Pot Calling the Kettle Black: Ken Ham Attacks “Secular Media” for Its Lies
by William Trollinger
Ken Ham has to be thrilled.
Mike Johnson – young Earth creationist, anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion extremist, and election denier – is now Speaker of the House. More than this, Johnson has done legal work for Ark Encounter, helping to ensure that Ham’s big (albeit unseaworthy) boat annually receives a sales tax rebate of $1.825 million, as part of Kentucky’s tourism development program.
But despite the fact that his ideological and work buddy is now, after the Vice President, next in the line of succession for the presidency of the United States, Ham is angry, angry that news stories on Johnson and Ham make the point that “Kentucky taxpayers helped fund” the Ark:
Do we even need to be reminded that we can’t trust much of the secular media and that they will lie for the purpose of maligning those they don’t agree with . . . At Answers in Genesis, we have stated so many times that the Ark was funded 100% by private funding. Let me say it again: the Ark Encounter project and the Creation Museum were both funded 100% by private funding.
Let’s leave aside the question of whether the sales tax rebate qualifies as public funding. For all of his self-righteous bluster re: the “secular media,” Ham conveniently and consistently fails to acknowledge that the little town of Williamstown provided the Ark with all sorts of public assistance:
- The town gave Answers in Genesis (AiG) $175,000.
- The town gave the Ark 98 acres for the princely sum of $1.
- Most important, the town underwrote $62 million of junk bonds for the Ark construction project, in the process (and here’s what makes this deal so sweet) agreeing that 75% of the Ark’s property taxes would go to repaying the bonds, and not to the local government.
If this is not public funding, I don’t know what is.
Of course, Williamstown agreed to subsidize the Ark in hopes that this fundamentalist tourist attraction would result in an economic boon for the town. The town was sold on this dream thanks to AiG’s feasibility report, which claimed that the Ark would attract an estimated 1.6 million visitors in the first year, and that these numbers would go up for the next decade by an average of 7% each year after that.
Well, Ark Encounter annual attendance has never reached 1 million. And last year (July 2022-June 2023) the Ark welcomed 782,660 visitors – not an insignificant number, but only 36% of the 2.18 million that had been projected.
Williamstown has not come close to enjoying the economic boon it had imagined when it was sold on the junk bond deal by AiG. As David MacMillan – featured in the brilliant documentary “We Believe in Dinosaurs” – has put it, “Ham fleeced a town that gave him his Ark Encounter.”
But not only does Ham refuse to come clean about the fact that Williamstown helped subsidize the Ark, but he has (appallingly) claimed that this little town has only itself to blame for its lack of economic growth, in that it happens to be on the wrong side of the interstate (which, of course, is precisely where it was located when AiG made its sales pitch).
Do we even need to be reminded that we can’t trust much of what Ken Ham has to say?
Not to mention his compatriot, Mike Johnson.
Mike Johnson: Not for the People, and Not a True Evangelical
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 seventh book, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy, has recently been published. And book #8, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, will appear in April..
Rep. Mike Johnson and I are Louisiana natives. We both were born and raised in North Louisiana. We both were raised as Southern Baptists. We both graduated from LSU, he from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, and I from the Ph.D. program in the Department of Communication.
I imagine that he, like me, attended the Louisiana State Fair in Shreveport numerous times in his childhood. I am sure that he, like me, grew up pulling for the LSU Fighting Tigers on Saturday nights.
He has become a powerful politician and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. I am an American Baptist preacher and writer.
We both profess to be evangelicals. But his understanding of what it means to be evangelical is dramatically different from mine. Perhaps the differences in a pair of Louisiana guys maps the major differences within American evangelicalism, within American Christianity:
- Johnson is an election denier who believes Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. I know that Joe Biden was legitimately and fairly elected as our president.
- Johnson is a MAGA supporter of Donald Trump; I believe Trump is the most dangerous and evil politician in America. I have written two books attempting to tell evangelicals the truth about Trump. In The Immaculate Mistake I argue that evangelicals gave birth to Trump and his demagoguery. In Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy, I argue that Trump is philosophically, biblically, rhetorically, and politically evil, as his political alienation, demagoguery, violence, and authoritarianism are shaking the foundations of democracy.
- Johnson is a young Earth creationist who believes the world was created 6,000 years ago. He has defended Ken Ham, the Creation Museum, and the Ark Encounter in court, helping Ham receive millions of dollars in tax breaks and funds from the Kentucky Department of Tourism. I find young earth creationism to be fake, false, and unchristian, as the Creation Museum is nothing but the visualization of right-wing ideologies.
- Johnson is a virulent opponent of the LGBTQ community, even to the point of lamenting the dissolution of anti-sodomy laws in a dozen states. Perhaps his most egregious statement came when he claimed,
- “Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone. Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”
- In contrast, I am a supporter of the LGBTQ community and am the interim pastor of a welcoming and affirming American Baptist and UCC church.
- Johnson is a hardline anti-abortionist, to the point of asserting that doctors who give abortion care should be “imprisoned at hard labor.” I am not a hardline anti-abortionist, and am appalled by the unending crusade to criminalize more and more people who are involved in helping women.
- Johnson believes America was founded as a “Christian nation, following the lead of the American history “hobbyist,” David Barton. But Barton’s views have been convincingly contradicted by the overwhelming majority of actual historians in America, including some very conservative ones. In contrast with Johnson, I know America was not founded as a Christian nation.
- Johnson is a Christian Nationalist, and his Christian Nationalism is rooted in an American Gnosticism and idolatry that is but one example of the failure of the Southern Baptist Church to be the church. On the other hand, I believe that Christian Nationalism is a form of idolatry.
- Johnson opposes the separation of church and state. Maintaining my Baptist roots, I am a firm supporter of the separation of church and state.
- Johnson defines his Christianity as a commitment to culture war politics. I define my Christianity as a commitment to the politics of Jesus – an alternative to the secular politics of violence and death.
I will address two problems that I have with Rep. Johnson’s political/theological understandings: His use of the word “people” and his claim to be an “evangelical.” I want to clarify who Johnson actually is; that is to say, I want to clarify what makes him so dangerous.
Johnson Doesn’t Care about the “People”
I don’t trust smiling, hand-shaking, back-slapping politicians and Baptist preachers going on until doomsday about the “people” and loving the people. There’s an agenda hidden behind the theatrics.
He voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. He even wrote a court brief that argued that polling irregularities stemming from COVID protocols invalidated the results in four key states. He has been willing to violate Constitutional rules to do permanent damage to democracy. Thomas Friedman has reminded us, “The peaceful, legitimate transfer of power is the keystone of American democracy. Break it, and none of our institutions will work for long, and we will be thrust into political and financial chaos.” The new Speaker of the House attempted to halt the peaceful transfer of power, and in so doing he was trying to break the ties that bind us together as one people.
