An Apologist’s Dream
by Susan Trollinger
Our last post talked about a new movie that is being featured at Ark Encounter this summer, called As in the Days of Noah. Very briefly (a fuller plot summary can be found in our previous post), the film tells the story of a young woman (Adah) who lives in New York city and writes for an online “progressive” tabloid and who is sent to Kentucky by her boss to do a negative story on Ark Encounter. To say she has profound doubts about God, thinks the whole idea of building a life-size ark is ridiculous, and desperately does not want to make the trip is an understatement. But she goes anyway, taking along her cameraman and soundman. Early in her brief visit, Adah interviews the character of Noah Zomarsh (fictional spokesman for Ark Encounter) who serves in the course of the film as a kind and gentle evangelist (as to why that is notable, see previous post) who seems to have infinite patience for Adah, which is impressive since she is not only cranky, rude, disrespectful, vain, and bossy but also announces early in the film that she is among those who are “over the God myth.”
We won’t go into the details here, but suffice it to say that Adah is quite changed in the course of the movie. In addition to the persuasive power of the kind evangelist (Noah), another chief reason she is changed appears about a third of the way into the movie when Noah takes Adah and her crew into a theater located in the belly of the ark.
What happens once they enter the theater is odd, we think, for at least three reasons.
1. It seems odd that in this short movie (25 minutes, 42 seconds), the viewer spends a quarter of it (6 minutes, 44 seconds) watching a film within it. Now and then, the viewer also sees the reactions on Adah’s and her crew’s faces as well. For the most part, the viewer spends nearly 7 minutes watching a film inside a movie.
2. Another thing that seems odd is that the film (within the movie) that Adah and her crew are watching features one man (Ray Comfort, who is a Christian evangelist and who plays himself in the film) giving a speech. For nearly the entire film (within the movie), he makes his case for a certain kind of conservative Christianity that Adah and her crew appear to reject. On the face of it, that wouldn’t seem to be the sort of film they would be interested in watching.
3. Perhaps the oddest thing in all this is that the figure of Ray Comfort is not actually Ray Comfort. As we mentioned above, he does play himself, but instead of appearing as Ray Comfort the person, he appears as Ray Comfort the hologram. When the film starts, he appears as a figure in any film: two dimensional and projected on a screen. But a few moments into the film (within the movie) he “jumps” out of the screen and becomes a hologram of himself.
Since seeing the movie, we have been scratching our heads to figure out why Ray Comfort appears as a hologram. Why not just appear as Ray Comfort? Is it to make the film within the movie more interesting? Exciting? Is it about showcasing how technologically advanced the folks behind Ark Encounter are? Is it about explaining why Adah and her crew remain in the theater to watch the film and don’t just walk out. Are they transfixed by the ghostly hologram who stands before them?
We don’t know. But one thing that stood out to us is how Ray Comfort, the hologram, reminds us of the talking animatronic figures in the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. Just like them, he speaks but the visitors (in this case Adah and her crew) can’t interrupt him, can’t introduce any counter-arguments to his case, or even ask him a question. And that, quite simply, is because he isn’t really there. Even more, since he isn’t actually there he can’t even see them much less hear them.
Ray Comfort, the hologram, also reminds us of Bob Gillespie’s presentation at the AiG conference we attended in July 2014. As we observe in Righting America, his “rapid-fire delivery” and the fact that “no time [was] allotted for questions” meant that he got to make his case all of a piece with no interruptions or critical interventions by his audience (203-205).
By way of all three kinds of figures—talking animatronic figures at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, Bob Gillespie during and after his presentation, and Ray Comfort the hologram—the skeptic, the critical thinker, the person who sees things otherwise, even just the person who seeks clarification is silenced.
Thus, in the presence of Ray Comfort, the hologram, Adah the cranky, mouthy, bossy, nonbeliever is rendered silent and invisible. Whatever their reasons for making Ray Comfort appear as a hologram, it’s hard not to see the scene depicted in this movie as the Christian apologist’s dream. They get to make their case in full and their critics are not only silenced; they are invisible.
A Kinder Gentler Evangelism at Ark Encounter?
by Susan Trollinger
One of the new additions to Ark Encounter that we mentioned in a previous post is a “theater” that has been installed in one of the ends of the ark. It consists of two flat screens suspended from the ceiling on one end of the room and several rows of backless benches arranged in front of them. A short film (the one we saw lasted about 25 minutes) plays repeatedly on the screens as visitors watch.
The film currently being shown in this new “theater” is As in the Days of Noah (2017). It tells the story of a very world-wise and skeptical (perhaps even cynical) young woman who writes for an online “progressive tabloid” in New York City. She hates her job as it is below her training and talents. Things get worse when she learns that her boss is sending her to Kentucky to do a story on Ark Encounter in which she is to make its creators look “ridiculous and greedy.” Angry, she fumes about her boss making her “cover a bunch of religious dummies who . . . think the story of Noah’s Ark is real.”
