitism, white supremacy, and threats of violence that one finds on these sites – enduring Ham’s hateful rants on Facebook is enough for me!) Here are some examples, some of which will be familiar to those of you who attend to Christian Right rhetoric:
- Anti-LGBTQ: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27)
- Anti-abortion: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13)
- Anti-climate change foolishness: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22)
Leaving aside whether these biblical snippets (especially the last one) actually serve as evidence that the Bible endorses Ham’s culture war arguments, I want to highlight the point that Ham particularly enjoys using Bible verses to issue threats of eternal damnation. Some examples from just one month’s worth (September 27-October 27) of Facebook posts:
- vs. pro-LGBTQ:
- “But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Peter 4:5)
- “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ . . . Their end will correspond to their deeds” (2 Corinthians 11:13, 15)
- “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6)
- “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31)
- vs. pro-choice:
- “I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them” (Ezekiel 25:17)
- One day “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Philippians 2:10)
- “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31)
- “If you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his iniquity, he shall die for his iniquity” (Ezekiel 3:19)
- vs. woke culture:
- “The nations have sunk in the pit that they made . . . Put them in fear, O LORD!” (Psalm 9:15, 19)
Four comments:
- I am certain you do not need me to say this, but these verses have nothing to do with abortion, LGBTQ, or woke culture. Ham’s approach is to mine the Bible for verses that threaten damnation, yank them out of their context, and wield them as weapons against his political and cultural opponents. And while it may be otherwise, all indications are that he relishes casting them into Hell. That certainly would explain why, at Ark Encounter, there is a “keepsake photo” site at the door that sealed the fate of the millions or billions drowning in Noah’s flood. Celebrate the damnation of the damned!
- It’s remarkable that Ken Ham is so confident in knowing whom God will damn. That is to say, he knows the mind of God. The self-righteous arrogance is breathtaking.
- It’s also remarkable whom Ham does not threaten with damnation. White supremacists, spousal/child abusers, antisemites, greedy capitalists, domestic terrorists: not a word. The silence is deafening.
- Finally, it’s particularly remarkable that – for all of his mining of the Bible for threats of damnation — Ham makes no reference to the one place in the Gospels where Jesus speaks about the Last Judgment (Matthew 25: 34-45). Ok, it’s not remarkable, because what Jesus had to say about damnation does not fit AT ALL with Ham’s criteria for damnation (which could suggest that Ham’s confidence about knowing the mind of God is, well, misplaced). I will end with this passage from Matthew:
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
They will also answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or naked or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
(For chapter 1 of the Gospel According to Ken Ham, see here.)
The Gospel According to Ken Ham: Chapter 1
by William Trollinger
I did this painful work, so you don’t have to.
Over the past few months it became increasingly clear that, for me to adequately explain the religious, cultural, and political vision of Ken Ham and the organization he leads (Answers in Genesis, or AiG), I need to lay out something like a comprehensive picture of what he says. On a daily basis.
And one way to do that is to report on what one finds in Ham’s Facebook posts. So I examined the 150 pieces that he published from September 13 to October 16, 2022. And over the next few weeks here on rightingamerica I will report on my findings.
A couple of caveats. First, Ham is constantly posting material all over social media, including on Twitter. That is to say, what I will be reporting here is just a peek into the flood of material he puts onto social media.
Second, and much more disturbing (thanks to Dan Phelps for alerting me to this), Ham also posts on various platforms that are very popular with right-wing extremists, including:
- Parler: A “social networking service associated with Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and far-right extremists. Posts on the service often contain far-right content, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories such as QAnon. . . . [Users include] members of the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and other militia groups; and white supremacists including members of the alt-right and far-right accelerationists such as the terrorist group Atomwaffen Division.”
- MeWe: “Business Insider has reported that some of the most popular groups on MeWe focus on ‘extreme views, like anti-vaccine rhetoric, white supremacy, and conspiracy theories.”
- Gettr: “Journalists reported extreme content on the [Gettr] platform was prevalent, including racism, antisemitism, and terrorist propaganda . . . [and the] white supremacist Proud Boys organization [has been] promoted on the platform.”
- Gab: “A haven for neo-Nazis, racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon. . . . Antisemitism is prominent in the site’s content and the company itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary. Gab CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory.”
For my own sanity I have avoided visiting these sites. That said, please keep in mind that it seems quite likely that when Ham posts on, say, Gab, he is more candid and more extreme than when he posts on Facebook. And that’s saying something.