All this political activity may be deemed necessary by Johnson, but it’s not a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It is a government of right wing culture warriors and the rich. Over the course of the last ten years, Republicans like Johnson have resurrected a social Darwinism that allows the strong to control the majority with strict laws and authoritarian ways. These strange Republicans push for a lack of government intervention in issues that matter to them – Wall Street, evangelical church “freedoms,” and the environment – while at the same time demanding extreme government intervention in the sex lives of the people. These folks have no empathy for the poor and no desire to enlarge the social safety net, and they are persistent in their effort to reduce voting rights, especially for minorities. In the name of “the people,” Johnson’s party works hard every day to destroy truth, decency, patriotism, national unity, racial progress, and U. S. democracy.
Mr. Johnson made it clear what his agenda will be as Speaker: “You’re going to see an aggressive schedule in the next few days and weeks ahead. You’re going to see Congress working as hard as it has ever worked, and we are going to deliver for the American people.”
Crack open Johnson’s agenda, and you will not see one benefit for the people. Mr. Johnson, like the ancient Gibeonites, is the hewer of wood and drawer of water for Trump.
The promise that the new Speaker will work hard for the “American people” can’t be trusted.
Johnson Is Not a Real Evangelical
The media has already made a big splash about Johnson being an evangelical. But while Johnson was born in what was once the “Bible Belt,” his birthplace of Shreveport, Louisiana, the region is now the “Gambling Belt.” Where the First United Methodist Church and the First Baptist Church of Shreveport once dominated Shreveport, they have been replaced by Bally’s Shreveport Casino & Hotel, Boomtown Casino Hotel Bossier City, Eldorado Resort Casino Shreveport, and Margaritaville Resort Casino Bossier City. Shreveport has gone from the Bible Belt to the Altar of Mammon.
The same erosion has afflicted evangelicals in general. The word “evangelical” has morphed from “preacher of the good news,” to political supporters of the right-wing of the Republican Party. Evangelicals “ain’t what they used to be.”
I challenge the right of Christians like Mr. Johnson to even use the word “evangelical.” Prior to the 20th century evangelicals were preachers and prophets who called for justice, who honored the teachings and example of Jesus, who asked his followers to act as peacemakers and to care for “the least of these.” Evangelicals supported voting rights for women, rights for African Americans, working people, and care for the poor.
Today’s evangelicals are much less substantive as they promote a religion based on success, the prosperity gospel, and “church growth.” With the triumph of right-wing Christianity, evangelicals are not nearly as interesting. The people who once “turned the world upside down” in defiance of Caesar have now made alliance with Caesar to obtain worldly political power.
Evangelicals, for centuries, had a biblical calling: “The kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe the good news!” To repent is not to feel bad but to think differently. But evangelicalism, in its concern for gaining power and control, has confused the kingdom itself with the benefits of the kingdom. So, the prosperity gospel preachers, the positive-thinking preachers, the charismatic preachers who promise that God will make you rich, healthy, and happy have an individual prescription for life. But all this is not the Gospel, nor is it historic evangelicalism.
The historian Randall Balmer has suggested
an evangelicalism for the twenty-first century that takes seriously the words of the Hebrew prophets who called for justice, an evangelicalism that honors the teachings and the example of Jesus, who asked his followers to act as peacemakers and to care for “the least of these.” Such an evangelicalism, I am confident, would look rather different from that of recent years.
Amen. But this is not Mike Johnson. He is not a true evangelical, and he is not for “the people.”
He is, however, perfect for MAGA Republicanism.
Racist Birds and Woke Conservatories: Ken Ham’s Colorblind Racism Knows No (Logical) Bounds
by William Trollinger
Ken Ham’s obsession with denying structural racism has gone completely off the rails.
Take, for example, his bizarre response to a Los Angeles Times article that discusses how there are remarkable contrasts in bird species in different parts of Los Angeles, as “wealthier, and typically whiter, areas attract a larger and more diverse population of birds.” Drawing upon an article in Ornithological Applications, the author points out that
the difference in bird populations [in Los Angeles] is a lasting consequence of racist home lending practices from decades ago, as well as modern wealth disparities.
So here we have a fascinating, sobering, and powerful article that draws upon a wonderfully researched study. More than this, it builds upon decades of scholarly work that has demonstrated the long-term impact of historical redlining and contemporary maldistribution of wealth in America.
Ok, this is one response to this article. Then there’s the response from Ken Ham. In an Answers in Genesis (AiG) blog post entitled “Is the Los Angeles Bird Population Racist?” – no, I am not joking – Ham argues that
those who look at the world only through the lens of so-called race will see racism everywhere – even observing “remarkably segregated” birds! Such ideas are permeating our culture.
What? What is Ham talking about? Does noticing the effects of historic housing discrimination equal birds that are racist? Is this what counts as a logical argument in the world of AiG apologetics?
Not satisfied with inanities about racist birds, Ham goes on to assert that:
This kind of thinking can now be found everywhere – from bird studies like this to which classical music is selected for students to learn to play. I was recently speaking with a piano and voice teacher who has a passion for high-quality music education. He shared that progressivism has completely overwhelmed the fine arts, including music, to the point where the standard canon of Western classical music (think Bach, Beethoven, Handel, etc.) is being ignored in favor of only [Ham’s emphasis] minority or underprivileged group music (so music isn’t selected based on merit or even historic value but on intersectionality).
There is so much to be said here:
- In contrast with the nicely researched LA Times article, there is no evidence here, there is no listing of all the conservatories that teach only “minority or underprivileged group music,” there is no listing of all the major symphony orchestras that play only “minority or underprivileged group music.” This article was supposedly “written with the assistance of AiG’s research team”; surely this research team had an hour or two to list all of the conservatories and all of the major symphony orchestras that have eliminated from their syllabi and from their repertoires music by white male composers.
- In contrast with Ham and his “research” team, I spent 15 minutes on the website of the famous Juilliard School. There I found a statement by the Dean of the Music Division, in which he notes that we are “taking important steps to broaden our knowledge by creating a faculty-research list of works by Black composers to embrace and work toward a more representative world of classical music.” So is that the problem? Noticing that for centuries the classical music world shut out composers (and conductors) who were people of color (not to mention women)? That is to say, is the point that Ham and AiG hate seeing anyone disturbing the white male (and unrepresentative) classical music world?
- And it is here where Ham’s racism becomes more blatant. Once that you decide to intentionally include classical music by people who have been traditionally left out (that is, people of color and women) you will end up with music that “isn’t selected based on merit or even historic value but on intersectionality.” Not very subtle, Ken.
(Side note: according to article #29 (!!) in the AiG Statement of Faith, “the concepts of ‘social justice,’ ‘intersectionality’ (my emphasis), and ‘critical race theory’ as defined in modern terminology are anti-biblical and destructive to human flourishing (Ezekiel 18:1-20; James 2: 8-9).” Of course these Bible verses have virtually nothing to say about rejecting social justice, intersectionality, and critical race theory . . . and I say of course because article #29 is not about aligning with biblical faith, but, instead, about aligning with MAGA politics.)
