The Willow Creek Lie
by Susan Trollinger
In the summer of 1979, just before I began attending Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois, I was convinced by my best friend to start going with her to Son City, a popular youth program run by what was then the less than four-year-old Willow Creek Community Church. In those days, the youth program met at the YMCA in Palatine and those Thursday night gatherings were intense, especially for a teen growing up in the exurbs of the “Greater Chicagoland Area.”
Hundreds of young people would show up and quickly join their particular color-coded team. I was on the Navy Team. And, weather permitting, we would gather outside for some competitive game. Often the games had some kind of athletic component, but even if you weren’t an athlete (I sure wasn’t), you could participate and imagine you were half decent. Teams would earn points depending on how well they did in those competitions.
After that, we would head into the gym at the YMCA where rows and rows of folding chairs had been set up along with a temporary stage. We would find our seats with the other members of our team and stand and clap and sway as the praise band and vocalists (its members were like rock stars to us) on stage led us in singing what I came to know as “contemporary Christian music.”
After a few songs, a cartoon appeared on a screen that offered up some biblical lesson, then a few members of the youth ministry team would perform a dramatization of another biblical lesson, then the lights would be dimmed and the room would go quiet. And it was time for “the message.” This is when the youth pastor preached. But we didn’t think of it as preaching because it was very warm and accepting and encouraging. And hip.
By the fall of my freshman year, I was part of the “Core” of my team. That meant that I attended additional weekly gatherings at the home of the Navy Team Core leader. Among other things, we memorized Bible verses. That was another way to rack up points for your team. Winning teams were recognized at the Thursday night gatherings. And, of course, it was a thrill to win!
By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was attending weekly Core meetings, Son City gatherings on Thursday nights, and church at the Willow Creek movie theater on Sunday mornings. I even joined the massive choir that sang at various special worship services. I was, to put it simply, all in.
Then one summer evening, I showed up at Son City. We did the usual sporty-competitive thing to start and then gathered to sing contemporary Christian songs. We gazed upon and thought about the cartoon. We contemplated the drama. We thought about the message that the youth pastor had brought to us. And then . . . something unexpected happened.
As the youth pastor’s message came to a close, he issued what I learned years later was an altar call. He had the lights turned off so that we were sitting in the dark. And he asked us two questions: Had Jesus come to us? And if Jesus had come to us, were we ready to commit our lives to Him?
At this point, I am all of 16 years. And while I had prayed nightly and read the Bible (not really knowing how to make heads or tails of it) I knew for sure that Jesus had not come to me. If he had, I was certain that I would have remembered it. You don’t blank on a visit from Jesus.
The odd thing about the altar call was that, unlike typical altar calls, if you could say yes to both questions you got to leave the gym. If you couldn’t, then you had to stay and sit in the dark on your little plastic folding chair. So, I sat.
And I sat. And then I thought—this is ridiculous. Obviously, despite my years at Son City and Willow Creek, Jesus had not seen fit to show up and ask me to follow Him. He’d had at least two years. That would seem like plenty of time. So, I deduced, I was not worth the effort. I clearly did not pass the Jesus test. I walked out of the Palatine YMCA, past all of the ecstatic, weeping chosen for whom other weeping chosen were praying. And I never went back.
Clearly forsaken by Jesus, I did not cross the threshold of a church for something like a decade. And when I finally did, it was only with enormous trepidation. I didn’t need to learn a second time that Jesus couldn’t be bothered with the likes of me.
This is the thing with so-called seekers churches. Their pastors look hip (their haircuts are amazing!), they give a super cool vibe, they love you, Jesus loves you, God loves you.
And then at some point the hammer comes down. And that’s when you find out that a few are in. And most are out. And those who are out are going to burn in hell for eternity.
That is the failure of the megachurch model. It’s built on a lie. You are ushered into the megachurch on the promise that God loves you. And then, at some point, you have to confront the counterpoint. If you deviate at all from their expectations for your religious conversion, your sexuality, your relationship to the state, your thoughts on free-market capitalism, your feelings about patriarchy . . . you are out.
As one who seeks to serve the Messiah who died for us even when we were sinners, this seems not only duplicitous.
It seems a lie.
Jerry Falwell, Jr. Unzipped His Pants for the Camera . . . But It’s Not About Sex
by Rodney Kennedy
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div. from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. The pastor of 7 Southern Baptist churches over the course of 20 years, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years. He is currently professor of homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary. He is also putting the finishing touches on his sixth book – The Immaculate Mistake: How Evangelicals Gave Birth to Donald Trump – for which he has a contract with Wipf and Stock (Cascades).
The photo of Falwell and the young woman is both damning and pathetic. It’s damning because there are no tricks in the rhetorical bag of “dark arts” arguments that can justify what has been seen in the light of day. But it’s also pathetic, in that Falwell seems to think that this perverse joke of a photo is actually humorous and hyper-masculine.
There’s a diabolical trope in play: the “bad boy” trope. It’s the American obsession with outlaw heroes, with bad boys with power and wealth. The “bad boy” image helped Donald Trump win the election. Trump campaigned as a transgressive outsider who developed a profile of power by building up his masculine image. “The result is a Janus-faced masculinity of outsider-yet-insider, bad-boy-yet-good-father” (Betul Eksil and Elizabeth A Wood, “Right-wing Populism as Gendered Performance”).
Being a “bad boy” is heralded by evangelicals as a virtue, as a good thing, but publicly flaunting a “bad boy” image is not the same genre. Falwell may have presented the “bad side” of the “bad boy image.” The “strongman” is not a university president who has unzipped his pants for the camera, but a tough guy who can kick dirt in the eyes of tormentors who have pushed them around all these years and not allowed them entrance into the halls of prestige and power.
Any effort to understand Falwell Jr.’s “lifestyle” (the photo merely sums up years of aberrant, arrogant behavior) needs to deal with the rhetorical implications of the fact, that Falwell, Jr., like Trump, desperately tries to project an image of hypermasculinity, heteronormative authority, a sense of an overpowering male presence that stands up to all the demonic forces tempting to take away their masculinity. The argument can be made that Falwell thought he was imitating Trump.
Falwell’s transgression is not about sex. Pay no attention to the porn-like photo and all of its sexual innuendos. It’s about unbridled power, and a narcissistic evangelical leader who believes that “’I can do whatever the hell I want’ because I am the president of Liberty University and my daddy gave it to me.” In the dark souls of evangelicals like Falwell, Jr., there really is an authoritarian, hypermasculine, heteronormative desire to be the king and do as they please, including unzipping for the camera.
The real embarrassment for evangelicals is that it demonstrates that they don’t actually care about anything other than “appearances.” Evangelicals are all about “feeling good” and “looking good.” This suggests a meme for Falwell, Jr.: a human-bodied frog character, created by the cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005, named “Pepe the Frog.” Pepe is a sad-clown figure who finds himself in embarrassing situations, like being caught urinating with his trousers around his ankles. He waves off all embarrassment with a stoner smile and his catchphrase, “Feels good, man.” Jerry Falwell, Jr. is Pepe the Frog before the Alt Right turned Pepe into a hate symbol.
Jesus says in Matthew 23:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
The evangelical “inside” – the ugliness, crudity, profanity, nastiness – has been revealed again and again and again, especially since the ascendancy of the Christian Right. And yet, evangelicals always find a way to cover up the “inside.” Somewhere in the secret enclave, where evangelical leaders convene to make plans to “save” the sinners of their ilk, a plan is probably being hatched on behalf of Jerry Falwell, Jr., a plan whereby he will return as Liberty president in two months, and all will be forgiven.