Nonetheless, she is soon on the road with a cameraman and a soundman. Along the road trip to Kentucky, we learn that Adah (played by Sasha Higgins) is as irritable as she is irritating. She is cranky, rude, ungrateful, vain, and presumptuous. When they arrive at Ark Encounter, Adah orders her crew around as she repeatedly checks her makeup.
With chairs and recording equipment in place, the Ark Encounter spokesman she is to interview, Noah Zomarsh (played by Curt Cloninger), shows up cheerfully singing to himself and sincerely apologizes for keeping Adah and her crew waiting. Noah is a white, middle-age man, about medium height and build, with a full head of silver grey hair and a well-trimmed beard and mustache. Despite the fact that Adah is impatient, dismissive (she rejects his explanation of why they built a life-size ark), rude (she often interrupts him), curt, insulting (she makes fun of his name and the Ark Encounter project), Noah is cooperative (he happily answers all of her questions), earnest (he tries to answer them as thoroughly and meaningfully as he can), humble (he often shrugs his shoulders as he makes his points and, when she cuts off one of his answers, he admits he used “a lot of words”), kind (he expresses a sincere interest in Adah and the grandmother who gave her the cross she is wearing on a chain around her neck). He smiles often and warmly at her.
Sympathetic to her frustrations about him going on at length, Noah excitedly suggests that rather than tell her why they built a life-size ark, he will take her inside the ark and show her a brand-new exhibit that the public hasn’t seen yet. Exasperated by him and all his enthusiasm, she nonetheless follows (with crew in tow) after him. Once inside the belly of the ark, she and her crew are brought to silence by what they encounter there.
As to what brings them to silence—we’ll save that for our next post.
Skipping that, we jump ahead to a scene near the end of the film in which Noah and Adah are having a very intimate conversation (notably, Noah’s assistant—Amy—is in the background to ensure that all is respectable) in which Adah asks whether someone like her “could get on the right side of God.” Very reassuringly, Noah reminds her that Jesus died for her sins so that she could escape the judgment she deserves. All she has to do is say yes. He brings his mini-sermon to a close by saying that this is why they built the ark—so that people would know that they don’t have to be judged. They don’t have to be condemned—that is, if they’ll just say yes.
Wow, what a message—a message of God’s love, mercy, forgiveness, grace. All you have to do is say yes. What a spokesman. Gentle, kind, loving, patient, compassionate, empathetic.
Wait a minute. What is going on here? Is AiG changing its tune? Have they bagged the culture war rhetoric for a kinder/gentler Christian Right approach that now wants to show compassion for the truly irritating, dismissive, rude, and insulting enemy by way of a loving, forgiving, and merciful God?
Could be. Wouldn’t that be great? But to make that message credible, to make it consistent across their venues, they’d have to overhaul (if not get rid of altogether) a whole lot of dioramas, placards, and videos.
It’d be a big job, but it could be done. A good place to start would be the miniature diorama at the Creation Museum that depicts the ark off in the distance, its door shut forever, and all the men, women, children, infants, and animals perishing on the mountain top that will soon be completely submerged under water.
Another great place to start would be the flat screen at Ark Encounter that unabashedly asserts that God destroyed as many as 20 billion people in that flood. And that would be easy—just take down the flat screen.
Somehow, neither seems likely.
Ark Encounter at One Year
by William Trollinger
Friday, July 7 marked the one-year anniversary of Ark Encounter, the Answers in Genesis (AiG) theme park near Williamstown, Kentucky. Below are twelve “takeaways” from the Ark’s first year:
Artistic license: For a place so dedicated to the notion that the Bible is true and errorless, and should be read literally, it is striking how so many Ark exhibits stray far beyond the biblical text, even inventing names, talents, desires, and ethnicities for Noah’s wife and the wives of Noah’s sons. The lesson at the Ark seems to be that literal is literal, except when it is not.
Risible exhibits: In a place that is so dark and disturbing (see below), it is a relief that there are places where it makes sense to laugh. One such place is the new “Why the Bible is True” exhibit, the main section of which consists of a giant cartoon in which the hero proves to his friends that the teachings of their World Religions professor are false with a photo on his phone of two placards from the selfsame exhibit.
Killing 20 billion: Ark Encounter is unsubtle in its commemoration of divine genocide. Not only is there an exhibit dedicated to exposing traditional children’s books about Noah’s Ark as Satan’s work – because they do not emphasize the righteous genocide — but according to one flat screen display upward of twenty billion human beings were justifiably slaughtered in the Flood.