In a recent talk at the First Baptist Church in Columbia, Missouri, historian Jemar Tisby – speaking to a predominantly white audience – asserted that
If I could get all the White Christians in the room – all of you, all together – and I could teach you one thing, it would be that racism is not solely an issue of attitudes or interpersonal relationships, but racism has its doing in institutional manifestations . . . [But] that’s controversial for a lot of people. That’s what they’re arguing against when they cry ‘critical race theory’ or ‘wokeism.’ They don’t want to deal with the systemic aspects of racism.”
Yep. That’s Ken Ham and AiG. They are resolutely determined not to see systemic racism.
Instead, how about those racist birds and woke conservatories?
Amish Culture Prizes Peace − But You Wouldn’t Necessarily Know It from a Stop in Amish Country Tourist Towns
by Susan Trollinger
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at The Conversation. We are grateful to republish it here at rightingamerica.
Ohio’s Amish Country, located in the northeastern part of the state, draws over 4 million visitors every year – second only to Cedar Point amusement park as the Buckeye State’s most popular tourist attraction.
October, with its cooler temperatures and spectacular colors, is the region’s peak month for tourist traffic. Hundreds of thousands of tourists descend on the area in the fall to shop for Amish-made furniture, enjoy buggy rides and visit small towns that many Americans romanticize as bucolic escapes from the world.
And what will they find in the shops that line the main streets of towns like Berlin, Sugarcreek and Walnut Creek? Among other things, a plethora of items that feature Christian nationalist motifs, intense patriotism and ominous suggestions of violence – all antithetical to the core values of the Amish.
The reality is that Amish Country tourism has long been at odds with the plain and simple life of the Amish – a discrepancy at the heart of my 2012 book Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia.
A life apart
Descended from Anabaptist immigrants who fled religious persecution in Europe, the Amish typically live in rural areas where they seek to live a different sort of life, resisting aspects of contemporary American culture that undermine their commitments to church, family and community.
To live at a slower pace, they drive horse-drawn buggies instead of cars. To pursue their calling to follow Jesus rather than chase personal ambitions, they stop school after eighth grade. To avoid the distractions of consumer culture, they prohibit TVs and internet connections in their homes. And to keep themselves humble, they yield to communal rules about dressing plainly, living in modest homes and keeping their businesses small.
Seeking to follow Jesus, they embrace nonviolence and find inspiration in the story of a 16th-century Anabaptist, Dirk Willems, who was imprisoned for his faith. He escaped, but because of his commitments to love his enemy, he turned back when he saw that his captor had fallen through the ice. His captor survived to witness Willems being burned at the stake.
Out of their deep commitment to separation between church and state, the Amish refuse to swear oaths, receive Social Security benefits or join the military. That’s why you won’t see an American flag in an Amish school or hear Amish students recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
The ‘Amish brand’
Yet tourist towns capitalizing on what has become the “Amish brand” are full of gift shops selling merchandise you would not expect to find in an Amish home – Uncle Sam cutouts, Mickey Mouse yard flags, ornate lace curtains and Elvis Presley figurines.
As a scholar of rhetoric and religion, I’ve long been curious about Amish Country tourism, since it seemed – at least on the face of it – to have so little to do with the Amish themselves. Selling the Amish was my attempt to explain why many Americans found Amish Country so compelling.
My answer was that Amish Country tourism afforded visitors a nostalgic experience of a “simpler time” when Americans could imagine that they were in control of technology; that men were “men” and women were “women”; and that families sat down to Mom’s home-cooked meal every evening.
The region’s tourist towns play into this nostalgic desire that visitors have for a future that resembles an imagined past. In that imagined future, they would, like the Amish, escape cultural forces that they think have compromised America’s ability to be the Christian nation it supposedly once was.
A glimpse of real life
Since 2008, I’ve taken students from the University of Dayton to the Amish settlement located in Holmes and Wayne counties in northeastern Ohio.
In the course of the day, we visit a two-room school run by New Order Amish, whose rules for daily life are among the least strict among the Amish. Then we’re off to a candle shop owned and operated by five Old Order Amish sisters, followed by a visit to a Swartzentruber Amish farm. The Swartzentrubers are among the strictest Amish groups. In the small shop located between the house and a woodworking shop, a young woman sells woven baskets, homemade preserves and wood furnishings crafted by her father. We also enjoy meals and conversation at two Amish homes.
Of course, the stops we make are part of the tourism industry. And many Amish make their living from that industry, whether they are crafting solid wood furniture, serving diners in Amish-style restaurants or preparing hotel rooms for guests.
Importantly, the Amish don’t own the big Amish-style restaurants or gift shops or hotels. And because I want my students to have conversations with the people they have been studying, we spend very little time in these tourist towns.
When I was invited to present a paper last summer on Amish Country tourism – an update of “Selling the Amish,” as it were – I was obliged to spend some time in those tourist towns.
Guns and crosses
What I saw blew me away. There I was in the heart of the biggest Amish settlement in the world, when measured by the number of congregations. This area is home to nearly 40,000 Amish people deeply committed to pacifism: people who would rather suffer solitary confinement and reduced rations – as some did during World War I – than participate in “the war machine,” and who would never sing the national anthem.
Yet, I saw the Stars and Stripes everywhere: on T-shirts, ball caps, decorative wreaths, candles and, perhaps most strikingly, wooden crosses. There were concrete statues of soldiers kneeling at crosses, patriotic bunting and images of the Founding Fathers, with facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence, the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance nearby.
A large display in one Berlin shop featured merchandise from “Hold Fast,” a company whose website says its merchandise is designed “for freedom loving Americans who want to see Biblical values preserved and are taking a stand and letting their voices be heard.” Flags figure prominently across the merchandise, along with messages like: “One nation under God. Psalm 33:12. Hold Fast.”
I was even more taken aback by home decor items announcing that the “2nd Amendment is my gun permit,” along with thermoses challenging government authorities to “come and take it” – “it” being a gun – and coffee mugs that listed gun calibers (.22, .380, 9 mm, .40, .45) and proclaiming, “All faster than dialing 911.”
Amish Country tourism has never simply been about the plain and simple life of the Amish. But these days, sites that fuse Christian symbols and sacred texts with a brand of nationalism that celebrates masculine bravado, guns and the military marks a further and dramatic remove from the character of Amish life.
Still, if one ventures down a back road and ends up behind a slow-moving buggy, or ducks into an Amish-owned shop selling bulk foods, handmade brooms or half-moon pies, they can still encounter a people whose life is wildly at odds with so much that characterizes mainstream America today.
Heartland Institute Says There Isn’t Warming
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 persuade 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.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at 3 Quarks Daily. We are grateful to the editors for their permission to republish it here.
The Heartland Institute tells us that there is not, and cannot be, a climate crisis, because for most of the past 12,000 years the climate was warmer than it is today. A recent (October 5) posting by James Taylor, president of the Institute, states as follows (full text; fair use claimed):
CLIMATE CHANGE: The so-called climate crisis is a sham
There cannot be a climate crisis when temperatures are unusually cool.