Now, I’m not saying this will happen, but it could happen. It certainly did happen at Cedarville University, where President White is “back in the saddle” (and in his gigantic McMansion) after knowingly hiring into a sexual voyeur (and then not telling anyone, except a few of his administrative compatriots).
And Falwell, Jr. is far more powerful and famous than White, so of course he could be back. Sure, all the tricks in the bag will be needed to rescue the poor little boy who has promised to be a good boy next time. But there are good reasons to think that this will be a minor pothole on the Falwell evangelical college super highway. The media’s reasons for attacking Falwell for hypocrisy are expected, but rather dated. The Age of Trump has put an end to Aristotelian notions of ethos – credibility, good will, appropriateness, decorum, and propriety. It’s not so much that Falwell himself posted the picture, it’s that he happily had the picture taken. He so obviously flouts what was once the rules of decorum and appropriateness, one can only conclude that at the moment such categories didn’t even occur to him.
In the past fifty years, we have gone from a culture that allows a few renegades, a handful of “bad-boy” politicians, to a society numbed by explicit sexuality. When Edwin Edwards ran against former KKK leader David Duke, he wisecracked, “The only thing we have in common is that we are both wizards under the sheets.” Gary Hart’s bid for the Democratic nomination ended with a photograph of him and a woman on a boat named “Monkey Business.” The photo turned out to be fake, but the damage was real.
But all of this is old and no longer applies. There’s a new ethos in town, an ethos of sizzle, media, television, shock, and the flouting of the rules. Decorum, appropriateness, modesty, propriety – boring! Falwell’s disturbing lack of traditional qualities expected of the president of a fundamentalist Christian university will be frequently noted, but may not garner enough votes to get him sacked.
Falwell has the secular nature of culture and evangelical faith on his side. We are, after all, a thoroughly secular culture and evangelicals are as secular as everyone else. Evangelicals are not only secular, but in a term I have phrased just for Jerry, they are “sexular, sexularized.” Our culture is immune to sexually suggestive pictures, charges of sexual misconduct, and lewd sexual language. None of this excuses Falwell unzipping his pants for the camera, but he doesn’t really need excuses. He only needs votes.
Evangelicals, having already rewritten their code of ethics for President Trump (Randall Balmer) will gladly make the same adjustment for Mr. Falwell, Jr. After all, in the total identification of Trump with his evangelical followers, the two have become one and what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Kenneth Burke defined this as “consubstantiality.” For Burke, this names a way of being together in language in such a way that it is also material and physical. Falwell and Trump are “both joined and separate” – they are substantially entwined by being placed with one another.
Even if Falwell returns to Liberty, what really is at stake here is the reality that Jerry Falwell, Jr. is not one bad apple; he’s one bad apple in an entire spoiled barrel of evangelical apples. His actions will be roundly criticized and publicly denounced. This is how the “bad boy,” “rotten apple” trope works. His supporters will be dismayed and disgusted, and then they will vote in secret to return him to his throne.
Falwell unzipping for the camera reflects the crisis of our culture.
In the Age of Trump and Falwell and the Christian Right, is there any there, there?
Thomas White, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and the Breathtaking, Awe-Inspiring Heights of Fundamentalist Hubris
by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger
One of the primary reasons that some 46,000 undergraduates attend Liberty University is that the institution obliges all of its students to adhere to a set of rules called “The Liberty Way.” That means that in addition to pledging not to cheat or plagiarize others’ work, students promise that they won’t have sex until they’re married and won’t drink alcohol. The rules are pretty strict for a campus about as big as a Big-10 school of 18 -to 21-year olds who are ready to experience adulthood. But, following these rules, so the thinking goes, will keep them safe for serving Christ.
So, it was rather shocking when Jerry Falwell, Jr (president of Liberty University and son to the man who created it in 1971 and the Moral Majority in 1979) posted this photograph on his Instagram account.
So, what do we have here? Okay, it might be pretty obvious. But we are going to spell it out. We have an image of Jerry Falwell, Jr. on a yacht. He is standing with a very attractive young woman (is she wearing a wig?) who is sporting a midriff shirt so that her lovely midsection is visible. She has a pair of shorts on and they are unbuttoned and unzipped. Jerry Falwell, Jr. has his arm around her waist, a glass in his hand (rum and coke?), and pants that are unbuttoned and unzipped so that viewers can see his underwear (and more—we’ll leave the details to the viewer). They are both smiling and looking very festive.
Later, after removing the photo from Instagram, Jerry Falwell, Jr. would attempt to make sense of the phot by saying that she was pregnant and so needed to unbutton and unzip her shorts. And he was just trying to be in solidarity with her.
One would imagine that – for so blatantly violating the code of conduct that applies to Liberty students, and for his history of inappropriate actions and statements — Jerry Falwell, Jr. would have been summarily fired. But Liberty University is a fundamentalist institution, and at such schools the supreme Patriarch operates with impunity.
So instead of being fired, Falwell has been placed on “indefinite leave.” What exactly does that mean? Who knows. But for a very close analogy, all we have to do is look at another fundamentalist university: Cedarville.
Here’s a greatly compressed review of the Cedarville scandal (and if you want the full story, replete with squalid details, see: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here):
Between 2012 and 2014 hard-line fundamentalists took over the Board of Trustees and initiated a widespread purge of faculty and staff who were insufficiently fundamentalist, while at the same time hiring Paige Patterson-protégé Thomas White as Cedarville president. Cementing the fundamentalist takeover, in 2017 the school established the “Biblically Consistent Curriculum Policy,” which requires faculty, under threat of firing, not to show or assign
images, movies, songs, plays, or writing that may be considered “adult” in nature, that represent immorality, or that may be a stumbling block to students . . . “Artistic bareness” [?] may be appropriate in courses studying art . . . [but] the use of images should be handled judiciously.
Just after White imposed this policy, he hired his old friend Anthony Moore to serve as Cedarville’s Multicultural Recruiter and Biblical Research Fellow at Cedarville. He and other Cedarville administrators did so knowing all the while that Moore had just been fired from his pastor position at a Fort Worth megachurch for having – on at least five occasions — secretly videotaped the church’s male youth pastor while showering.
(For those who are flabbergasted that White and his compatriots could miss the irony of imposing their “biblically consistent curriculum” – with its singular fixation on maintaining sexual purity – while simultaneously hiring a known sexual predator, see this video of Jordan Klepper at a Trump rally. Start at about the 4:25 mark.)
Moore soon acquired more roles at the school, including faculty rank in the Biblical and Theological Studies Department, assistant coach on the Cedarville basketball team (!), and special advisor to President White. White and company neglected to tell faculty, staff, students, and other Cedarville constituents what Moore had done . . . which was a brazen act of hubris, given that one could easily find on the internet a statement by the lead pastor of Moore’s former church that he was fired for “grievous immoral actions against another adult member that disqualify him as an elder and staff member.” And this is the same pastor who informed White precisely what led to Moore’s dismissal.
When the story became public last April, Moore was summarily fired. White defended his hiring with the ludicrous statement that, when he hired Moore, he only knew about two instances of videotaping, not five. In fact, and as brilliantly explained here, White not only did not issue anything in the neighborhood of a real apology, he worked to present himself as a victim.