Enervating interior: For a place that is so creative in its treatment of the biblical text and that focuses so much on genocidal slaughter, it is surprising that the Ark is quite boring. The size and the carpentry are remarkable, but the content – empty bins and ceramic jugs, and lots of placards with lots of text – is pretty dull.
Not the Creation Museum: As with Ark Encounter, the Creation Museum is – as we document in Righting America – a dark and disturbing place. But the museum is much more complex and much more interesting than Ark Encounter. Not only does the museum deal with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and the Tower of Babel (along with the Flood), but it is also much more explicit in its culture war rhetoric.
Changes and additions: Among the 2017 additions to Ark Encounter is “a pre-Flood village” that at the moment features a small building serving hot dogs and brats, some new landscaping, and a buffet at Emzara’s Kitchen (which last year was organized like a fast-food restaurant). Will these modest changes really contribute to a doubling of Ark attendance (see below)?
Ostriches, lizards, and wallabies: The Ark Encounter website gives much attention to its Ararat Ridge Zoo: “With fun for the kids and biblical teaching for all ages, the Ararat Ridge Zoo is a must-do at Ark Encounter.” But even with the addition of a few animals, a GQ reporter’s assessment last summer that this is “tobacco country’s saddest zoo” seems on point.
Underwhelming first day: We were at Ark Encounter’s opening day, expecting chaos and crowds, and concerned that there would be so many visitors that we might not be able to get in. But not only was there no chaos, but we were stunned by the fact that the shuttle buses were nearly empty, and — as we documented with photos — there was not one person at a ticket window. On opening day, the Ark did not live up to AiG’s hype.
Numbers of visitors: This has been an ever-changing story, with few firm numbers, and no evidence. To recap: Ken Ham predicted 1.4-2.2m visitors in the first year, and one month after the Ark opened he announced the number would be closer to 2.2m than to 1.4m. But as the six-month mark approached Ham announced Ark attendance was approaching 1/2 million; now he is claiming (without evidence) 1m visitors. That’s 400,000 visitors short of his original low-end prediction. But he makes up for it by asserting that attendance will double in the second year.
Tax subsidy: In 2013 the small town of Williamstown issued $62m of junk bonds, loaning Ark Encounter the proceeds so it could get the project started. What makes this such a good deal for the Ark – and dangerous for Williamstown – is that over the next three decades 75% of what it would have paid in property taxes will go to paying off the loan. Furious with media reports about these bonds, Ham refuses to acknowledge that, in effect, Ark Encounter received a large government subsidy.
Empty Williamstown: Given the subsidy Williamstown provided the Ark, it is very sad to report that the small town has seen very little in the way of development. According to Cincinnati.com’s Scott Wartman, there is much “angst” in Williamstown regarding the Ark’s “fail[ure] to deliver on the promise of economic progress.” For Ham’s part, he blames the town itself for the lack of development, as well as secularists and atheists who – with their “negative, misleading, and outright false reporting” – are “influencing business investors in . . . a negative way.”
Restaurant and reenactors: From the beginning Ham and company planned to place a large restaurant on the top of the Ark. When we visited last year there was much excitement about the projected Brazilian steakhouse. This plan has apparently been scrapped, replaced by a projected 800-seat restaurant “where guests will be entertained by Noah-era reenactors, a Bible-inspired dinner theater.”
Noah-era reenactors? Are they re-enacting scenes from before, during, or after the drowning of twenty billion people?
Only AiG would think this is a good idea.
As the Christian Right Sees It, the LGBTQ Threat
by William Trollinger
If one goes by what Answers in Genesis (AiG) CEO Ken Ham says on social media, he seems obsessed with the LGBTQ community.
Of course, Ham writes blog posts on how wonderful the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter are, how they are attracting remarkable numbers of visitors, and how they are a magnet for evangelical speakers and performers. Not surprisingly, he writes posts on the ways in which atheists and secularists and the “dishonest media” attack him and his ministries. And he spends much time detailing the ways in which “true Christians” are under siege in this culture.