- Scientists have documented, and even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has admitted, that temperatures were warmer than today throughout most of the time period that human civilization has existed.
- Temperatures would have to keep warming at their present pace for at least another century or two before we reach temperatures that were common during early human civilization.
- There can be no climate crisis – based on the notion of dangerously high temperatures – when humans have thrived in temperatures much warmer than today for most of the last 12,000 years.
None of this is true. Here is a graph of climate change in the past 12,000 years; note the value for 2016, on the right-hand axis of the main figure, as well as the rapid rise over the past century shown in the inset, which also shows the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. I have seen Heartland’s claim before, accompanied by graphs such as the one below, but without the insert and recent date, thus effectively suppressing everything that’s happened in the last century:
For people familiar with the Heartland Institute, this is just a dog bites man story. But it still matters, because it shows the extent to which discourse is being deliberately degraded.
Heartland is a major organisation, with an annual budget of almost four million dollars. It hosts its own climate change conferences, and has links to other powerful right-wing organisations such as the Heritage Foundation. It has seen its model legislation adopted by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council, which brings together state legislators and private sector representatives).
Heartland does not disclose its funding, although it is known to have received funding from ExxonMobil, the tobacco company Philip Morris, assorted right wing pressure groups, and the Walton family foundation.
Heartland could not have chosen a wore movement to make this claim. This just in; not only have we just seen the hottest September on record, but it is the hottest September on record by a record amount:
In contrast with Heartland’s “sunny” pronouncements, the news could hardly be worse.
The Descendants of Jim Crow Segregationists Are Carrying On the Tradition of Suppressing Voting Rights
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 seventh book, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy, has recently been published. And book #8, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, will appear very soon.
Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana are callously ignoring the rulings of U. S. Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, ordering them to create legislative maps that give African American voters a greater chance of having a second majority representation district. In this they are repeating the sins of the era of segregation. They are spitting on the Voting Act and the Civil Rights Act.
Governor DeSantis and the other old-time Southern politicians and preachers have exhumed the corpse of Jim Crow and pronounced him to have been a good man at the time of his demise. The practical result intends to restore the power of majority-white legislatures to repress the vote of African Americans. Same old Crow.
The Supreme Court has already ruled against Alabama, but the Alabama Attorney General is delaying and attempting to block the ruling of the Supreme Court. Louisiana is dragging its heels on the drawing of the new legislative map. North Carolina Republicans flipped their Supreme Court to overrule its own previous decision to prevent racial gerrymanders benefiting Republicans. At stake are voting rights for all Americans.
While insisting they are not racist (the new defense for being racist), these Southern states claim they are only trying to eliminate fraud in voting. That no evidence of fraud exists only magnifies the arrogance of these Dixie states.
In February, 2023 white representatives in the Mississippi House approved a bill to create a new district—that includes all of the majority-white neighborhoods in Jackson, a capital city that is 83 percent Black.
State Rep. Trey Lamar, the white Republican sponsor of the bill, holds a seat once held by his grandfather, Leon Hannaford. Representative Hannaford introduced a 1962 bill that would have stopped James Meredith from filing suit to enter the University of Mississippi.
Rights are slippery entities. Rights bestowed in one generation can be retracted, eliminated, and removed in a new generation. Even the twin mountains of the Bill of Rights and the U. S. Constitution have trouble maintaining the rights of African Americans. The tangled history of voting rights is largely explained by the persistent struggles over maintaining a majority for the Republican party.
The Fog of Revisionist History
Lurking behind these southern state legal shenanigans of southern states is an evangelical fog of revisionist history. In Florida, for example, the legislature has passed a law attempting to ensure that white students not be made “uncomfortable” with the stories of our nation’s racist past. This revisionist history is not history; it is propaganda. White preachers once defended slavery and segregation with the Bible. Now, they defend white privilege with the same Bible. Same old story. Same old white people.
Racism is the core of this upheaval of assailing the voting power of African Americans. Robert Rowland argues that this nationalist populism appeals to whites who believe they have lost status. They are moving to consolidate “white power” by promising a return to the national greatness of an earlier time when “real Americans” – white people – were in charge.
Whites, the true patriots, want walls to prevent non-white immigration. Facing minority status by the middle of the 21st century, they want laws that reduce Black voting power.
Revisionist history hides under an alleged “color blindness” that allows whites to take out their resentment on minorities while crying, “We are not racists” or “We are color blind.” Dissipating this fog of propaganda reveals the false purity of racial innocence. The naïve attempt by whites to write a different story than the actual American story is doomed to failure.
The corollary to having no story is the claim that the current generation of white people were not there. They didn’t enslave people, segregate from Blacks, or lynch them. This is a historical fallacy because we are all linked to all humanity. For a people who insist on tracing their origin back to a literal Adam, it seems odd that they would want to excise entire histories of their existence. Biblical literalists can’t get back to Adam by excising the generations from 1619 to the present from history. There are no innocent people in America’s racist existence.
Once upon a time, the slavers, segregationists, and lynchers lifted up their eyes in Hades. They cried, “Father Abraham, send one of those Black boys to get me a cup of water.” But Abraham said, “Remember that during your lifetime you were rich and powerful, and you mistreated and murdered Blacks.” All the tortured white people cried, “We have ancestors who are following in our tracks. Send someone to warn them so they they will not also come into this place of torment.” Abraham told them, “They have the Bible; they should read it.” But the whites screamed, “Send someone from the dead and they will repent.” He said to them, “If they do not listen to the Word of God, neither will they be convinced by a messenger from the grave.”
The voices of the dead are crying out. If you put your ear to the ground in the black soil of the Mississippi Delta, you can hear them still. Southern oak-lined lanes fill with honeysuckle, but if you look closely you will see the blood stains.
Voices, some silenced by murder, now cry out from southern soil to protest a new outbreak of white politicians attempting to repress the votes of African Americans. Burned into our brains is the picture of Governor George Wallace standing in the door of an Alabama public school to prevent the end of segregation. This should be the poster ad for the current attempts not to have a second African American majority district in Alabama.
There are portraits hanging in the Hall of White Memory that will not fade into obscurity or be covered by the fog of propaganda. The sins of whites can’t be rendered invisible by state laws passed by the descendants of slavers, segregationists, and lynchers.
Pictures Destroy the Fog of Propaganda
In 1961, a busload of Freedom Riders received a brutal beating from a white mob in Birmingham, Alabama. The riders made it as far as Montgomery where another mob gave them another vicious beating.
In Tylertown, Mississippi, where police officers just went out and systematically whipped on a large number of Negroes every Saturday night, where there was a designated “Beating Ground” not far from the city.
In the Winona, Mississippi jail, African Americans working for voting rights were beaten by prison guards. One of the leaders of the movement, Mrs. Hamer described the beating of a fifteen-year-old girl:
I could hear them licks just soundin’. . . . But anyway, she kept screamin’ and they kept beatin’ on her and finally she started prayin’ for ’em, and she asked God to have mercy on ’em, because they didn’t know what they were doing. And after then. . . . I heard some real keen screams, and that’s when they passed my cell with a girl, she was fifteen years old, Miss Johnson, June Johnson. They passed my cell and the blood was run-nin’ down in her face.