As a “Former CU Parent” noted on an earlier post, what White should have said is: “I was wrong and shouldn’t have brought Dr. Moore to Cedarville because two cases of a felony are enough to disqualify someone from ministry.” But such a confession would require humility.
At a normal university White would have been summarily fired. But instead of firing White – think Liberty and Falwell – Cedarville’s Board placed White on “administrative leave.” After a seven week internal investigation (and given what was and is known, we are at a loss to understand what they were “investigating”), White was reinstated, with the proviso that he take victim awareness webinars this summer.
So the point of these webinars was to educate White that it’s not a good idea to hire sexual predators? Did he really need webinars to help him understand this? Did he really need webinars to tell him that his university should not shame women who talk about sexual abuse, that his university should actually enforce Title IX, and that his university’s Counseling Center should care for and protect students who have been sexually assaulted and harassed?
Not everyone at Cedarville is pleased with the whitewashing of the school’s president. Two trustees resigned in protest of the Board’s decision to reinstate White. Moreover, a survey of nearly 550 Cedarville stakeholders – alumni, students, parents, current and former faculty and staff, local residents, pastors, and donors – found that
- 81% disagreed with the statement, “Are you in agreement with the Trustees’ decision to reinstate the president?”
- 87% agreed that the “trustees should reconsider their decision to reinstate White.”
In the land of fundamentalist hubris, none of this matters. White and his wife have moved into their 9000 square foot (!) house, using (so we were informed) the school’s international students to do the heavy labor. The colonialist optics seem problematic, to say the least.
Rumors have it that in the past few days White has declared to the Cedarville faculty and staff that – thanks to the webinars – he is now “woke,” realizing that there really are people who have been sexually abused (this was a revelation?), to the point that Cedarville will now have a legitimate Title IX coordinator and a part-time victim’s advocate.
Of course, White gave no real apology for his hiring of Anthony Moore, and his failure (and the failure of his compatriots) to alert students, faculty, staff, and constituents that he had hired a sexual predator. Moreover, all indications are that, as Cedarville prepares to open for fall semester, White and company are assiduously working to quash any dissent on campus. The great man must be free from criticism, must be free from any suggestion that he failed the university’s students, faculty, and staff.
As for those Cedarville faculty members who are suffering from the ways in which their administration has failed them, the Vice President for Academics has reportedly told them to take their grief to God, and get over it – suffering is part of life. Be quiet, and let the great man do his business.
It’s an old story. The fundamentalist patriarch – be it Jerry Falwell, Jr., Thomas White, or hundreds of others in various schools, churches, and parachurch organizations – is free to do as he pleases. This story is as old as William Bell Riley and his fundamentalist empire in the 1920s and 1930s.
There’s no getting around it. Patriarchal hubris is baked into fundamentalism.
Growing Up with Dr. Dino
by Sean Martin
Sean Martin has recently completed a doctoral degree in Theology from the University of Dayton and is currently preparing his dissertation project, Scott Hahn and the Rise of Catholic Fundamentalism, for publication. Along with a doctorate in theology, Sean has an M.A. in theology from the University of Dayton, and an M.A. in philosophy from Georgia State University. He specializes in Christian fundamentalism, Scott Hahn, John Henry Newman, and early modern philosophy. When not editing his book or attempting to survive global pandemics, he and his wife, Beth, are raising their wonderfully precocious daughter, Gwen, and a wildly destructive puppy, Luna, in Cincinnati.
I grew up in the small town of Richmond Hill about 30 miles into the woods outside of Savannah, GA. In many ways, it was a truly magical place to grow up. The neighbors all knew each other and kept tabs on the safety of each other’s kids. My siblings, friends, and I built tree forts, swam in the wide, slow Ogeechee River that wrapped around our little neighborhood, hunted (successfully, and without our parents’ permission) rattlesnakes in an effort to make our own snake skin boots, and always felt safe and loved. Our little town boasted one blinking yellow traffic light, three Baptist Churches, and two Waffle House restaurants, each of which you could see from the doorway of the other. My father attended a weekly men’s breakfast at the small local restaurant in town; the few times I was allowed to go with him, I would watch in amazement as the waitress would walk around the table of sometimes up to twenty men and ask, “The usual?…the usual?…?” She never made a mistake, down to the number of creams and sugars in the coffees.
Such an idyllic place to grow up, however, also came with a cost. My childhood gave me an extremely small view of the world. I had never met a Muslim. I had never seen synagogue. Most everyone in my world looked like me, thought like me, talked like me, and lived like me. I had no idea I was a Republican, only that the Democrats were bad. In school, I learned about the War of Northern Aggression, that the world was created in seven days, and that prayer’s most natural place was in the classroom.
While this worldview was reinforced by many aspects of the small, southern world in which I lived, there is one event that has always stood out in my mind. My father had learned from some friends of a “world-renowned” scientist who was coming to speak at a church just outside of town. This speaker was celebrated for the way in which he effortlessly dismantled the ridiculousness of atheist, evolutionary thought. As I had decided at the tender age of eleven that I wanted to be a pastor, my father signed the two of us up for the five-day event. I still remember driving down Hwy 144 out into the countryside and after passing miles of pine forests we came upon the small white Church that stood alone on the side of the road. Inside was a crowd of perhaps twenty people, filling the small sanctuary, and Dr. Kent Hovind (a.k.a., “Dr. Dino”).
We began that first morning like you might expect. We opened in prayer thanking God for heroes like our speaker and asking for God’s protection around our community from the evil of the world. Dr. Hovind, a tall, pencil-thin man in a light blue suit began to tell us about the dangers of evolution. I’m not sure I had ever heard that word before that day but by the end of the week I felt that I could have written a book about this most immoral and dangerous of theories. Hovind sat on the narrow wooden stage with an overhead projector and screen and demonstrated time and again how evolution and the Big Bang are complete (pardon the pun) nonstarters. I don’t remember everything that was said throughout the week but in the years that followed, I committed several discussions to memory and employed them in my role as middle- and then high-school evangelist.
On that first day of the event, Hovind recounted a conversation that he had with one of his college science professors. This professor had begun a class with an account of the Big Bang and the age of the universe. As Hovind told it, he raised his hand and asked a simple question, which the professor could not answer.
As we waited to hear the question, Hovind placed on the overhead a cartoon of children playing on a merry-go-round. He then told us that, according to these scientists, billions of years ago, all the matter in existence, for reasons we don’t know, began to be drawn together, like water rushing down a bathtub drain, into a tight point, “smaller than a period on a page.” This infinitely dense, spinning point, for reasons we don’t know, then burst out creating the universe.
He then turned to the cartoon of the children at play and asked the audience if, as children, they had ever had the misfortune of playing too wildly on a merry-go-round. Putting up a second cartoon of the children either holding on to the merry-go-round or flying off, he informed us that, interestingly enough, several planets and moons in our galaxy spin in a different direction than the rest. “If children were playing on a merry-go-round that began to spin clockwise at 100 mph,” he jokingly asked with a grin, “how many of the children would fly off spinning counterclockwise?” Obviously, none.
“So why,” he told us he asked the professor, “do several planets and moons in our solar system spin the wrong way?” The professor, of course, had no response. Hovind helped him out. “Here’s what I believe: Six thousand years ago, God created the heavens and the Earth,” a mantra that he would go on to repeat after refuting every claim.