Anyway, in order of frequency, Ham’s 150 Facebook posts can be categorized as follows:
- Promotions for AiG events, exhibits, group visits, ads for Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, products to purchase, and the like. 46 posts
- Comment: This is a good reminder that – while dedicated to fomenting the culture war and labeling those who disagree with them as demonic — AiG is also about making money by getting people to visit their tourist sites and to buy their products.
- Anti-abortion blasts, which sometimes include reference to the anti-abortion exhibit at the Creation Museum. 22 posts
- Comment: These blasts often include nasty attacks on Democratic politicians, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Given that in previous Facebook posts Ham has labeled Pres. Biden as “The Enemy,” such vitriolic attacks are not surprising.
- Christians are persecuted, the culture is anti-biblical, and adults and children need to be prepared to engage in culture war. 20 posts
- Comment: As regards preparing children to serve as culture warriors, the 2023 AiG Vacation Bible School curriculum is designed to equip children with “armor to wear in this battle between truth and lies, light and darkness, good and evil.”
- Anti LGBTQ blasts, with a particular obsession with children being infected with the “LGBTQ ideology.” 13 posts
- Comment: These blasts tend to focus on a shadowy “LGBTQ conspiracy” that has invaded school, church, and the popular culture. People who understand themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender have been brainwashed into thinking so.
- “Evidence” for young Earth creationism and a literal Bible. 13 posts
- Comment: It is safe to say that anyone outside fundamentalist young Earth creationism would not find these “evidences” persuasive.
- “Evidence” against evolution and mainstream science. 7 posts.
- Comment: See above.
- Scientific (Darwinian) racism. 5 posts.
- Comment: These posts are all about promoting a 7 episode series produced by AiG which is designed to establish that modern racism is a product of Darwinian evolutionism. Guess whose sins are elided?
- Ark Encounter carousel: 4 posts.
- Comment: These reports on the new carousel at Ark Encounter remind me of Jeff Vrabel’s hilarious GQ article in which he described the Ark’s petting zoo as “tobacco country’s saddest zoo.” Ditto for the carousel?
- Fundamentalist apologetics: 3 posts.
- Comment: Ken Ham and AiG have the Truth. Enough said.
- Christian organizations and leaders who compromise the Truth: 3 posts.
- Comment: See above.
- Climate change denialism: 2 posts.
- Comment: With no credible science in hand, but with an intense desire to preserve unfettered capitalism, and with the active support of folks working in behalf of fossil fuel corporations, the response is to mock those (even referring to them as a “climate cult”) who are trying to keep our planet from burning up.
- Everything begins with the book of Genesis: 2 posts.
- Comment: It’s Answers in Genesis, after all, and not Answers in the Gospels.
- The real haters are secularists. 1 post.
- Comment: Guess whose sins are elided?
- A future AiG conference devoted to teaching women the proper response to suffering. 1 post.
- Comment: Given the extreme patriarchy promoted by AiG in particular and fundamentalism in general, it’s not hard to imagine what the message will be.
- Proper family worship. 1 post.
- Comment: See above.
- A tribute to Queen Elizabeth. 1 post.
- Comment: It is not surprising that this glowing tribute makes no reference to the horrors that accompanied the British Empire, given that fundamentalist textbooks – including those used at the AiG private school – present colonialism and imperialism as benign.
- The story of one girl who wrote out the entire Bible, word for word. 1 post.
- Comment: Why?
So here we have a snapshot of Ken Ham’s Gospel, a right-wing culture war gospel that – to understate the case – seems strikingly at odds with what one finds in the New Testament Gospels. And what’s missing from Ham’s Facebook posts is as significant as what is included:
- Nothing on poverty, or America’s dreadfully inequitable health care system, or rising maternity death rates in the U.S. (all of which suggest that Ham’s anti-abortion stance is better described as “forced birth” rather than “pro-life”).
- Nothing on America’s epidemic of gun violence.
- Nothing on white supremacy, domestic terrorism, and antisemitism (of course, given the social media sites he posts on, this is no surprise).
- Nothing on sexual and spousal abuse.
- Nothing on the horrible effects of Hurricane Ian (of course, given Ham’s climate change denialism, this is no surprise).
Chapter 1, the Gospel According to Ken Ham. Chapter 2 is to come.