But in the midst of all that, Ham has much to say about LGBTQ individuals and their relationship to Christianity and culture. Here, for example, is a sample of posts from the past year:
- July 4, 2016: “Anglican Bishops Urge Church to Rethink Homosexuality”
- July 17, 2016: “Ontario, Canada to Issue Male, Female, or X Drivers Licenses”
- July 27, 2016: “Transgender Restroom Case Headed to the Supreme Court”
- October 11, 2016: “New Rules Say Women’s Shelters Must Admit Men Who Identify as Women”
- December 3, 2016: “Kids’ Magazine to Feature Same-Sex Families”
- December 6, 2016: “Secular Intolerance Against Christian Fixer Upper TV Stars”, who oppose same-sex marriage
- December 20, 2016: “Rainbow Lights at the Ark”
- December 29, 2016: “Genesis-the Foundation of Christianity”, including “marriage . . . as one man for one woman,” humans are either male or female, and “the origin of clothing.” Regarding the latter, in Righting America we note that “Ham’s notion that ‘why we wear clothes’ is a major Christian doctrine is peculiar, to say the least. But this is a topic that clearly occupies his thinking.” (289n21)
- January 5, 2017: “UK Children’s Book Teaches Gender Diversity”
- January 16, 2017: “Who’s Poisoning the Rainbow?” (second post on page)
- March 22, 2017: “Banana Pancakes and the Blessing of Marriage”, which focuses on “attacks on the true family God ordained in Scripture.”
- March 28, 2017: “Study: Only 4% of Millennials Have a Biblical Worldview” , including the fact that “nearly two-thirds of those under 30” support same-sex marriage.”
- April 2, 2017: “Power Rangers Movie: It’s OK to Be That Way”, that is, LGBTQ.
- April 10, 2017: “Seventh Circuit Decides Sex Means Sexual Orientation”
- April 17, 2017: “Judge Grants Oregon Resident’s Request to be ‘Genderless'”
- May 26, 2017: “Are Christian Ministries ‘Hate Groups’ for Believing the Bible?”
- June 10, 2017: “New Law Allows Government to Seize Children If Parents Don’t Affirm Their ‘Gender Identity'”
- June 19, 2017: “New Bible App for ‘LGBTQ Christians’ Who Feel Excluded”
- June 24, 2017: “Rainbow Fries and Flags: A Sign of Our Secular Times”
- July 1, 2017: “Target Sees Consequences of Accommodating Sinful Behavior?”
All this on the necessity of Christians to resist LGBTQ rights, to reject the legitimacy of LGBTQ identities, and to understand the effort of LGBTQ individuals to assert their civil rights as an assault on the rights of Christians. All this, and yet nothing or virtually nothing from Ham and AiG on issues pertaining to poverty, refugees, income/wealth inequality, structural racism, and misogyny.
Interestingly, for all of Ham’s LGBTQ-obsession, Jesus said nary a word about homosexuality. But Jesus did have a lot to say about how Christians should live in the world, including this statement from Matthew 25:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory . . . Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
Wouldn’t it be remarkable if Ken Ham, AiG, and the Christian Right in general actually took the teachings of Jesus seriously?
But if the Christian Right took Jesus seriously, it wouldn’t be the Christian Right.
(Note: for two excellent books on fundamentalism, the Christian Right, and homosexuality, see: Bernadette Barton, Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays; and Rebecca Barrett-Fox, God Hates: Westboro Baptist Church, American Nationalism, and the Religious Right. In Righting America we feature the visit of Barton’s Morehead State University class to the Creation Museum (164-165); Bill’s review of God Hates will appear in the September issue of the Journal of American History.)
Education is the Greatest Threat
by William Trollinger
According to Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG), the nation is in the midst of a terrible spiritual struggle, as true Bible-believing Christians valiantly fight the forces of secularism and atheism in a desperate attempt to save the soul of America. And in this culture war, who is the most dangerous soldier in Satan’s army?
That’s easy. He or she is standing at the front of the classroom.
At the Creation Museum the film “Men in White” features a young woman named Wendy, a “young woman who wants to believe there is a God who created the universe, who wants to believe her life has meaning, but who does not want to look stupid for rejecting . . . evolutionary science.” According to the film, “the cultural voices that have put Wendy in such despair . . . are located in the educational establishment.” The arch-villain is a high school science teacher, Mr. Snodgrass, who “speaks in a nasal whine . . . dron[es] on and on about the age of the Earth . . . [and proclaims] that ‘there is no God who intervenes in the world!’” (Righting America 150-152)
At Ark Encounter – in the graphic novel-like “Why the Bible is True” exhibit – the setting is a large university, complete with imposing darkly-hued buildings and unsupervised undergraduates who spend their free time in drunken debauchery.
The placard that sets the stage for the exhibit’s dramatic action portrays a large lecture hall with enough seats to accommodate 700 students or so. The seats are fixed in rows that form a semi-circle around a large center stage and are steeply raked as in a professional sports stadium. The professor stands on the large center stage. The lighting, which is set in the very high ceiling, casts shadows throughout the hall that are so dark as to render many surfaces completely black. Otherwise, the colors in the hall are cool—greys, blues, greens. Importantly, the three main figures in the story – Andre, Gabby, and Ryo – are sitting in the last row of the lecture hall. The viewer is positioned by the placard as sitting or standing just off to their right. From this location, the professor on the stage appears tiny. The professor is so distant and so small that the viewer cannot make out his/her gender (we learn in a later placard that the professor is a woman), and thus appears as a very distant authority figure who is unknowable, unapproachable, and likely uninterested in her students.