I was transfixed. It was all so easy and straightforward that the only way anyone could not believe was due to willful, sinful ignorance. That week I learned that:
- given the erosion of Niagara Falls, if the earth were millions and millions of years old, Niagara Falls must once have been as far south as Texas.
- reptiles never stop growing and so, if there was once a time on earth when there was no death or disease, these small reptiles we experience today would have been able to grow into the massive dinosaurs of the past.
- alleged alien abductions were actually instances of demonic possession.
- there were layers of bedrock that showed dinosaur footprints right next to human footprints.
- there are plesiosaurs swimming in the deepest reaches of our oceans and Scottish lochs even today.
- the Earth is slowing by a small amount every year, and that, if the Earth was millions and millions of years old, there must have been a time when it was spinning so quickly that everything on the Earth should have been flung away into the depths of space.
- a scientist once carbon dated an apple his coworker had brought from home for a snack and was informed that the apple was hundreds of thousands of years old . . . and that the scientist soon converted to Christianity because of the experience.
- all of the mysteries of existence were fully explained in the simple, perfect Word of God.
At my request, my father purchased from Hovind’s media table a series of perhaps eight VHS tapes of lectures. Over the years that followed, I watched these tapes incessantly and memorized everything I could. I felt so much pride in all that I had learned as well as the praise that I received from the leadership of the church we attended. I felt so much confidence in the knowledge that I would never experience the crisis of faith that so many had after being caught unprepared by the allure of evolution. In the years that followed my introduction to Dr. Hovind, I told hundreds of questioning friends and nonbelieving strangers about the myth of evolution, always echoing my teacher’s mantra, “Here’s what I believe: about six-thousand years ago, God created the heavens and the Earth.”
My crisis of faith came about ten years after my time with Hovind and his overhead projector in that small, white chapel. The small fundamentalist Christian college I attended somehow had a few professors who actually had reasonable rebuttals to my well-rehearsed declarations of the truth of creation. And then in my junior year of college, I lost a good friend to the carelessness of a drunk driver. He was a good man, like a brother to me, and nothing I had learned could keep the careful world I had built in my mind from shattering. In the moment of a short phone call in the middle of the night – “Doug died last night. I have to go” – the last vestiges of the hollow faith and naivete that I had inherited in that backwoods, country church with Dr. Hovind and his cartoon overheads were finally exposed.
In a moment, everything that I had once held dear had been taken from me. But by the grace of God and the kindness of God’s people, I have found a new and stronger faith than the one I lost. The scars of my fundamentalist past still remain, but I in the intervening decades I have found a new faith.
Here’s what I believe: About 2,000 years ago, Christ, for reasons that I will never fully understand, sacrificed himself for a world I will never fully understand, but that, through the work of a lifetime, I can come to love like he did.
Galloping to Hell: Genesis: Paradise Lost
by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger
In our recent article at The Conversation, “At the evangelical Creation Museum, dinosaurs lived alongside humans and the world is 6,000 years old,” we made the point that there is very little in the way of science at the Creation Museum.
Not surprisingly, the folks running the museum do not agree.
Dr. Jason Lisle, who holds a PhD in astrophysics and now has his own online creation science ministry, wrote this in response (in 2008) to a comment from a visitor who said they were surprised that there wasn’t more science in the museum:
Of course, there is plenty of science that confirms a biblical creation. . . . Much of this science is presented in the Creation Museum. Some of this science in the museum is very apparent (such as the information presented in the planetarium, or the Flood . . . geology room). But much of the science is “behind the scenes,” and you may not have noticed it (Righting America at the Creation Museum, 71).
In another 2008 Answers in Genesis (AiG) publication (The Creation Museum: Behind the Scenes!), visitors who wanted to see more creation science were directed to videos in the Wonders of Creation Room.
In the Science chapter of Righting America at the Creation Museum, we do a rather exhaustive analysis (some may have found it tedious, and we don’t blame them) of all the placards, videos, dioramas, and so forth in these areas identified by AiG as presenting a lot of creation science.
Quite honestly, we were surprised that most of the so-called science on display in the Creation Museum did not even pass AiG’s test for “real science.” AiG makes a big deal about the distinction between observational science (which is real science because it is observable and repeatable in the present) and historical science (which is not real science—evolution is their primary example—because it is about things that happened in the past that can’t be observed in the present). As we document in the book, it turns out that there is precious little (if any) observational science in the Creation Museum that actually “confirms” (AiG’s preferred term) a biblical creation.
In November 2019, AiG unveiled new exhibits at the Creation Museum. Ken Ham (CEO of Answers in Genisis) boasted that they had completely renovated one third of the square footage of exhibits within the museum. We watched with much interest the “Walk through the Exhibits” video on the Creation Museum website. While some of the renovations were basically “upgrades” (Ham’s term) of the old exhibits such that the arguments, other renovations involved replacing old exhibits with new ones. And the aforementioned Wonders of Creation Room has been replaced by the Relevance of Genesis room, in which the Creation Museum designers have staged a converted urban warehouse within which an imagined artist has, among other things, painted images of Noah and other biblical figures on a brick wall.
Given that the Wonders Room is gone, we wondered if the Creation Museum had found another place to offer up creation science. And we believe we have found it in the 4-D theater (it’s 4-D because in addition to the fact that the film is 3-D, the seats also shake such that viewers have a “4-D” experience). In the 4-D theater, viewers watch a shortened (22-minute) version (titled In Six Days) of the full-length (100 minute) film Genesis: Paradise Lost.
The executive producer of Genesis: Paradise Lost, which was shown in a few theaters last year, is Eric Hovind, who is the son of the infamous Kent “Dr. Dino” Hovind, and who is continuing in his father’s footsteps as head of Creation Today ministries. The film lists nine “featured doctors and scientists,” all of whom are familiar names in the tiny world of young Earth creationist experts, and includes AiG’s token female creationist, Georgia Purdom. Also on the list is John Baumgardner, who later in the film is identified as “Geophysicist, Los Alamos National Laboratory” – which seems weirdly misleading, given that he left Los Alamos in 2004 to embark on a full-time career as a creation scientist.
But of all the talking heads, Charles Jackson gets the most airtime. Jackson, who regales viewers with stories about his victories in debates with evolutionists and atheists, proudly asserts that “I have four degrees, [while] most evolutionists I have met have only three. The film lists him as “Professor of Creation Science” at Liberty University.
But it turns out that he is not a working scientist: his highest degree is an Ed.D. from the University of Virginia, he has taught at the grade school level, and while he apparently has taught an online course at Liberty, we can find no reference to him on the Liberty website.
Genesis: Paradise Lost is, in essence, a 100-minute Gish Gallop. Coined by Eugenie Scott, long-time director of the National Center for Science Education, the Gish Gallop (originally meant to refer to creationist Duane Gish’s rhetorical strategy) “is a technique used during debating that focuses on overwhelming an opponent with as many arguments as possible, without regard to accuracy or strength of the arguments.”