Creationism and Climate: The Birth of a New Pseudo-Science
by Paul Braterman
Paul Braterman is Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, University of North Texas, and Honorary Research Fellow (formerly Reader) at the University of Glasgow. His research has involved topics related to the early Earth and the origins of life, and received support from NSF, NASA, Sandia National Labs, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is now interested in sharing scientific ideas with the widest possible audience, and was involved in successful campaigns to perusuade both the English and the Scottish Governments to keep creationism out of the science classroom. He is a regular contributor to 3 Quarks Daily, and blogs at Primate’s Progress, paulbraterman.wordpress.com.
This post originally appeared at Panda’s Thumb. The post appears as a shorter version of Braterman’s longer article, “Creationism in the Service of Climate Change Denial” at 3 Quarks Daily.
We are all too familiar with creationist life science (theory of kinds) and creationist Earth science (Flood geology). As I explain in an article at 3 Quarks Daily, recent decades have seen the emergence of a creationist climate science, which is a direct attack on the “secular” climate science of climate change. Creationist climate science rejects, as it must, the palaeoclimatology that helped establish the existence of positive climate feedbacks, and from this draws the inference that our present concern about human effects on climate is unbiblical, unscientific, and exaggerated. This fits in directly with the agendas of the organisations opposing fossil fuel restraint, and even involves some of the same people. We need to pay attention.
Creationists cannot avoid accepting a single Ice Age, which they have to regard as more recent than Noah’s Flood. So with great imagination they have devised theories that make the Ice Age an actual consequence of the Flood, and in the process they come to believe that their own theories are biblical. They can then call into play the entire creationist rhetorical apparatus, invoking arguments about biblical versus secular, God’s word versus man’s word, and a conspiracy of secular scientists deliberately hoodwinking the public by ignoring the biblical evidence.
But it is this secular science that lies behind our models of the climatic effects of human activity. In particular, the ability of the Milankovitch cycles to cause such large changes in Ice Age climate shows the existence of positive feedbacks, as further confirmed by detailed ice core studies. The creationists, whom we must not to dismiss as ignorant or ill informed, are well aware of this, and draw the implication that the appeal to positive feedbacks is an artefact of the secularist viewpoint, and should be rejected. They argue from this that current concerns about where the climate is going are misplaced. As I show in my 3QD article, all this is explicitly spelt out in the creationist literature, which links directly to the Cornwall Alliance’s climate change denial literature. This is no accident. The director of the Cornwall Alliance is an active contributor to Answers in Genesis, and the right wing political philosopher Jay W. Richards, who over at the Discovery Institute pours scorn on evolution science and global warming concerns alike, is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a former adviser to Cornwall.
For all these reasons, I regard creationist climate science as a much more pressing threat than the usual annoying creationist nonsense. How should we respond?
History Takes On Christian Nationalist Traitors
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, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. He is currently interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, NY. His sixth book – The Immaculate Mistake: How Evangelicals Gave Birth to Donald Trump – has recently been published by Wipf and Stock (Cascades). And his newest book, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy, will come out this December.
The First Amendment to the Constitution has never been in so much precarity. The forces of nationalism have induced a substantial portion of the American population into a trance, and while under this hypnotic spell a revised version of history has been placed in their minds and hearts. Faced with a withering bombardment from anti-historians, the American people are being told that our nation was founded by born-again evangelicals. More than this, they are being told that America is a Christian nation, and that Americans are God’s new chosen people.
The battering ram of Christian nationalism has joined forces with these apocalyptic horses arrayed against democracy. According to a 2021 Pew poll, 34% of white evangelicals believe that the federal government should “stop enforcing separation of church and state,” and 35% assert that the “federal government should declare U.S. a Christian nation” (in contrast with, respectively, 19% and 15% of the general population).
These commitments are traitorous. A harsh word, to be sure. But a true word.
The Baptists were the original architects of the First Amendment. But now Baptists, especially Southern Baptists, are betraying the First Amendment. Once upon a time Baptists knew that America was not founded as a Christian nation. Once upon a time they knew, from harsh experience, why the church needed to be separate from the government. Now, like Judas taking his 30 pieces of silver, these Christians have succumbed to the illusion of secular political power.
They are traitors to the First Amendment.
Using historical analogies, I offer pictures from our past to make the connections to the armies that have allied to destroy America. If this sounds too belligerent, too presumptive, I can only note that the forces opposed to democracy, while claiming to support democracy, are unrelenting enemies of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The forces of “demolition” have aimed all their weapons at the wall of separation.