Her class is World Religions, and here’s what she has to say about the Bible:
The Bible is full of contradictions – written by people with no knowledge of science. The Earth isn’t 6,000 years old, and there’s no way the millions of species of animals could fit on Noah’s Ark. The Bible wasn’t even put together until the Council of Nicaea in 325. It’s gone through countless revisions and translations. There’s no way to know what was originally written.
As she is lecturing Ryo and Gabby turn to Andre – a stalwart fundamentalist – and ask how he can really believe the Bible is true. Andre replies by saying they will talk after class. Much of the rest of the exhibit is devoted to Andre (who is positioned as the expert) explaining to his friends that the professor is teaching untruth and that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. For evidence Andre recommends “one of his favorite websites that addresses objections to the Bible,” which just happens to feature the content of two of the placards at the entrance to the exhibit.
This is a fundamentalist fantasy tale in the form of a giant cartoon. A placard here, a website there, and poof, good-bye so-called Ph.D. experts. As AiG tells the story, it is ridiculously easy for fundamentalists to dispose of the educational elite and their false teachings. (AiG even sells a video that, so it is claimed, teaches viewers to “refute evolution in less than three minutes.”)
Oddly enough, however, the overwhelming message one takes away from “The Bible is True” exhibit is that universities and colleges – down to their ominously-hued buildings – are actually very unsafe places for Christian students. For every Andre, who has been so thoroughly steeped in AiG teachings that he is immune to the university’s “false teachings,” there are apparently hundreds of students who are being brainwashed by professors who are hostile to biblical truth. In this sense the exhibit seems like one big advertisement for AiG’s “Creation Colleges.” Safe places like Dayspring Bible College, God’s Bible School and College, and, of course, Cedarville University.
Not sure it is a great selling point for fundamentalism that the only safe place for fundamentalist youth is inside the fundamentalist bubble.
The Ever-Deepening Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
by William Trollinger
In 1994 historian Mark Noll published The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which he famously begins with the devastating assertion that “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind” (3). While Noll gives many examples to make his case, he clinches his argument with a discussion of young Earth creationism, which he described as “the firmest indication that the damaging intellectual habits of fundamentalism maintain a powerful grip in the evangelical world” (208).
Twenty-three years after Noll wrote these words, we have a young Earth creationist theme park in Kentucky that claims a global Flood drowned upwards of twenty billion human beings four millennia ago, in the process creating the geological formations we see today. If one uses Ark Encounter as the measure, “not much of an evangelical mind” would seem to be an overly generous assessment of intellectual life in conservative Protestantism.
Someone might object, however, that it is too easy – akin to shooting fish in a barrel — to use “creation science” as an example of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Moreover, when it comes to young Earth creationists, what they really care about most is making the case for the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, errorless, authoritative, and factually accurate in all that it discusses.
In this regard, this past February Ark Encounter held a ribbon-cutting ceremony (complete with live-stream video for those who could not be in attendance) for its new exhibit, “Why the Bible is True,” which it touts as providing “five evidences . . . that, when taken together, demonstrate the truthfulness of the Bible.” These “evidences” proving the Bible is true (i.e., “true” meaning “inerrant” in fundamentalist parlance) are contained in five placards at the entrance to the exhibit:
- “The Bible is God’s Word” – The Bible says it is “God-breathed,” and as God “cannot lie” and God “cannot make mistakes,” then the Bible is inerrant, a teaching that “applies to the original manuscripts.”
- “The Bible is Unique and Unified” – Despite the fact that there are 66 books, the Bible “remains unified,” “maintains perfect unity,” and “exhibits amazing consistency.”
- “The Bible Has Been Faithfully Passed Down” – The “scribes who copied Scripture took great care in their work,” as evinced by the “extraordinary consistency between . . . the Dead Sea Scrolls” and “the Leningrad Codex, [which] dates to the early eleventh century.”
- “The Bible Contains Fulfilled Prophecy” – As evidenced by the biblical predictions regarding the Messiah, “only the Bible contains accurate, predictive prophecy, because only the God of the Bible knows the future and has the power to bring it to pass.”
- “The Bible Holds the Key to Eternal Life” – “The Bible’s ultimate message answers our greatest need and meets our deepest yearning.”
In what sense do these placards “demonstrate the truthfulness of the Bible”? How does the circular argument that 2 Timothy 3:15 (a favorite fundamentalist verse) says the Bible is “God-breathed” prove that the Bible is true, much less inerrant? What does it mean to claim that the Bible “maintains perfect unity” and “exhibits amazing consistency,” and where is the evidence to make such claims? Since we do not have the original manuscripts (how many Ark visitors know this point?), how do we know for certain that the Bible has been faithfully transmitted over the millennia?