Charles Payne, in I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, describes what then happened to Mrs. Hamer:
When Mrs. Hamer’s turn came, the guards, perhaps tired by this time, had her lie face down on a bunk and ordered two Black prisoners to beat her with a studded leather strap until she couldn’t get up.
Has anyone bothered to ask the men and women forced to live in the wake of the beating of John Lewis, the lynching of Emmett Till, the firebombing of Percy Julian’s home, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers if they believe American history should give comfort to “whites?”
Here’s an entire wall of pictures of white Americans grinning back at us in lynching photos while singing, “Shall We Gather at the River,” listening to sermons, and then watching the lynching. They look like those salt-of-the-earth Americans whom we lionize in our culture and politics because they are. The new generation is just “carrying on an old family tradition.”
Learning from a Tragic History of Repression
The history of the Civil Rights movement still teaches us about living in the present. The descendants of the white men who beat, tortured, arrested, and murdered African Americans protesting for freedom now carry on that tragic family tradition by inventing new ways to restrict the right to vote.
As James Baldwin noted,
To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
Giving young people a history that they can use doesn’t require any bending of the record. Quite the contrary. The more precisely and complexly we can render the history, the longer it will be useful.
And this history will not judge kindly Gov. DeSantis and the other arrogant, brazen public officials who – like Gov. Wallace in the schoolhouse door –are continuing the tradition of seeking to restrict the rights of African Americans.
Dear Williamstown: Sorry for Misleading You About Ark Encounter – My Bad!
by William Trollinger
It has been exactly ten years since Williamstown, Kentucky, underwrote $62.5m worth of bonds that made possible the building of Ark Encounter. This anniversary seems the perfect opportunity for Ken Ham to (finally) apologize for the fact that his big unseaworthy boat has not come close to producing the attendance numbers and economic impact that Answers in Genesis (AiG) promised in seeking support from this little town.
Of course, Ken is a busy guy, fighting the atheists and secularists who, as he said on Facebook this past weekend, “are becoming increasingly intolerant of Christianity—in fact, trying to outlaw the Christian worldview in many places.” (Interestingly, the current book-banning campaign “target[s] stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” and not stories by and about Christians. Oh well: for Ken, this is apparently the good sort of intolerance.)
Because he is so busy warring against the forces of evil, I wrote the following letter in his behalf. And Ken, there’s no need to thank me. Just sign your name and send it along to the Williamstown powers-that-be and enjoy the good feelings that come with a sincere (albeit ghost-written) confession!
September 26, 2023
Dear Williamstown City Council:
Greetings from the gigantic fundamentalist tourist attraction on the other side of I-75! It has been a decade since you so generously underwrote the $62.5 worth of junk bonds that made it possible to build Ark Encounter . . . and you not only underwrote the bonds, but you also agreed that 75% of what Ark Encounter would have paid in property taxes would instead go to paying off the loan. Yes, I know that I go on and on and on about how government is hostile to Christianity in America, but wow, this was a fabulous subsidy. Thank you, Williamstown!!
Of course, I know very well that you said yes to providing us with this wonderful windfall in good part because of what we said in the Ark Encounter feasibility report that we provided you. As I know you will recall, we told you that our attendance numbers would an “estimated average of 1.6 million visitors” in the first year. More than this, we told you that these attendance numbers would simply keep going up. And for July 2022-June 2023, our “scientific” formula projected an attendance of 2,177,737.
Oops!! We have never even made it to one million paid visitors in a year. Here’s a breakdown from this past year (and yes, that busybody Dan Phelps makes it his business to collect and publicize these numbers, instead of allowing us to come up with our own numbers, which I can tell you would look much better!):
- July 2022: 110,098
- August 2022: 83,638
- September 2022: 68,301
- October 2022: 74,864
- November 2022: 39,125
- December 2022: 37,959
- January 2023: 14,724
- February 2023: 23,020
- March 2023: 66,390
- April 2023: 70,700
- May 2023: 82,585
- June 2023: 111,256
- TOTAL: 782,660
Yes, yes, yes – I know. This total is only 36% of attendance we told you we would have this year.
So that’s why I am writing. I am so sorry that we “misled” you so badly. Sure, some of this is on you. You should have conducted a closer analysis of the information we gave you. But I don’t want to play the game of blaming the victim (that is, you!) Instead, I want to own the fact that what we told you in our feasibility report was, well, false. Sorry about that!
Speaking of blaming the victim, I am also sorry for saying that the reason Williamstown has not enjoyed an economic boom is that Williamstown is on the wrong side of the interstate. Of course, your town was on the wrong side of the interstate when we were selling you on underwriting the bonds, which was NOT a point we brought up during our sales pitch. Oh well, that’s capitalism . . . but again, sorry about that!
All this said, I hope you keep in mind that we at AiG are soldiers in the Christian army saving America from the radical Marxists (not exactly sure what this means, but we know that these folks are bad!), from the hordes of LGBTQ militants storming the cultural gates, from the Critical Race Theorists (not exactly sure what this means either, but we know that these folks are bad too!), and from the vaccine-crazy climate cultists.
That is to say, members of the Williamstown City Council, we are on your side (unless, of course, you belong to any of the aforementioned groups or are liberal)! So we are confident that you will forgive us for misleading you. And in turn, we will pray for you and your local economy.
Your brother in Christ –
Ken Ham
Enough with the “Secession” Rhetoric
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 seventh book, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy, has recently been published. And book #8, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, will appear soon.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has made plenty of headlines since being elected to the House of Representatives. As off-the-wall as she often is, with her conspiracy theories and desire to impeach President Biden, nothing is as anti-American as her repeated calls for secession.
In February, she declared, “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.”
On September 11, Greene went for the secession argument again. On a day of memory of the lost American lives in a terrorist attack – perhaps no orator has ever had less of a sense of the appropriate – she called for secession:
If the Biden administration refuses to stop the invasion of cartel-led human and drug trafficking into our country, states should consider seceding from the union. From Texas to New York City to every town in America, we are drowning from Biden’s traitorous America Last border policies.
Greene should have nothing to say about secession, considering her declared adoration and support of Putin. We know that Putin has long engaged in campaigns designed to divide America, and if Greene is aiding and abetting such misinformation, she should say more that might convince us of her patriotism, and less of the rhetoric that makes her sound like a traitor.
But Greene is not alone. There has been a cacophony of calls from various politicians for secession. Secession. What a horrific term. I certainly thought secession had been consigned to our past.
Regrettably, I was wrong.
Those who speak of secession and procreate division among us get no respect from me. That said, I can also say unequivocally that I would rather have the United States of America made up of the “babble” rhetoric of Marjorie Taylor Green than to lose our Union. I would rather continue to debate, argue, and dissent from Donald Trump and MAGA then not have the United States of America.