Here are the words causing all the commotion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It is clear why the founding fathers made this the First Amendment, because here are contained the foundational pillars of democracy: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the people to assemble.” Undo the First Amendment, and democracy devolves into chaos.
Will Campbell, with piercing clarity, cried:
There are lies being told about the Bible and America by people who should know better, and probably do. They pose as the Messiah’s evangelists on programs subsidized with tax exemptions and protected by the same First Amendment they frequently denounce. They clothe a blatantly political agenda in pious rhetoric and peddle it as gospel.
Will, Baptist that he was, was protecting the wall of separation between church and state.
My first historical analogy is Benedict Arnold. He was an American military officer who served during the Revolutionary War. He fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose to the rank of major general before defecting to the British side of the conflict in 1780. General George Washington had given him his fullest trust and had placed him in command of West Point in New York. Arnold was planning to surrender the fort there to British forces, but the plot was discovered in September 1780, whereupon he fled to the British lines. In the later part of the conflict, Arnold was commissioned as a brigadier general in the British Army, and placed in command of the American Legion. He led the British army in battle against the soldiers whom he had once commanded, after which his name became synonymous with treason and betrayal.
Robert Jeffress is a leading evangelical and Southern Baptist pastor. He is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. As a Southern Baptist, he was taught that Baptists are fierce defenders of the wall of separation.
But now Jeffress has defected, making the treasonous claim that the disestablishment clause in the First Amendment was meant to apply solely to Protestant denominations. Historian John Fea says,
I do not have the space …. to counter in depth the false and problematic claims Jeffress makes …. But it is worth noting that his manipulation of the past to advance his Christian right agenda and scare his congregation into political action comes straight out of the playbook of David Barton.
Barton is the poison well from which Jeffress and his fellow evangelicals have been drinking for the past thirty years. Incredibly, Barton named his organization WallBuilders. A man who has given his entire ministry to tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, had the nerve to call his organization, WallBuilders. They hypocrisy masks the insidious attempt to destroy not only the First Amendment but democracy. Jeffress is the Benedict Arnold of Baptists, but he has plenty of company, and the creator of this kind of treason is David Barton.
A second historical analogy: General Robert Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, at the Battle of Gettysburg. Sensing an opportunity to defeat the Union army and secure victory for the Confederacy, Lee threw everything he had at the center of the Union lines. In the assault, popularly known as “Pickett’s Charge,” General George Pickett’s soldiers marched across the shell-swept field and temporarily broke the Union line, marking the high-water mark of the Confederacy and becoming a glorious moment in the story of the Lost Cause.. And this despite the fact that Pickett’s soldiers returned to Seminary Ridge, broken and shattered, with over half of the division killed, wounded, or captured.
If the assault on the First Amendment can be metaphorically linked to the Battle of Gettysburg, then the commanding general leading the charge at the point of the “breach” in the wall is the prophet of American nationalism, William “Dutch” Sheets.
Sheets, 68, is one of America’s most influential Christian voices demanding an end to the separation of church and state. Make no mistake, Sheets understands dismantling the wall to be only the opening salvo in an all-out attack on democracy, an attack that has only one purpose in mind: the ruling of the nation by right-wing Christians.
As Tim Dickinson details in a recent Rolling Stone article, Sheets told the crowd at a July 01 worship event that “we must marry these two arenas — the civil and the sacred. They are not separate in Scripture,” he added, then insisted, “God never intended for it to be separate.” Sheets has even produced what he dubs the “Watchman Decree,” which “reads like a Christian nationalist pledge of allegiance.” At the worship event he led the crowd in reciting the Decree:
“As a patriot of faith, I attest my allegiance first and foremost to the Kingdom of God and the Great Commission,” Sheets began . . . He then led the crowd in a series of theocratic declarations, including:
“We, the Church, are God’s governing Body on the Earth.”
“We have been given legal power and authority from Heaven.”
“We are . . . delegated by Him to destroy every attempted advance of the enemy.”
The audience then read aloud, with Sheets, a list of 13 decrees, including that the three branches of U.S. government will “honor God,” “write only laws that are righteous,” and only “issue rulings that are biblical.” The congregation continued, in unison, “We declare that we stand against wokeness, the occult, and every evil attempt against our nation.” They concluded with Sheets’ trademark spiritual battle cry: “We decree that America shall be saved!”