The point here is not whether or not these various claims – they are not evidences – are true. The point is that at Ark Encounter the “argument” on behalf of biblical inerrancy consists of five placards filled with unsubstantiated assertions and circular arguments. Thin intellectual gruel, indeed. Remarkably enough, these five placards are the most substantive section of “Why the Bible is True.” The vast majority of the exhibit is designed in the form of a graphic novel in which three college students grapple with secularism, binge drinking, and casual sex before coming to the conclusion that the Bible really is true in everything it says, including when it comes to history and science.
A fundamentalist fantasy tale in the form of a giant cartoon: here then is the argument for biblical inerrancy at Ark Encounter. The scandal deepens. The mind vanishes.
Additions to Ark Encounter—Will they be enough?
by Susan Trollinger
Ark Encounter is about to embark on its second year of operation, this July 7. To attract new visitors as well as to tempt those who have visited before to come again, the creators of Ark Encounter have been designing and building new attractions, which they previewed last winter on the Ark Encounter blog. Earlier this month, we (Bill and Sue) visited Ark Encounter to see what was new. Here are some of the highlights.
We came upon the first addition on our left as we walked toward the ark from the bus drop-off area. It consists of a few small buildings constructed in something of a southwest style. According to the Ark Encounter blog, this is “a pre-Flood village,” and they call it “The West Village.” So far, only one building there is accessible to visitors and that is a small restaurant (no indoor seating) that serves hot dogs, brats, and the like. The other small buildings and a small covered stage are still under construction or behind construction fences.
Other additions outside the ark include the wood ramp that extends from the ground to the ark door (that was incomplete as of our second visit last summer), a good deal of impressive landscaping especially underneath the belly of the ark, and a new approach to food service at Emzarra’s Kitchen.
In the first year, Emzarra’s was organized much like a fast-food restaurant with a long counter at which visitors placed their orders (for burgers, fries, and so forth) and were given their food. The counter has been replaced this year with a buffet. Visitors purchase tickets for the buffet ($12.99 for adults who want to eat one meal in the course of their visit and $19.99 for adults who want to eat two) or for pizza (either by the slice or a whole pizza). On the whole, the fare is standard American—fried chicken, burgers, fried fish, steamed vegetables, mac and cheese, and free-standing salad and dessert bars.
According to the Ark Encounter blog, the additions for 2017 also include an expansion of the petting zoo (or the Ararat Ridge Zoo). We saw nothing to indicate a structural expansion of the zoo, but we did notice that much landscaping has been added along with kangaroos and some animals.
Inside the ark, the spaces at each end of the structure (in the bow and the stern) which were largely empty last year now feature a snack shop, sitting area, and small petting zoo; a “theater” area in which visitors sit on backless benches to watch a movie on flat screens that are suspended from the ceiling (more on the movie in a later post); and a new exhibit (likely the most significant addition) called “Why the Bible Is True.” This exhibit features about 40 placards (depending on how you count large placards and clusters of smaller ones) designed in the style of a graphic novel that tell the story of three college students at a large university who grapple with questions of faith, a secular religion professor, excessive drinking, casual sex, and an automobile accident. More on that later too.
According to the Ark Encounter blog, there is also some new signage and a new video inside the ark too. We did not take note of those additions. There is also talk of a new 800-seat theater to be built adjacent to the ark. While the area just behind the ark is fenced off, we could see no indication of any construction underway.
So, these are the highlights of the additions to Ark Encounter for summer 2017, at least as we saw them on our recent visit. Expectations are high as AiG promised at minimum 1.2 million visitors in the first year (July 7, 2016 to July 6, 2017) with increases each year after that. Will enough new visitors find their way to Ark Encounter along with enough repeat visitors to reach that impressive goal? We shall see.
An Ex-Fundamentalist Reflects on his Visit to the Creation Museum
by Sean Martin
Today’s post is a continuation of our colleague Sean Martin’s reflection on his visit to the Creation Museum. Sean is a fourth year doctoral student in theology at the University of Dayton (UD), where he is researching Catholic Fundamentalism. Before doctoral studies, he earned an MA in Religious Studies, also from UD, and an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University. Along with teaching duties at UD, he also works as an adjunct instructor in Philosophy for Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana and this autumn will begin as an adjunct at Chatfield College teaching Philosophy and Religious Studies. Sean lives in Cincinnati, OH with his lovely wife, Beth, an adorable dog, and a disinterested cat.