Following this standard young Earth creationist strategy, Paradise Lost gallops along at a breakneck pace from one claim to the next. In just one 10 minute and 30 second segment, the film’s talking heads “cover” (an absurd word in this context) all of the following topics:
- The Big Bang
- The Creation of Stars
- Black Holes, and Gravity Waves
- First Law of Thermodynamics
- Second Law of Thermodynamics
- Spontaneous Generation
- Scientific Naturalism
- The Starlight Problem, and Light Years
- The Bible Teaches that God Stretched out the Heavens
- “Red Shifts,” and the Expansion of the Universe
- The Bible Teaches that the Earth is Round
- The Stretching out of Time
- Spiral Galaxies, and the Question of Galaxy Smearing
- Short Period Comets and Long Period Comets
- The Sun and Nuclear Fusion
- The Density and Magnetic Field of Mercury
- The Magnetic Field of Mars
- The Magnetic Field of Uranus
- The Magnetic Field and Heat of Neptune
- The Magnetic Field and Atmospheric Nitrogen of Pluto
- The Retrograde Rotation, Magnetic Field, and Surface Features of Venus
- The Dissipating Rings of Saturn
630 seconds, 22 topics. On average, 28.3 seconds per topic. It is a quintessential Gish Gallop.
Of course, Genesis: Paradise Lost is not presented in the context of a debate. If for some inexplicable reason mainstream scientists watch this film, they can pick apart each of the film’s arguments at their leisure.
But the film’s target audience is not the scientific community. As is the case with the Creation Museum in general, the film is aimed at evangelical laypeople. And these evangelical viewers will come away from the film with no understanding of, say, gravity waves and red shifts and galaxy smearing and the retrograde rotation of Venus, which of course means that they will have absolutely no ability to evaluate the argument that gravity waves and red shifts and galaxy smearing and the retrograde rotation of Venus help prove that the Earth and Universe are but 6,000 years old.
So what is the point of this film?
It’s simple. The goal is to use the barrage of information and incomprehensible arguments to reassure evangelical viewers that there is lots and lots and lots of science that supports young Earth creationism. Evangelicals do not have to understand it. They just have to believe that “real science” confirms their Truth.
Punctuating the film’s Gish Gallop are completely unsubstantiated assertions such as these:
- “we have science, it’s really on our side,”
- “the scientific evidence does not confirm evolution and millions of years, it confirms what Genesis says,”
- “Genesis passes the scientific method; evolution doesn’t,”
- “creationists are finding more and more ammunition in the new scientific data,”
- “we actually have an immense amount . . . of evidence of dinosaurs and man living at the same time,” and
- “it’s the unbelievers that have a problem, not us.”
So if true science is really with the young Earth creationists, why do so many people believe in evolution and an old Earth? The talking heads in Genesis: Paradise Lost answer that it is because the American people have been “brainwashed” and “conned” by secularists and atheists. In language eerily reminiscent of Joseph McCarthy, they spin out a gigantic conspiracy theory:
The secularists, the atheists, they took control of science. They took control of all the science journals, all the university science programs. They have taken over the museums, they have taken over the state schools, they have taken over the universities, the textbooks, the public schools in every country. The secularists really have control of the educational system, and they want their religion of secularism, of atheism, of naturalism forced upon the students. They use political pressure, they use scare tactics, they use the ACLU, they will intimidate school districts and take away their autonomy that’s given to them by the Constitution . . . They hijacked science, and they convinced the whole world that science is only possible within an atheist worldview (emphases ours).
They, they, they.
Fortunately, “they” are going to get their appropriate reward in the end.
The last 10 minutes of the film transitions from the Gish Gallop to standard fundamentalist fare, particularly, the reality of Hell. With great enthusiasm, evangelist Ray Comfort describes the Judgment Day that is coming:
Every time we sin, we store up His wrath. It’s going to be revealed on the Day of Judgment . . . You will have to give an account to God for every idle word you have spoken. Every deed done in darkness will be brought out into the light. And if that happens on Judgment Day, and you’re found guilty, [here Comfort pivots to look directly at the camera] the Bible says you’re heading for Hell.
According to the film, this judgment was prefigured by the Flood: God slaughtered once, and He – with all that stored up wrath – will do it again.
The talking heads make much of the fact that Noah’s Ark served as an ark of salvation – people just had to choose to get on board. Given AiG’s claim that there may have been as many as twenty billion people on Earth at the time of the Flood, it is absolutely baffling that the film points to one boat as a sign of hope.
Or perhaps not baffling at all. In the end, Genesis: Paradise Lost, the Creation Museum, and AiG are all about the horrific slaughter and everlasting torture of their perceived enemies. There is a reason that the final chapter of Righting America at the Creation Museum is entitled “Judgment”:
The museum’s controlling and repetitive narrative of disobedience and punishment, especially with its judgment for America, for the West, for all humanity is forthcoming, and with it the rescue of a faithful remnant and eternal damnation for the rest of humanity . . . They [will] be cast into a hell where they will endure eternal, conscious torment (emphases added).
They. And we know who they are.
(Most of) us.
Righting America appears at The Conversation
by William Trollinger and Susan Trollinger
We were delighted to write the following article, which was published today at The Conversation! We have shared the article below in its entirety, thanks to The Conversation’s generous republishing policy. Enjoy!
At the evangelical Creation Museum, dinosaurs lived alongside humans and the world is 6,000 years old
William Trollinger, University of Dayton and Susan L Trollinger, University of Dayton
Summer travel in the United States has slowed but not stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Among those destinations that have recently reopened is, as of June 8, the Creation Museum, a museum dedicated to promoting the Biblical story of Genesis as historic and scientific fact.
More than this, the Creation Museum offers a window into the ideas and workings of the American religious right.
Adam, Eve and the dinosaurs
Evangelical Christians make up approximately 25% of the U.S. population. A majority of them think the Bible should be read literally and that evolution is false.
The Creation Museum, about which we wrote a book in 2016, promotes a very specific version of this belief, which holds that God made the universe in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago.
The first four chapters of the book of Genesis tell the story of Adam and Eve, who were created on the sixth day and given two jobs: to obey God and populate the Earth. When they disobeyed God and ate fruit from the tree of knowledge, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and became mortal.
Adam and Eve did better on their second assignment, though. Eve gave birth to two sons, Cain and Abel, and, according to the Creation Museum, to a daughter who later became Cain’s wife.
According to Genesis, humans eventually became wicked and violent. In response, God sent a global flood that drowned everyone on the planet; the Creation Museum says the dead numbered in the billions.
Only righteous Noah and his family were saved. They, along with some animals – including, according to the Creation Museum, dinosaurs – were safely housed in the ark that God commanded Noah to build.
Since opening in 2007, the Creation Museum has told this story – with an abundance of dinosaur displays and life-size dioramas of the idyllic Garden of Eden – to more than 4 million visitors.
Biblical inerrancy
Creationism is a central tenet of Protestant fundamentalism, an American evangelical movement that has its roots in the late 19th century just as Darwinian evolution was undermining the story of Genesis.
Around that same time, scholars were also asking substantive questions about who actually wrote the 66 books of the Bible, noting some of its apparent inconsistencies and errors and observing that some of its stories – including that of the giant flood – seemed borrowed from other cultures.
Some conservative evangelical theologians, appalled by the undermining of biblical authority, responded by creating the notion of biblical inerrancy. In this view, the Bible is without error, clearly written and factually accurate – including when it comes to history and science.
The fundamentalist movement emerged in 1919, holding to biblical inerrancy and creationism. They did, however, accept geologists’ assertions that Earth was millions or billions of years old, based on its many layers of rock.
As such, fundamentalists understood God’s six “days” of creation to refer not to 24-hour days, but to eras of indeterminate length.
This posed a problem for biblical inerrancy. If the Bible is best understood literally, how can a “day” be an era?