Sheets and his band of Christian nationalists have nothing positive to offer us. They have no policies for the common good. They are a scurrilous bunch of negative whiners and complainers. They are angry and disgruntled. They talk and act as if they are being persecuted and displaced. These are middle class white people who somehow have convinced themselves that people are taking from them what is rightfully theirs. They point the finger, wink the eye, speak evil, and attack our democratic institutions and norms. In short, they are a present and imminent danger to democracy.
A counterattack happens here and now. In Isaiah 58 there is an amazing metaphor – “repairer of the breach.” I offer the vision of Isaiah as a response to the idolatry of Christian nationalists. Isaiah 58 offers a precursor to the social gospel, a vision for how America can be a great nation, a servant nation, a “good neighbor” to all the nations of the world.
God desires a servant nation. “Repairing the breach” includes actions such as “Loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Share your bread with the hungry, satisfy the needs of the afflicted and bring the homeless poor into your house” (Isaiah 58:6-7).
The repairer of the breach will break every yoke. They will refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing their own interests on God’s holy day; from going their own ways, serving their own interests, or pursuing their own affairs.
My question: “Where on the wall of separation do you want me?” We will repair the breach and build the wall thicker and higher than before.
No one has as much horrific experience with the persecution and genocide that often follows the breakdown of the separation of church and state as the Jews. My dear friend, David Sofian, rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel (Dayton OH) joined me for more than a decade in the fight to maintain the wall of separation. He wrote to me at one point: “Build the wall higher, wider, and thicker.”
The result of standing in the gap to repair the breach elicits a promise from Almighty God: “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly …. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (Isaiah 58: 10, 12).
At the end of my ministry, please have somebody engrave these words on my tombstone: “A Repairer of the Breach.”
Witness to an Execution
by William Trollinger
Saturday we attended the wedding of the daughter of dear friends of ours. It was a beautiful autumnal outdoor ceremony. And at the reception we toasted the happy couple, chatted with other close friends, and danced in celebration.
But in those moments when I was waiting for the ceremony to begin, and when I was standing in line for a glass of wine, and when the conversations at the reception lagged, I found myself thinking about the night exactly 25 years before.
Just after midnight on September 24, 1997, I was sitting with five other civilians and four security guards in a tiny, cramped room in the bowels of the maximum security Potosi Correctional Institute, just southwest of St. Louis. The civilians were seated in two rows of chairs, facing a glass window and closed mini-blinds. I was in the front row, and I could look through a crack in the blinds to see the lower part of a man’s face, including a mouth and jaw. And I knew that was my friend Samuel McDonald, who in just a couple of minutes was going to be injected with a lethal combination of sodium pentothal (which would render him unconscious) and pancuronium bromide and potassium bromide, which would stop his breathing and his beating heart.
I had opposed capital punishment since the ninth grade. In this, as in many other things, I was at odds with my evangelical parents and my evangelical Baptist church. I was surrounded by folks who – while not bloodthirsty – wholeheartedly supported the notion of state execution. Interestingly, it was growing up in a “Bible-believing” church led me to dissent from my family and church, as my reading of the Gospels convinced me that capital punishment violates the essence of Christ’s teachings to choose mercy over revenge, to love our enemies, and to forswear violence (which is why the Catholic church and almost all of the major Protestant denominations have come out against capital punishment).
In my teenage years my opposition to the death penalty remained an abstraction. This was because by the late 1960s capital punishment had almost disappeared from the American landscape. What seemed to be the final blow to a barbaric institution came in 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that the death penalty is “arbitrary” and “capricious.”
But then, just four years later, the Court ruled that capital punishment does not violate the Constitution, as long as the state has “adequate” due-process procedures in place. Soon, 40 or so states re-instituted the death penalty for certain types of murder.
One of the states that has proven to be most enthusiastic about applying capital punishment is the state of Missouri. Since 1976 Missouri has executed 92 individuals, ranking #5 among states that kill (behind Florida, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Texas, the latter state having executed 575 individuals in the past 43 years).
Having completed my Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in 1984 I accepted a teaching position at the School (now College) of the Ozarks, near Branson, Missouri. Now in a death penalty state, I felt I needed to do something. But I was not aiming to be heroic. What I settled upon was corresponding with someone on Missouri’s death row. I contacted the Death Row Support Project (which is under the auspices of the Church of the Brethren) for the name of a condemned prisoner with whom I could exchange letters. This is how I became acquainted with Samuel McDonald.