While it makes sense that my visit to the Creation Museum produced anger at those who run the museum and pity for those who are buying what the museum is selling, upon reflection I realized that neither response is completely fair or helpful. While there is a place for anger at an institution that has been the cause of so much confusion and resentment toward Christianity as a whole, I am quick, eager even, to forget that I have an obligation towards them. In the words of so many vacation Bible schools, I remain, after all, a C, I am a C-H, I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N.
While my understanding of Christianity, the Church, and her scriptures have changed me into someone no longer recognized by the museum as a Christian, the hallmark of my faith cannot be anger but love. Love, of course, does not preclude anger, but it does require prayer and faith. I have expressed my anger toward the museum and the damage that the ideology they push has done to me and many of those I love, yet I have not prayed for Ken Ham and company. Even as a liberal, evolutionist Catholic, I remain called to believe that God is drawing all things to God’s perfect self. Upon reflection, I have lately been willing to pray that this work be completed in even those who perpetrate the most evil sins against humanity, but I have (as of yet) failed to pray that God’s grace would change the hearts and minds of the folks at Answers in Genesis and their followers.
Secondly, my pity for those who have been charmed by the museum’s carefully crafted presentation, if I am being honest, only serves to demonstrate to myself how far I have come. “If only,” I smirk in my heart of hearts, “you were to become like me.” Further, it is this feigned concern that allows my pity to turn to haughty disgust in the face of climate change deniers, ardent supporters of President Trump, and the like. Reflecting upon the scriptures and Christian tradition, it would seem that my obligation, while maintaining truth and goodness, is to ask what deficiencies in myself and in the Church’s presence in the world foster this type of confusion, anger, and fear. I am angry at the museum for taking advantage of those who have not been equipped to see through their illusions. And then, in the same breath I express my righteous indignation against those same people for that very lack when it manifests itself socially and politically. The allure of a cleverly crafted Facebook meme almost always wins out against compassion, understanding, and the faith God is drawing the whole of Creation to Godself.
As I begin my own examination of fundamentalism in the form of a doctoral dissertation (Mary, Seat of Wisdom, pray for me) it is crucial that I not lose sight of my conviction that, in the words of Laudato Si, “there is but one human community” and, moreover, that there is but one Church. My work as a theologian is against fundamentalism, but must always be for the good of the entirety of the Church. So much of my anger at the Creation Museum is not necessarily because of what it does to create division and confusion but because it reminds me of how much work remains to be done within me. “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.” And thus, it is my lack of prayers, and not my academic ability, that remains to haunt me. May God, who has begun a good work in me, be faithful to complete it.
An Ex-Fundamentalist Visits the Creation Museum
by Sean Martin
We welcome to rightingamerica Sean Martin, who is a fourth year doctoral student in theology at the University of Dayton (UD), where he is researching Catholic Fundamentalism. Before doctoral studies, he earned an MA in Religious Studies, also from UD, and an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University. Along with teaching duties at UD, he also works as an adjunct instructor in Philosophy for Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana and this autumn will begin as an adjunct at Chatfield College teaching Philosophy and Religious Studies. Sean lives in Cincinnati, OH with his lovely wife, Beth, an adorable dog, and a disinterested cat.
My visit to the Creation Museum in the Fall of 2015 was largely similar to those who have written for this blog before. I was impressed by the sheer amount of money and energy invested in crafting this monument to evangelical anti-evolution ideology. I took pictures for research, I spent time at each and every display looking for hidden assumptions and logical inconsistencies, and watched the many other pilgrims who had journeyed to worship at this temple to society’s remaining hope of salvation. And from this experience, I could easily rehash that which others have written about previously in prose more elegant and insightful than I am capable. I also brought with me to the Creation Museum, however, all the confusion, angst, and pain of being raised as a fundamentalist, young-Earth creationist.
Thus, while I walked through the Creation Museum cataloguing my reflections for later examination, I also felt the lingering vestiges of my past commitments stirring in some long forgotten part of my mind. Having been a committed creationist until my freshman year of college in 2000, I know very well that despite the attestations of the Museum to the contrary, creationism is not about truth, or at least, not in the end. Creationism is about salvation and Heaven and Hell. And as I walked the halls of the Creation Museum, I heard again the whispers of doubt that – despite my advanced degrees and years of committed study of scripture, theology, and philosophy – it was possible that I was wrong. It was possible that I was being deceived and my pride and confidence in my commitments (as opposed to God’s truth) had placed my eternal soul in ultimate peril.
Like anyone perennially living in the mode of recovery, however, I was able to silence my demons through the use of long memorized mantras and self-assurances. These would be the same that I use on the rare occasions that I cannot reach my wife on the phone for longer than is comfortable coupled with the coincidental inability to contact several family members, leaving me beginning to wonder if I had been “left behind.”