Recreating Earth
In 1961 Bible scholar John Whitcomb Jr. and engineer Henry Morris came to the rescue with their book, “The Genesis Flood.” Borrowing heavily from the Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price – who had spent decades defending his own faith’s belief that God created Earth in six days – Morris and Whitcomb argued that it was Noah’s flood that created Earth’s layers.
In this theory, the planet’s geological strata only give the impression that the Earth is ancient, when in fact these layers were created 6,000 years ago by a global flood that lasted a year.
Young Earth creationism spread through American fundamentalism with astonishing speed in the late 20th century. Among the many Christian organizations established to advance these ideas is Answers in Genesis, or AiG. Founded in 1994 in Petersburg, Kentucky, AiG is a young Earth creationist juggernaut, producing a flood of creationist books, videos, magazines, school curricula and other print and digital materials each year.
As we document in our book, AiG is also heavily invested in the white evangelical right-wing politics that in 2016 helped secure the presidency for Donald Trump.
The 75,000-square-foot Creation Museum, located next to AiG’s main office and down the road from its giant replica of Noah’s Ark is the jewel of AiG’s close to US$50 million assets.
Creationist science
Though the Trump administration derides science and scientists, AiG chief executive Ken Ham claims to be a fan.
In a 2014 debate with Bill Nye, popularly known as “the science guy,” that has been viewed nearly 8 million times on YouTube, Ham said the word “science” 105 times – twice as often as Nye. “I love science!” Ham insisted.
But contemporary mainstream science is defined by its use of the scientific method, in which scientists formulate a hypothesis, conduct experiments to test that hypothesis and then confirm or deny it.
By contrast, creationists begin with a conclusion – that the universe is 6,000 years old – then seek evidence to confirm it. Contravening facts, such as carbon dating that shows the Earth to be 4.5 billion years old, are rejected.
The Creation Museum’s presentation of an impressive skeleton of an Allosaurus, donated by neo-Confederate Michael Peroutka, is a good example of creation “science.”
This exhibit explains in great and seemingly accurate scientific detail that the Allosaurus’s skull is 34 inches long, 22 inches high and has 53 teeth that are about 4.5 inches long, if you include the roots.
Then it states that this Allosaurus perished in Noah’s flood. Those scouring the placards for empirical evidence that dinosaurs scrambled up a hilltop to escape the rising waters will come up short.
Mainstream geologists and biologists will probably find the Creation Museum more frustrating than educational. But for those hoping to better understand the divides of modern American society, the museum is illuminating. It shines a light on the worldview held by a segment of the U.S. population with significant economic resources and political connections at the highest rungs of power.
William Trollinger, Professor of History, University of Dayton and Susan L Trollinger, Professor of English, University of Dayton
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Bible, and the Creation Museum Bible
by William Trollinger
I grew up in an evangelical home in Denver – with a very pietistic mother – and attended an evangelical church and then an evangelical college (Bethel, in St. Paul, MN). And in home, church, and college there was one very consistent message: I needed to read the Bible and know the Bible and understand the Bible as the final authority. There were personal devotions centered around the Bible, Bible study groups, Bible classes in church and then in college.
Bible Bible Bible.
So is it just me, or is it the case that contemporary white evangelicals simply do not, in the end, care about the Bible as the Bible? Is it simply an object – even if held upside down (as we see here with Donald Trump) – that they can use to bash their enemies?
When Sue and I started our research on the Creation Museum we assumed that there would be lots of Bible on display at the museum. After all, the whole premise of the museum, the whole premise of young Earth creationism, is based on a literal reading of Genesis 1-11. More than this, Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) repeatedly assert that the inerrant Bible is without error, factually accurate in all that it teaches (including what it says about history and science), and the final authority for Christians.
So it makes sense that we thought there would be lots of Bible at the museum. But we were wrong.
Oh, there are lots and lots of placards with tiny bits of biblical text, sometimes just a few words from a particular verse. Snippets.
But it’s worse than this, as there is
the inconsistent use of translations and the creative editing [of biblical text]; the lack of ellipses indicating where text has been removed from a passage; the failure to provide relevant context for the passages that are displayed. All of this seems oddly loose, given the Creation Museum’s stated commitment to biblical inerrancy and the very words of the Bible as “God-breathed” (Righting America 136-137).
At first blush this seems perplexing. And then it becomes blindingly obvious. For all their talk about the Bible as the final authority, the Creation Museum is not interested in the Bible qua Bible. Instead, the Creation Museum is interested in promoting a right-wing patriarchal young Earth creationism as the Truth. And if that means ignoring biblical text and cutting/manipulating biblical text and failing to contextualize biblical text, so be it. It is all in behalf of the Truth.
Ten years after its opening the Creation Museum got around to devoting a three-room exhibit to Jesus, or, to be accurate, a vengeful, superhero version of Jesus.
A new exhibit, but the same old Creation Museum approach to the Bible. I discussed various examples of this in an earlier post, but here I want to focus on what is perhaps the most egregious example of biblical manipulation in the entire museum.
On the “Teachings of Jesus” placard there is a section entitled “Rebukes,” which could easily be entitled “A Very Angry Jesus Condemns Again, and Again, and Again.” And here is one of those condemnations:
Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41).
Now, it is clear that the museum is hoping or expecting that the visitor reading this placard will supply the missing premise—that is, who the “cursed” are who deserve “everlasting fire.”
This is one of Aristotle’s crucial insights that we find in his treatise on rhetoric. And that is, the enthymeme, a rhetorical strategy that leaves out either a premise or a conclusion to an argument that, in doing so, involves the audience (because they supply the premise or conclusion) and makes them think that they (rather than the rhetorician) are constructing the argument.
Of course, given that many (most?) visitors to the Creation Museum are steeped in the culture war rhetoric of AiG and the Christian Right, it is obvious who they supply as the cursed: those who are LGBTQ, those who are pro-choice, those who seek the separation of church and state, those who hold evolution to be true, those who do not hold to biblical inerrancy and other fundamentalist doctrines.
In the world of AiG and the Christian Right, it’s obvious that these are the people whom Jesus is condemning to hell. In fact, it is easy to imagine that the folks running the Creation Museum expect that their visitors will assume something like this follows Jesus’ statement of condemnation:
“Because you are gay and lesbian, because you have had an abortion, because you are not obedient to your husband, because you do not want the Bible to be taught in your schools, because you do not believe the universe was created in 6 24-hour days, because you do not believe the Bible is factually accurate in all that it teaches: you shall go away into eternal punishment.”
Just a side note here. If Jesus had indeed said anything like this, AiG would unquestionably feature these verses everywhere – on T-shirts and coffee mugs, in ads on Tucker Carlson and Fox News, perhaps even on the exterior of the Creation Museum. That is to say, if Jesus had said something like this, these verses certainly would have been included on this placard.
But it turns out that Jesus did not say anything like this. Here are the five verses that follow Jesus’ statement of condemnation, the five verses that the Creation Museum chose to elide:
“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.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or naked or sick 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 to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:42-46)
Not one word about doctrine, or sexuality. Not one word that can fit into a culture-war narrative. Instead, these words from Jesus are all about caring for “the least of these.” And judgment comes for those who don’t care for them.
I was an earnest evangelical adolescent. I read the Bible as I was told. And it was in reading the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25 – among other passages in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament – that the nature of my faith changed. Dramatically.