Over the next decade I was able – through conversations with Sam, newspaper reports, and open access court records – to piece together Sam’s story. He grew up in a poor, churchgoing family in inner city St. Louis. At the age of 17 he enlisted in the Army. It was 1967, and Sam ended up – as did so many poor black males – in Vietnam. He proved to be an efficient soldier, earning a raft of medals. But the experience traumatized him, particularly when, in the process of “sweeping” a village, he more-or-less deliberately killed an elderly woman and an infant (an incident about which he would have nightmares for the rest of his life, even the week before his execution). Like a host of other Vietnam veterans, Sam returned to the States mentally and emotionally unhinged, addicted to heroin, and without anything in the way of adequate medical and psychiatric support. Over the next decade, he lived the life of a petty criminal.
Then, on the evening of May 16, 1981, the downwardly spiraling Sam McDonald encountered someone whose life had been going in precisely the opposite direction. Robert Jordan had been a St. Louis County police officer for 19 years; not only was this former Marine (who had earned both his BA and MA degrees) just the second African American to be hired as a police officer by the county, but he was president of the St. Louis County Association of Minority Police Officers. Besides his full-time job, Jordan moonlighted as a security guard. Which is what he was doing on the evening of May 16. And when he got off work and arrived home, where his wife Emma Jean was waiting for him, he discovered there was no beer in the fridge, and not much in the way of snacks. So, with his eleven-year-old daughter Rochelle in tow, he drove to the local liquor store.
At the store, they made their purchases and headed out the door. In the parking lot, they encountered Sam. Sky-high on “T’s and blues” (a heroin substitute), and accompanied by a drugged-up girlfriend (who was waiting for him in the car), Sam was looking for someone to rob, for the money that would provide him with his next stash of drugs. Encountering Robert Jordan, Sam pulled out a gun and demanded that he hand over his wallet. Jordan’s daughter ran back into the store and watched through the window. Robert handed over his wallet, which also held his St. Louis County police badge. Whether Sam actually saw the badge was a matter of dispute at the trial. But we do know that he took the wallet, shot Robert twice in the chest and once in the side, and ran for the car. Dying, Jordan managed to pull out his service revolver and shoot six shots, one of which hit Sam in the side. Obviously showing the effect of the drugs, Sam had his girlfriend drive him to the local VA hospital for treatment. It was there that he was arrested for the murder of Robert Jordan.
A poor African American drug addict who killed a well-respected off-duty police officer in full view of the officer’s young daughter: it is obvious that Sam’s chances in the justice system were bleak. But things were made worse by the fact that the district attorney decided to try this case himself. The normal procedure would be for the DA to give the case to one of his subordinates, but the DA was in the middle of a re-election campaign in which he was promising to get tougher in capital cases, and this provided him a great political opportunity. Worse, Sam was assigned an inexperienced and overworked assistant public defender who got into shouting matches with the judge (at one point the judge responded by swiveling his chair around so that his back was to Sam’s attorney). Worst of all, the judge refused to allow testimony regarding the impact of Sam’s Vietnam experiences on his mental and emotional health, even though there was solid evidence that Sam was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
So, it was no great surprise that, on February 22, 1982, Samuel McDonald was sentenced to die by lethal injection . . . the 17th man placed on Missouri’s death row.
Three years later, I sent Sam my first letter. We soon became regular correspondents. I also visited him in the state penitentiary.
But when I took a teaching job in Pennsylvania, I was no longer able to visit him. So, while Sam kept writing, he also began calling, generally on weekends, and generally every other weekend. I know it may seem peculiar, but we spent much of our time laughing and joking and making fun of each other; in fact, if friends were visiting they would often be stunned to learn that I was talking with a man on death row. Sam and I spent a lot of time talking about sports. We were both particularly convinced that we had special insights into football. We had an annual contest to see who could pick the most winners in the college bowl games, with the winner – usually Sam – getting to keep the “traveling crown” that Sam had cut out on typing paper (and sent to me before he was killed).
But in our conversations we also talked about conditions in the prison, and the state of his appeals up and down the court system (appeals which focused on the failure of the original trial judge to allow his psychiatric history to be considered at sentencing). We talked about politics, including the Supreme Court (which would consider his final appeal – Sam particularly disliked Clarence Thomas). We talked about God, and church, and the efficacy of prayer. We talked a lot about our families. I commiserated with him when his son – who was only three when Sam went to prison – was caught in the middle of a gang fight, and was shot and paralyzed. Sam commiserated with me when my mother died of cancer. In fact, he was probably more sensitive to my grief than anyone outside my family; a few times he called out of the blue just to see how I was doing.