For me the withdrawal of the Southern states from the Union remains a blot on our region. As deeply enmeshed in the consequences of that war as the South has remained, I still insist on the Union now and forever.
And I wish that our politicians who insist on talking “secession” would bring as much wisdom and love to the debate as did those who debated the same subject prior to the outbreak of the Civil War:
- Robert Lee: “I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution.”
- Stonewall Jackson: “I am much gratified to see a strong Union feeling in my portion of the state … For my own part I intend to vote for the Union candidate for the convention and I desire to see every honorable means used for peace, and I believe that Providence will bless such means with the fruits of peace.”
- And as Texas made the fateful decision to secede in February, Governor Sam Houston ominously predicted, “To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country—the young men.”
The strong, powerful voices of the Unionists needs to be heard above the howling of the “secesh” crowd. The United States of America has survived all the disparate, dissenting voices because that is the power of democracy. The ongoing struggle for democracy is both a part of our past and our present. Josiah Ober reminds that “opportunistic politicians” exacerbate “unstable perversions of democracy” because of an “absence of adequate civic education.”
These perversions of democracy have always been heard, and always dismissed. The primary ideology of America is a commitment to democracy, and that has always absorbed all rivals.
This has worked well since our nation’s founding. If we can have more of the reasoned deliberations of democracy and less of the irascible, irrational rhetoric of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the nation will be better off, and it will still be the United States of America.
The One Time an F is (Better than) Acceptable: Turning Point USA’s Dean’s List
by Tucker James Hoffmann
Tucker James Hoffmann is an undergraduate student at the University of Dayton. Under the mentorship of Drs. Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger Jr., Tucker has written – among other works – “Gen Z Gen Free: The Rise of Christian Right Politics on College Campuses,” a piece written with the support of the University of Dayton School of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Summer Fellowship Program. Tucker has his eyes set on the future going into his senior year at UD, as he is starting the process of graduate application, with the goal of securing a PhD in Rhetorical Studies.
Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is a right-wing student organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded by Charlie Kirk and William Montgomery, the organization’s stated mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.” It has representation at 2,900 high schools and college campuses. This growth has resulted in a veritable explosion of Turning Point content. Radio shows, podcasts, YouTube videos, speaking tours and annual national conferences combine to create an ecosystem of right-wing propaganda that the unsuspecting college or high school student can easily find themselves within.
Turning Point USA is no stranger to monitoring, watching, and writing down things that threaten their (perceived) ideological superiority. Much like their Professor Watchlist and lesser-known School Board Watchlist, the organization has unveiled the Turning Point Dean’s List, which they describe as “a comprehensive search engine to help young patriots make aneducated choice on where to attend college.” As one with even the slightest knowledge of TPUSA could imagine, this “search engine” is highly biased. Each university they analyze is ranked on (initially) 15 variables that correlate with the seemingly standard A through F grade scale. The original 15 variables include:
- What Will They Learn? Academic Score
- Average Salary of Recent Graduates
- Average Salary of Graduates Mid-Career
- Percent of Graduates with Debt (Federal and Private)
- Average Debt of Graduates (Federal and Private)
- Mandated Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Training for Staff
- Bias Reporting System or Bias Response Team
- Ratio of Right-Leaning Clubs to Left-Leaning Clubs
- Denied Turning Point USA Chapter
- In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants
- Amount of Foreign Funding
- Required Equity, Diversity, or Inclusion Courses for Students
- Segregated Dormitories, Graduations, and Classes
- Harassment Policies
- Protests and Canceling Speakers
Since its inception, these 15 variables have changed. TPUSA has removed “Harassment Policies” as one of their grading variables, but it also added the following points:
- Boycotting, Divesting and Sanctioning Israel
- Mask and Vaccine Mandates
- Percent of Students Graduating with STEM Degrees
- Crime Rates in University City or Town
- Required Western Civilization Courses
Turning Point was strategic in their creation of these variables; some seem reasonable and even valuable for a person thinking about going to college. For example, when I was looking at what university I wanted to attend, I found – not from Turning Point – the percentage of graduates who were in debt. This might be valuable information for someone trying to calculate the cost of their education, and if they want to apply for more scholarships than they originally intended. Of course, when you display this factual and possibly valuable information next to dangerous and biased measures of a school’s identity, such as Denied a Turning Point Chapter, it legitimizes the unfounded TPUSA ideological agenda.
To understand Turning Point’s guiding ideology, one only has to look at the banner on their website: “The Dean’s List utilizes a fine-tuned algorithm designed to analyze each university based on its woke activist culture, racial discrimination, and hostility towards conservative students on campus.” The point of this “fine-tuned algorithm” becomes particularly clear when one sees how TPUSA rates universities’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices.
For the purposes of this article, I am going to use my own school to explain the Dean’s List grading system. The University of Dayton (UD) is a Catholic and Marianist university with a long history of social advocacy for minoritized individuals inside and outside the Catholic Church. Turning Point gave the university an overall score of F for a multitude of reasons, but I would like to highlight what they have to say about UD’s DEI practices and UD’s curriculum.
Mandated DEI Training for Staff/ Required DEI Courses for Students
To Turning Point, anything that might make higher education more equitable and accessible to historically marginalized populations is a red flag. The official grading curriculum stated by TPUSA is as follows:
This score is calculated based on the intensity or requirement of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity training for university staff. If a university has either mandated training or the training is severely radical, the university receives an “F” grade. An “A” grade is assigned if the university does not offer any Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity training for its staff.
The University of Dayton received an F in this category, as the New Employee Orientation includes “an opportunity to meet the University President, a discussion of Marianist history and charism, and a discussion of diversity and inclusion at UD.”
Turning Point also critiques universities that require DEI training for students. As they lay out in their official description of the grading scale for Required DEI Courses for Students:
This score is calculated based on the intensity or requirement of Equity, Diversity, or Inclusion (EDI) courses for students. The university receives an “F” grade if at least one EDI course or EDI category of courses is mandated. The university receives an “A” grade if no mandatory EDI courses exist, or if it is overwhelmingly easy to bypass any such courses. The university is assigned a “B,” “C,” or “D” grade based on the feasibility to bypass any such courses.
The University of Dayton received another F in this category, as UD requires “Diversity and Social Justice” as part of the Common Academic Program (CAP). According to the Institutional Learning Goals of UD, the “4 Dimensions” of Diversity training are Intersectionality, Social Justice, Bias, and Intercultural Competence. Turning Point quotes UD’s website by saying “The university describes ‘Intersectionality/Power’ as a ‘framework for conceptualizing interlocking oppressions based on the interconnected nature of historically and systemically oppressed, underrepresented and underserved groups.’” In the eyes of TPUSA, this is very, very bad.