That sort of transformation is precisely what the folks at AiG do not want. They are determined to do what they can to “lock down” a culture-war Christianity. And if this means cutting out or eliding or failing to contextualize passages from the Bible, that’s ok. It is a war.
So much for standing on biblical authority.
Never Mind His Teachings—Jesus is on the A-Team!
by Susan Trollinger
One of the great things about academic research is that you never know in advance what you are going to encounter. You enter an archive. You open a book. You start watching a movie. You begin to interview subjects. You dig into survey results. You embark on a scientific experiment. And you do not know in advance what you are going to find. That is what makes research a blast and, when we are at our best, it is what keeps us humble.
So, when Bill and I crossed the threshold of the Creation Museum for the first time in January 2008, we had no idea what we would encounter. But given Answers in Genesis’s explicit claim to be an apologetics ministry, one of the last things we thought we would encounter is a paucity of Jesus. Seriously? The Messiah? The one for whom the whole religion is named was barely there? As we point out in Righting America at the Creation Museum:
[I]t is striking how little “Jesus” is to be found at the Creation Museum. While there are a great many placards throughout the museum with quotes from the Bible, few of these placards contain a quote from Jesus. Visual representations of Jesus in the museum appear to be limited to a white statue that is usually confined to a corner outside the Last Adam Theater (except, it seems, during the Christmas season when it appears in the Main Hall) and images of Jesus as he is being crucified that appear in The Last Adam film (Righting America 48).
In spring of 2017, Answers in Genesis unveiled a new three-room exhibit dedicated to Jesus. Thus, they addressed the striking lack of Jesus. But who is the Jesus that appears in those three rooms?
Early in the exhibit, placards identify groups that have Jesus wrong: Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims—folks who think he was a created being or “simply a prophet.” Or worse—secularists who think Jesus was “gentle and never judgmental.”
By contrast, the Jesus of the Creation Museum is powerful and authoritative. He “raised at least three people from the dead.” He “performed countless miracles during His ministry, just as the prophets foretold. He repeatedly demonstrated His power and authority over sicknesses, disabilities, nature, the supernatural realms, and death itself.”
Moreover, he provided proof of his divinity that rises even to modern empirical standards: “After He rose from the dead, Jesus proved that He was alive again as He appeared to various people over the next 40 days. He walked and talked with them, and He ate and drank with them.”
And what is important about Jesus’ resurrection is that it proves his claims to divinity and God’s approval: “This amazing miracle demonstrates that God fully endorsed the work and claims of Jesus. This is particularly significant in regard to Christ’s claims of divinity. . . . Therefore, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ proves both His divinity and that He had God’s absolute approval.”
God’s approval, absolute approval, divinity, power, claims made and proven, authority, miracles, history anticipated and revealed. The Jesus at the Creation Museum is the A-Team if there ever was one.
Representations are always selective. And to purchase this one, there is much about Jesus that must be bracketed.
- There certainly can’t be sustained attention to the Sermon on the Mount, in which among other things, Jesus calls his followers to be peacemakers, to turn the other cheek, to love even our enemies, and in which Jesus teaches us to pray for the forgiveness of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us (Matthew 5-7).
- Likewise, Jesus’ knowing and willing submission to the Roman authorities following Judas’s betrayal doesn’t fit the superhero Jesus of the Creation Museum (Mark 14: 43-50).
- And the Jesus who generously extends grace again and again to “untouchables” like the Samaritan woman at the well (someone most Jews of Jesus’ day wouldn’t even talk to) who Jesus knew already had five husbands and was living with a sixth man she wasn’t even married to also doesn’t make an appearance at the Creation Museum (John 4: 7-26).
- Then there’s the Jesus who, thanks to God’s great love for us, died for us even when we were sinners (Romans 5: 8). I think even Ken Ham would have to agree that that is not exactly a culture war move. Maybe that’s why such a Jesus doesn’t make an appearance at the Creation Museum.
While “Jesus” is on display at the Creation Museum now in a much more visible way than He was before, we have to ask—which Jesus? Who is this powerful, authoritative, God-approved, superhero Jesus? And what point is being made with this Jesus? And is that point the kind of point to which Jesus would give his assent? What about Jesus is ignored? And what sort of Christian is formed by this Jesus?
I don’t know about you, but I want the Jesus by the well. I want the Jesus who can’t stop sharing his grace with those who all the “respectable” people of his time couldn’t countenance. I have no need for the superhero, muscular Jesus.
If that means I’m secular (which I’m not), so be it.
Unrest and Status Quo at Cedarville
by William Trollinger
The Cedarville mess just gets worse. And the folks in charge apparently do nothing. But, remarkably, there are folks on the outside who are trying to help victims of the scandal.
Before we get to that, here is an extraordinarily abbreviated summary of the ongoing scandal.
In 2017, Paige Patterson-protégé Thomas White – who apparently participated in Patterson’s effort to cover up a rape at Southeastern Seminary in 2003 – hired Anthony Moore with the full knowledge that Moore had just been fired from his position at a Fort Worth TX megachurch for repeatedly filming the male youth pastor taking showers. White knew, Jason Lee (Cedarville’s Dean of Theology) knew, and the pastor of a local church (whom White asked to serve as Moore’s mentor) knew . . . and it appears very likely that a number of other Cedarville administrators and trustees also knew. But White and his collaborators failed to inform faculty, staff, and students about Moore’s (very recent) past.
Moore moved up the ladder at Cedarville, to the point of being appointed as special advisor to the president. Then, this April the story broke. Moore was fired, and the local pastor resigned. More than this, stories began coming out about how – under White’s leadership – the tenure process was undermined, Title IX mandates were ignored or circumvented, and (in Cedarville’s culture of toxic masculinity) female students who had been raped and sexually harassed were denied care and justice.
(If you would like the full story in all its sordid details, see (and these are in chronological order): here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
At a normal university, the Board of Trustees would have immediately relieved White and his collaborators of their jobs. But Cedarville is not a normal university. It is a fundamentalist institution that operates according to its own peculiar and perverse logic. And the school’s trustees – most of them at least – seem remarkably unconcerned with all of the above.
As one Cedarville person has observed, “White and other administrators have always gaslighted us employees, but the trustees have taken that to a whole new level!”
So it is status quo at Cedarville, and White and company remain on the job.
Just to be clear: the local pastor has resigned for doing what the Cedarville president asked him to do, but that president – and his collaborators – remain safely ensconced in their posts.
Of course, one could imagine that an honorable person would have voluntarily resigned their position. But it is way too late for Thomas White to do the honorable thing. Is it simply that he can’t give up the 9000 square foot house (!) that the Board of Trustees is building for him and his family?
It is important to note that, in contrast with White and his collaborators, two trustees did act honorably. In response to their colleagues’ decision to retain White, they resigned from the Board.
More than this, a person with long-standing and very deep ties to Cedarville has very recently issued a public letter, in which he observes that
Even our declining culture takes such abusive leadership and the mishandling of sexual offenses more seriously than the Trustees of Cedarville University. I never would have thought we would see such a day in my lifetime. Wonderful. We are now left with an institution whose standards are lower than the culture around it . . .
As an alumnus, as the son of the first campus pastor and Vice President for Christian Ministries (’70-’95), and as the pastor of the church that gave birth to Cedarville Baptist School in 1953, regrettably, I can no longer endorse the school. If it were possible, I would ask for the return of the motto that our church gave to the school, “For the Word of God and the Testimony of Jesus Christ.”