All this to say that, much to my surprise, Sam McDonald and I became very close friends. I had started corresponding with him assuming that I would be the one giving to him. It turned out that I was receiving from him at least as much as he was receiving from me.
In all of this I tried very hard not to think about the fact that the state of Missouri was determined to end Sam’s life. But in the spring of 1997 reality hit. Sam’s appeals had come to an end: the Supreme Court would not stay his execution; that he was a decorated Vietnam veteran with war-induced psychiatric problems was irrelevant. The governor of Missouri was adamant that he would not grant clemency; my letter pleading for Sam’s life could not have been more irrelevant. Sam was given a firm execution date: September 24, 1997.
Sam handled these developments with remarkable grace, but I went into an emotional tailspin, as I grappled with the fact that my friend was going to be killed. More than this, I started to wonder what sort of friend I was. I had a pretty strong suspicion that Sam wanted me to serve as one of his witnesses to his execution. I was a middle-class white academic who had grown up in the suburbs, and who had never seen anyone die . . . much less seen anyone be killed. So, throughout the summer of 1997 I tried to ignore Sam’ s oblique hints that he wanted me there for him.
Then, on Labor Day, Sam asked me to serve as one of his six “family and friend” witnesses: “I don’t want to die alone, and I need to see you there.” I said yes.
The week before the execution was surreal. I ended up in a minor media vortex, as Missouri newspapers and radio stations apparently had some fascination with the fact that a college professor from Ohio was coming out to witness the execution of a person they clearly considered a “low-life.” I was a novelty act, and I ended up doing a number of phone interviews from my office in the University of Dayton’s Humanities Building. I liked talking with the newspaper reporters, but the radio folks were annoyingly superficial: one even suggested that I should be happy if Sam’s execution were televised, as I would not then have to drive from Ohio.
The night before his execution, Sam called me to tell me that I would be allowed to visit him at 5 PM, seven hours before his execution. (It turns out that I was the last “civilian” to see Sam). When I arrived at the isolated, fortress-like prison, a guard – who made no effort to disguise the fact that he despised me – led me to Sam. We descended endless flights of stairs into the depths of the prison. This is where the “death cell” is located, where all death-row inmates spend the last two days of life. The guard knocked on the door. It opened, and I walked in.
There was Sam, rumpled and weary-looking, and markedly heavier than when I had last seen him. He was in a tiny cage with a bed, a chair, a toilet and not much else. Instinctively I walked up to the wire fence and put my hand against it. But before Sam could respond a voice behind me barked, “Get away from there!” Alarmed, I looked at Sam, who pointed at the floor: a white line marked off a “no-man’s land” between the rest of humanity and the condemned man’s cage. I backed up behind the line and sat down in one of two chairs bolted to the floor. The guard who had yelled at me sat at a desk behind me, clattering away on a very loud typewriter, presumably reporting on what was being said in the cell (although there was also a video camera recording all). Sam McDonald’s final 48 hours were without privacy, in part to ensure that he did not commit suicide and thus cheat the executioner.
At first I struggled to make conversation with Sam. But in a few minutes, we were talking freely. In some ways, it was no different from our phone conversations. We talked about sports and our families; we had a few laughs; we talked about our friendship. But Sam also talked about himself in ways he never had before. He regretted how he had messed up his life, and he expressed remorse for what he had done. He assured me that he was prepared to die – “things on the other side have to be better than they have been here” – and to face God. For the first time in the 12 years I had known Sam, he was resigned to his impending death.
At 5:58 my angry escort returned to the cell. I stood up. Sam and I said “I love you” to each other. The door opened, and I left the death cell. Soon after I departed, Sam ate his last meal, of steak, catfish, and eggs. Soon after that, prison authorities began to prepare him for execution.
Six hours later I was being marched to the observation booth for friends and family (in Missouri there are three such booths, with the other two for family of the crime victim, and for state witnesses). We were sternly warned by a guard that “there will be no standing, crying out, or knocking on the window.”
Just after midnight the guards raised the blinds. There lay Sam, on a gurney with a white sheet up to his neck. He had obviously been told where we would be, as looked only at us. He spoke rapidly, but we could not make out what he was saying. And then, after only a minute or two, the drugs kicked in, Sam shuddered, and then was still.
We were then escorted out, in the process instructed that we could not stop until we were out of the prison. Not even to pray.
I felt filthy, and over the next few days I took 3-4 showers a day. Capital punishment demeans us all. And it does not bring back the victim of the crime.