In my extensive research on this organization, I have found that the best way to explain their understanding of “rights” is using an analogy about pie, similar to the one used in economics courses. Turning Point and its ideologically adjacent followers see “rights” as a finite resource; everyone gets a piece of the pie, but the pie is limited. Turning Point believes that some groups in our pluralistic society deserve more pie than others. The slices are based on a preconceived social hierarchy. Some groups have more rights than others because they are at the top of the social hierarchy. When a socially disenfranchised group advocates toreceive more of the pie, it is perceived as a loss for Turning Point followers, as said pie is limited. When civil and equal rights movements mobilize, those in Turning Point and on the far-right in general see it as a threat to their way of life and a stripping of their own personal rights. They will do anything they can to retain their own piece of the pie.
In the context of education and the Dean’s List, universities that want to equalize the accessibility of college to prospective students from different socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds are forcibly taking away opportunities from those individuals who have traditionally had such opportunities handed to them. Of course, those who have had access to higher education are upper- and middle-class, straight white men. Those who historically have been denied equal access to higher education are predominantly poor, women, immigrants, and racial, gender, and sexual minorities.
And thus, to Turning Point, DEI initiatives are a form of anti-white racism. Of course, the idea of anti-white racism as a tangible issue in the United States has grown dramatically. Its adoption in common discourse has its roots in white supremacy, and it has legislative consequences. The best and most recent example occurred on June 29th of this year, when the right-wing supreme court struck down affirmative action as a common practice in higher education.
Required Western Civilization Courses
Turning Point explains its criteria for the Required Western Civilization Courses as follows:
This score is calculated based on the university’s General Education program. The university receives an “F” grade if its General Education program does not require any Western Civilization course or categories of courses. The university receives a “C” grade if its General Education program lists a required category that includes some Western Civilization courses. The University receives an “A” grade if its General Education program requires a Western Civilization course or category of courses.
Every student must take a Western Civilization course, but it can’t just be any Western Civilization course. Instead, it must be a course that emphasizes that the United States is, as Charlie Kirk described it, “the greatest nation ever to exist in thehistory of the world.” Because Turning Point’s ideology borders on fascism, one of their main characteristics is hyper-nationalism. Every piece of content they produce is covered top to bottom with the American flag.
The University of Dayton received an F in the “Required Western Civilization Courses” category because it “does not require any courses or category of courses designed to teach students about the history of the United States and Western Civilization as a whole.” UD does require HST 103, “Introduction to Global Historical Studies,” but the title alone makes clear that this will not satisfy TPUSA’s hyper-nationalist agenda. But Turning Point fails to consider relevant that many history, economics, social science, and philosophy courses focus on America and the West. As a UD political science student, I can safely say that many of our political science courses are taught and studied solely from the American perspective, including: POL 201, American Political Systems; POL 316, American Political Thought; POL 350, Legislative Politics; and, POL 301, American Judicial Process.
All of this is irrelevant, as TPUSA doesn’t just want courses that deal with America and the West. Instead, TPUSA wants courses that approvingly present American exceptionalist propaganda. Turning Point has been upfront in this regard. Look no further than the Turning Point Academy roll out in 2022, when Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of TPUSA, asserted that the “proper” form of education is to “restore the memory of the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world” by teaching “the magic of 1776, beauty of America’s founding, and the truth of slavery.” When they say these phrases, they don’t mean to teach reality about 1776, nor America’s founding, nor the actual brutal history of chattel slavery. They mean to tell a faulty history where the founding fathers were chosen by God, that they were all completely moral figures, and that American slavery was not that bad and did not indicate that the United States was a racist nation.
To the chagrin of TPUSA, history and political philosophy courses at UD and elsewhere are not simply an exercise in post-9/11 flag waving patriotism designed to create students who unquestioningly love the United States and everything it has ever done. Instead, these are college courses that foster exploration into the past and encourage questions about how that past, good or bad, led us to the situation we are in today.
And that is precisely what TPUSA opposes. The goal of Turning Point USAs Dean’s List and its other anti-academic and anti-intellectual initiatives is to change American education from institutions that seek to teach, enlighten, and question the common practices of society to a place where far-right fear and ideology is reinforced.
In this particular moment, Turning Point’s Dean’s List and the University of Dayton’s “F” grade has never made me more proud to be a Flyer. There is more work to be done, but if TPUSA thinks we deserve an F, we are doing something right.
Former Bob Jones University students describe experience, exit from evangelical college
by Devyani Chhetri
Devyani Chhetri is the South Carolina politics reporter for the Greenville News and has written extensively about the intersection between faith and politics. She is a Boston University post-grad and has previously worked for the Sun Chronicle in Massachusetts.
Two weeks after he publicly came out as gay, former Bob Jones University student Andrew Pledger heard a knock on his door.
It was his final semester of his senior year. He was resting in his dorm room during the evening hours.
A university official stood outside and told the then-21-year-old to make his way to the official’s office for a meeting. He could see the writing on the wall. He knew he was about to be expelled from the private, evangelical institution.
His inclination was correct.
A year later, in the first week of July 2023, Pledger sat in his Greenville home with 17 former Bob Jones University students and two faculty members. They were, collectively, attempting to flesh out what they had in common.
Several of the attendees belonged to the LGBTQ+ community and went to the university at different points over the past three decades. Most of them grew up in fundamentalist households, were homeschooled, or had parents who met and married while at the Greenville-based university.
Lance Weldy is a former Bob Jones University student who edited a collection of personal essays by LGBTQ+ alumni, BJU and Me: Queer Voices from the World’s Most Christian University. He said following a similar path as his parents who met at the university felt like the obvious choice. “BJU is kind of the reason I exist,” Weldy said.
But in the years following their departure from the university, the group of former students have individually sought to create records of the environment at Bob Jones University.
In court documents, blog posts and the collection of personal essays, former students say the university’s disciplinarian approach in preserving its steadfast opposition to same-sex relationships and secularism came at a cost ― to the students themselves.
“Trauma really affects how you relate to people,” Pledger said, adding that the university, which receives federal funding, had religious policies that led students on a path of isolation. He added the atmosphere marginalized students at risk of harassment.
Pledger starts podcast: ‘Surviving Bob Jones, a Christian Cult’
Pledger, who now works as a social media manager, is producing a podcast in collaboration with more than 10 former BJU staff and students. The first four episodes were released Aug. 23. The podcast seeks to explore the roots of fundamentalism and how its restrictive policies leave indelible marks on former and current students.
Bob Jones University did not respond to requests for comment on Pledger’s podcast or this article.
In his own time on the Wade Hampton Blvd. campus, Pledger said he was bullied by a group of students who used anti-LGBTQ+ slurs and followed him around.
“I felt unsafe, but I could not tell anyone about it because I would be the one who would have gotten in trouble,” he said.
Pledger was always aware of the university’s long history of opposing homosexuality.
In 1980, Bob Jones III, president of the university from 1971 to 2005, said homosexual people should be stoned “as the Bible commands.” Jones issued an apology in 2015, disavowing those comments.
David Diachenko, a former Bob Jones University student and faculty member, resigned in 2006, after coming out as gay. He said the university softened its rhetoric over interracial dating and dress code over the years. However, he believes the university’s official policy related to gender and sexual identity will never change.