The president frequently concludes his letters, videos, and social media statements with the line, “God is faithful. You can trust Him.” That is so true. And in that we all can rest. Unfortunately, the same can no longer be said about the governing body and the executive officer of Cedarville University.
On Cedarville’s campus, and as seen in the photo accompanying the post, someone (apparently a student) painted “Dr. White Hypocrite” on a rock outside the Stevens Student Center. Not surprisingly, by morning it had been painted over (presumably by campus security).
But there are signs that there will be unrest among students and faculty when school starts again. And as noted before, formal complaints have been filed with the Higher Learning Commission, responsible for accrediting Cedarville.
Who knows where this story will end. In the meantime, there are students and faculty – particularly, but not only, women students, faculty, and staff members – who are forced to deal with ongoing abuse at a university that does nothing to protect them, and that actually discourages them from seeking help outside the Cedarville bubble.
In response to this appalling situation, and in dramatic contrast with the Board of Trustees, a source (who remains anonymous because of her connections with folks at the university) has very generously provided a list of resources for those who have been harassed and/or abused, and whose emotional and mental challenges have been dismissed by authorities at the university:
As a graduate of Cedarville, and as a Licensed Professional Counselor, I want to reach out to current or past students, faculty or staff in the Cedarville area who may be looking for counseling from a Christian perspective that is also guided by the rules, ethics, and standards of the State of Ohio. Counseling that offers acceptance, confidentiality, grace, and will affirm your perspective on medication to treat any mental health issues.
One major hurdle in therapy that I come across is spiritual guilt over mental health issues – as though anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc. are somehow marks of a “less-than” Christian and present a barrier in our relationship with God. We are ALL broken due to sin, and struggling with these issues is part of living in a fallen world. In fact, I believe scripture shows us that God CHOOSES to use people who don’t have it all together, and is in fact very present for the broken-hearted. God wants us to come and lay out our mess so He can do the cleaning….not for us to tidy up before we come to Him.
- Citi Lookout,CitiLookout.org,
- Counseling Center & Trauma Recovery Center
- Telecounseling & In-person Appointments
- Springfield, Ohio
- Individual Counseling, Trauma Recovery, Journey to Freedom
- Phone Number: 937-322-6532
- Sliding Scale (based on need)
- CrossWalk Counseling – Cindy Anderson (Contact Person)
- Xenia Nazarene Church | CrossWalk Counseling
- Xenia, Ohio
- Limited In-Person Appointments
- Individual and Marriage Counseling
- (937) 344-1030
- Low Flat Rate
- Greenhouse Counseling, LLC – Ginger Smith
- Ginger Smith, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, Beavercreek, OH, 45432 | Psychology Today
Telecounseling & In-person Appointments - Beavercreek, Ohio
- Individual Counseling
- gjsmith937@gmail.com
- (937) 681-6235
- Reduced Rates for Students
- Ginger Smith, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, Beavercreek, OH, 45432 | Psychology Today
- New Creation Counseling Center
- newcreationcounselingcenter.org
- Telecounseling & In-person Appointments
- Locations in Centerville, Tipp City, and Dayton, Ohio
- Psychiatry Services, Individual Counseling
- Intake Number: 937-506-0674
- Accepts Insurance & Sliding Fee Scale (based on need)
One would think that such information for abused and troubled members of the university community would come from the school itself.
But that’s not Cedarville.
Sin is Something Others Do
by William Trollinger
In her magisterial work, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances FitzGerald brilliantly explains a dynamic at the very heart of the contemporary Christian Right. Interestingly, she does this by contrasting Puritan theologian and revivalist Jonathan Edwards with the founder of the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, Sr.
As FitzGerald observes, when Edwards lamented that “the people have fallen into evil ways that jeopardize their covenant with God and risk His judgment upon them,” he was “speaking to the people in front of [him] about their individual sins.” They were the ones who needed to “repent and return to God.”
At first glance Falwell – with his repeated emphasis on the need for America to repent for its sins – sounded like Edwards. But FitzGerald points out that Falwell was preaching a radically different message, a radically different “jeremiad.” And the difference is that, in Falwell’s formulation,
The sin lay not in the souls of his congregation, but in outside forces. The enemy was . . . the Other. In this case it was “the immoral minority,” composed variously of feminists, humanists, homosexuals, liberals, pornographers, Supreme Court justices, and government bureaucrats. This minority was conducting “a vicious assault on the family,” and the only sin of the majority was in allowing it to continue. Christians, said Falwell, have been silent too long (Evangelicals, 307-308).
FitzGerald has it right. And Falwell was perhaps the primary architect of the contemporary Christian Right message. It is the rhetoric of culture war. The Forces of Light v. the Forces of Darkness. Sin is that what the “Other” does.
Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) epitomize this cosmic binary. Ham, AiG, and their fellow young Earth creationist fundamentalists are the forces of Righteousness. Sin is what the Other — liberals, feminists, secularists, homosexuals, and evolutionists – does.
Take, for example, what Ham and AiG have had to say about racism. Who is to blame for “the so-called ‘racism crisis’” (Ham’s phrase) in the contemporary world? As we discuss in Righting America at the Creation Museum, and as Ham continues to promote on the AiG website, most of the blame lies with Charles Darwin and the evolutionists, of course. This is a very old creationist trope, highlighted by their determination to draw a straight line from Darwin to Hitler.
This is a fallacious and absurdly simplistic argument. I will spare you the details (but you can check it out in Righting America, 182-184). My point here is that, for Ham and AiG, most racism is over there. With the Other. With the Enemy.
This is a fantasy, of course. Millions of white Americans used a literalist reading of the Bible to argue for the just enslavement of African Americans. Millions of white Americans used a literalist reading of the Bible to argue for the establishment of the Jim Crow system of white supremacy (which, of course, involved the lynching of blacks). Millions of white Americans used a literalist reading of the Bible to argue for segregation.
And when, in the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans resisted their oppression, well, those same Bible-believing Christians desperately worked to keep them in their place:
In her [wonderful] book, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, historian Carolyn Renee Dupont puts it bluntly: Mississippi’s white “evangelicals fought mightily against black equality, proclaiming that God himself ordained segregation, blessing the forces of resistance, silencing the advocates of racial equality within their own faith traditions, and protecting segregation in their churches.” While many white mainline Protestants and white Jews joined the movement for civil rights, a host of white evangelical and fundamentalist ministers and leaders vehemently attacked them for having “dangerously perverted both the Bible and the divine plan.” So in 1958 BBF [Baptist Bible Fellowship] minister Jerry Falwell thundered from his Lynchburg, Virginia pulpit: “The Hamites . . . were cursed to be servants of the Jews and Gentiles . . . If we persist in tearing down God’s barriers” between the races “God must punish us for it.” When it became clear that the United States government meant to enforce integration of the public schools, white fundamentalists, including Falwell, started segregation academies throughout the South to ensure that their children would not attend school with black children (Righting America, 187).
White supremacist ideas indeed have deep historical roots in U.S. Christianity But Ham and AiG in particular, and white evangelicals in general, will not talk about this obvious historical fact. (Just ask black evangelicals.)
Instead, sin is what liberals, feminists, secularists, homosexuals, evolutionists do.
When it comes to Ham, Darwinism, and race, this verse comes to mind: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7: 5).
Jesus apparently failed to appreciate the fact that to own one’s sin violates the essential logic of the culture war. Sin is the property of the Other.