In that regard, last year I received an email from the son of the man who was killed by Samuel McDonald. He ran across an article I had written about this experience, and felt compelled to write:
I too was at the execution and I prayed for Sam, and his family . . . That experience was traumatic for all involved in every facet. I would love to engage you in conversation one day. I am sure the conversation would be great. God Bless. Robert T Jordan Jr.
Note: This is a revised version of my September 24, 2019 blog post. Also: the writer Christopher Hitchens happened to be in the state witness booth for Sam’s execution. He wrote about this experience for Vanity Fair.
A New Museum: Competition in the Land of Young Earth Creationism
by William Trollinger
Last Friday a reporter visited my office to interview me about the KKK in 1920s Ohio. He came here having just visited Ark Encounter, and so I naturally asked him for his impression of Ken Ham’s big boat. His response: “A monument to stupid.”
So it seems fair to ask the question: Do we really need another huge temple to the idea that the Earth was created around 6,000 years ago? I ask because it appears that the Answers in Genesis (AiG) tourist sites – the Ark and the Creation Museum – are about to get some major young-Earth-creationist competition. And it will be located less than five hours south of the Ark.
As we have noted here many times before, AiG – in an effort to secure financial support for the building of the Ark – sold the little town of Williamstown (KY) on the idea that they would attract at least 1.2 million of visitors in the first year of operation, and that there would be an annual attendance increase of 7% for the next decade.
And the sales job worked. In hopes that the flood of visitors would revive their economically shaky (to say the least) town, Williamstown floated $62m in junk bonds to enable AiG to build the Ark. What made this deal particularly sweet for AiG is that 75% of what Ark Encounter would have paid in property taxes instead has gone to paying off the bonds. (Talk about a government subsidy!)
Well, Ark attendance has fallen far, far short of its projections. It has never reached the 1.2 million mark that was projected for year one. And while, according to AiG’s own projections, 2022 should see 1.8 million people pouring into the Ark, as of August 31 (that is, after the end of the summer tourist season) there had only been 528,105 visitors to the giant, non-seaworthy boat. (Thanks to the City of Williamstown and Dan Phelps for these numbers). And as was made clear in the terrific documentary, We Believe in Dinosaurs, Williamstown has definitely not reaped the economic benefits they hoped for in floating the bonds and foregoing the property taxes.
And very soon now, the AiG tourist sites will face a new challenge.
The David Rives Ministries describes itself as “the most trusted name in Biblical scientific research” (would AiG agree with this statement?) providing “true facts” to counter “atheists” who use “evolutionary theories” to “claim they have refuted the Bible’s accuracy.” And Rives does seem to be everywhere in the land of young Earth creationist media, with his (to give just a few examples):
- Genesis Science Network, which “airs to millions globally”
- Creation in the 21st Century, which airs weekly on the Trinity Broadcasting Network
- The Creation Club magazine, distributed bimonthly
- Genesis Science Minute, a daily radio feature
- Changing the Narrative, a weekly podcast
- Secrets Beyond the Rim, a documentary on the Grand Canyon as a product of the Flood as described in Genesis 6-8
But now, the David Rives Ministries are moving beyond media. The organization has purchased the more than 100,000 square foot Renaissance Center (Dickson, TN) from Freed-Hardeman University, and is in the process of transforming it into a tourist site. According to Rives,
upon opening [in 2023] The Wonders Center & Science Museum will be the largest science museum in the world that upholds biblical values . . . Plans . . . include replicas of life-size dinosaurs, hands-on experiments for children, space-themed exhibits, and a rare historical collection of artifacts, including ancient Bible scrolls . . . [plus] an incredible 140-seat Planetarium [that] will allow visitors to experience the cosmos in real-time as well as view shows with groundbreaking visual effect.
Wow. Sounds a lot like the Creation Museum, only bigger.
Now, let’s be clear. At Rives’ Creation Superstore, described as the “World’s Largest Origins-Related Store” (Rives definitely has an affinity for hyperbole), books and DVDs by Ken Ham and other AiG folks are for sale. Put another way, AiG and the David Rives Ministries are clearly on the same team.
That said, one has to wonder what The Wonders Center & Science Museum means for the AiG tourist sites. Will it negatively affect Creation Museum attendance? Will Ark Encounter fall even further short of AiG’s attendance projections?
Or will this new museum inspire visitors to hop in their cars to make the five hour trek northward to visit Ken Ham’s monuments to a young universe?
We shall see.