“Because they see that as kind of a basic tenet in their interpretation of the Bible,” he said.
The current policy statement on the university’s website says genders are assigned at birth by God.
“We believe God intended heterosexual marriage for the propagation of the human race and the loving expression of healthy relational and sexual intimacy,” the BJU policy states.
The university’s rigorous sermons also continue to indicate where the school stands on cultural issues, said Camille Lewis, a professor at Furman University and a former Bob Jones student and faculty member.
Sermons given by previous leadership, from Steve Pettit to Bob Jones III, have continued with similar messaging.
“It’s not the fact that Jesus has saved us that makes us able to live the Christian life,” Lewis said. “The message is ‘You need to check all these boxes of righteousness in order for Jesus to save you,’ which is a whole different kind (of Christianity). It’s very human-centered, not Jesus-centered.”
Lewis said she and her husband resigned from BJU after the couple resisted a rule that would’ve allowed the campus daycare centers to use corporal punishment on their son. “Hitting a child a tenth of your age and a fifth of your size was so important to this bastion of fundamentalism that it could not tolerate my refusal,” Lewis wrote in a Huffpost Op-ed detailing the denouement of her affiliation with fundamentalism.
“My mothering was offensive to them because I was making decisions that were not with the fundamentalist code of ethics,” Lewis told the Greenville News. “I refused to let them hit my children.”
Lewis said the enforcement of restrictive rules was controlling.
“I’m sure for an LGBTQ+ person that is even more pronounced, prominent and heavy,” she said, adding the university banned her from campus due to her criticism of the code of conduct.
For some students, Bob Jones University, evangelical college often ‘only choice’
Pledger remembers sitting in discipleship groups at BJU where he heard a common refrain against the presence of LGBTQ+ students on campus: “Why are they here?”
Yet for children who grow up in fundamentalist circles, attending a Christian university is often the only choice.
Bill Trollinger, a professor at the University of Dayton, has studied American evangelicalism and fundamentalism extensively. Trollinger explained families raised in fundamentalism gravitated to schools like Bob Jones in search of “safe schools” that toed the line on core issues such as sexuality.
“Schools are between a rock and a hard place,” Trollinger continued. Younger evangelicals are not as anti-LGBTQ, he explained. The schools may have parents and donors who want the school to hold the Biblical line, but they are getting students who may not agree with their parents and are caught wondering, “What’s the big deal?”, he continued. “Even moderate evangelical schools are going through it,” he said.
At 17, Pledger’s parents told him that they would only pay for a Christian school. It served as a reminder that the teen was financially dependent on his parents.
He started searching for Christian colleges with accreditation. Pledger’s parents told him Regent University and Liberty University, both located in Virginia, were “too liberal.”
“It was mainly because of the music they had there,” he said. “In fundamentalist Christianity, you’re really not allowed to listen to music outside of classical or piano or anything with a beat.”
Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Pledger grew up in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) household, girded by strict rules around his clothing and music choices, as well as traditional gender roles. He was part of a movement that grew as a reaction to modernism in protestant congregations. IFB churches carved their own sect to emphasize a more literal interpretation of the Bible.
Pledger’s parents met at Hyles-Anderson College — an Independent Baptist college in Indiana. Pledger and his two siblings were home-schooled with a Christian curriculum, which denied evolution and espoused the belief that the world was only 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
“I was trained to defend against anyone who said differently and you were taught to always have an answer for everything,” he said.
Fear pervaded his senses. He felt handicapped when he considered the outside world. Pledger said he was a rule follower, loved school and had a sincere desire to get an education.
Pledger said he considered breaking away from fundamentalism before he began his classes at Bob Jones University.
He caught himself disagreeing with his parents, which was a feeling antithetical to everything he had been taught as a child. He was taught to respect authority, no matter what. But he couldn’t.
“I felt so much shame for not feeling the same way,” he said. “And so from then on, I learned to keep my doubts to myself and even learned to just repress them.”
Pledger was a freshman when the university hosted its Gender and Sexuality conference in 2019. Speakers, such as former Dean of Students, Jim Berg, said Christians needed to show compassion and be amenable to listening to people with different experiences. However, Pledger saw “compassion” wrapped in statements where homosexuality was touted to be a side effect of sexual assault or a bad relationship with parents.
Pledger said the conference and his day-to-day discipleship groups reminded him that he would always be seen as an aberration.
When the bullying grew worse and his mental health declined, Pledger spoke to his dorm supervisor in confidence about his sexuality and the struggles he faced at the university.
But his cry for help only prompted more self-blame.
“After (the supervisor) heard about the things I went through, he told me that I was paying for my sins.”
Soon after, Pledger said the supervisor began a session of conversion therapy, “to change his sexuality.”
A fog overwhelmed him.
“I don’t even remember the first session,” he said.
But he remembers his feelings after the session ― the weight on his chest, the shame and the suicidal thoughts.
“There was something in me, my intuition that I had developed enough that was like — don’t do this anymore.”
Pledger kisses goodbye to fundamentalism
Pledger was a semester away from finishing undergrad when he appeared on an Instagram live with an influential ex-pastor, Joshua Harris.
Once upon a time, in the evangelical world, Harris’ name was akin to royalty. In the late 90s, Harris wrote a book called “I Kissed Goodbye to Dating,” which served as a guide for generations of Christian families. The book instructed people to stop dating to avoid pre-marital sex and marriages ending in divorce.
In 2018, Harris rescinded support of his book. In a USA Today op-ed, Harris wrote “The ideas in my book weren’t just naïve, they often caused harm.
Harris later renounced his faith.
“It is very rare for a Christian leader to say, ‘I’m so sorry for the harm that I caused,'” Pledger said, adding that he looked up to Harris.
Last year, just before his expulsion from BJU, Pledger reached out to Harris. He wanted an opportunity to discuss his journey with fundamentalism and the solace he found in visual art.
Pledger had been working on a long photo series in class that followed a man locked away in his room, with just a bed, a cross and a Bible for company. In the series, the man had a key to the locked door around his neck the whole time, but he just couldn’t see it.
“That’s all they have, and for me, it just kind of felt like, internally, that’s how I felt like my childhood was. These things to rely on,” he said.
Harris responded and hosted Pledger for a 40-minute interview that aired on Harris’ Instagram account. Pledger publicly announced then that he was renouncing his faith.
Pledger’s friends warned him that the interview would likely get him expelled. And two weeks later, when the dorm supervisor appeared outside of his dorm room, he was ready. He knew the university “did not allow unbelievers.”
The meeting only lasted a few minutes. The university asked Pledger to withdraw his admission, and he obliged. However, Pledger said he had no regrets. In retrospect, he believes all of his actions hinted that he wanted to leave.
“I got tired of not belonging,” he said.
Note: This article originally appeared in the Greenville (SC) News: Former Bob Jones students, members of LGBTQ community speak out. It appears here by permission of the author.