As I made my way farther through the museum my fear turned to anger. Because I knew by heart all the tell-tale signs, I could recognize the subtle way that the Creation Museum and its parent organization, Answers in Genesis, gradually leads their visitors from academic discourse to irrational fear. What began as simply a different historical-scientific perspective is replaced with sin and despair, the specter of Pascal’s wager haunting every step. I became enraged, not only that the museum had weakened my own defenses and reintroduced doubts that I had assumed long conquered, but also that they would use such methods against those who have not had the luxury of 15+ years of theological and philosophical education. The museum preys on those whose pasts were, for whatever reason, bereft of the opportunities that had allowed me to find my way free of fundamentalism’s strong pull. I was furious at the Museum, and I pitied those who had fallen into their trap.
But as I reflected on my visit, I realized that anger and pity are neither completely fair nor helpful responses to the Creation Museum. More on this in my next post.
Politics: National and Transnational
by Peter Cajka
In his conclusion to this week’s series, Dr. Pete Cajka compares the political implications of each site’s displays, focusing on the ways both sites critique secularization of local, national, and transnational cultures.
V: Politics: National and Transnational
In Righting America, the Trollingers make the persuasive argument that the Creation Museum is preparing its visitors to fight in the culture wars. The site seeks to “constitute” or “form” subjects to this end. Visitors are encouraged to pursue a particular interpretation of the bible in order to stop the nation’s slide into sin and ultimate destruction at the hands of an epochal flood. If one adheres to the truth about creation as presented by the museum, one cannot be held responsible for secularization or the nation’s decline in morals. The hoisting of Reason over the Word fuels the nation’s decline into a moral morass – and the Word must be made triumphant over Reason to arrest the slide. The museum encourages visitors to denounce Public Schools (bastions of secularism), promote patriarchy, and elide the nation’s painful history of race relations.
When set alongside Maria Stein – and considering a question of how Maria Stein “constitutes” its subjects – it is striking just how much the Creation Museum forms its subjects to win the culture war in America. The culture warriors that leave the Creation Museum are prepared to do battle in an arena of the American nation-state. If more individuals manage to save themselves from the public schools, perhaps the nation’s slide towards corruption can be reversed. It is, as the Trollingers note in their chapter on politics, a choice between “following the Word” or living in a “Godless America.”
This is not to suggest that the Creation Museum is only concerned with the nation-state, but the evangelicals and fundamentalists who frequent it seem to be focused on the religious and moral life of America in a way that the Catholics – past and present – at Maria Stein simply are not.
The ambitions of the Creation Museum itself are cosmic (which make its consideration for “America” all the more striking). In claiming that the earth was literally made 6,000 years ago, the Creation Museum makes a point about all of creation in outer space. They built the planetarium to show their concerns with the cosmic. The cosmic claims can also be seen in the way the CM avoids both the flat-earth idea of the Old Testament and the geocentric interpretation of the universe in other quarters of fundamentalist Christianity. While the Creation Museum forms cultural warriors to fight on an American front – it also projects an interpretation of the entire universe.
The Creation Museum also attempts to obliterate time, which also makes its concerns with the moral life of the nation-state all the more salient. The culture warriors are formed to save America (a time-bound nation) but these soldiers have an imagination that is supposed to be 6,000 years in length. The creation of Noah’s Ark and the replication of scenes from Genesis obliterate time to give the viewer direct access to the early story of the bible. Yet, they have been commissioned by the museum to save America, a particular nation-state, from “the godless.” The flood came initially in response to human pride and selfishness, and it can return, but it can be stopped in the nation-state.
Maria Stein fosters a transnational consciousness among its visitors. The trunks on display at the museum show that the shrine’s initial patrons were Germans. The Sisters of the Precious Blood, also German, arrived at Maria Stein in 1944, at the very beginning of an age that American Catholic historians call “the immigrant church.”
German Catholic Culture Exhibit. Copyright: Heritage Museum at the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics, 2017.
The museum makes clear that Maria Stein has its origins in the tremors that shook continental Europe in the wake of the French Revolution.
Visitors encounter this transnational history several times in Maria Stein’s museum. A poster entitled “Trumpet of the Precious Blood” notes that, “St. Gaspar del Bufalo was a priest of the diocese of Rome, Italy, who found Missionaries of the Precious Blood in 1815. In refusing the oath of fidelity to Napoleon he remained loyal to the Holy Father and was exiled and imprisoned.”
Trumpet of the Precious Blood. Copyright: Heritage Museum at the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics, 2017.
Maria Stein is also trans-temporal and cosmic in its own way – its relics, its connection to the saints, its likes to heaven – but it is also profoundly local. The nuns who built the convent at Maria Stein poured their labor into western Ohio soil. The immigrants who settled in Ohio understood the convent and shrine through profoundly local idiom: it placed an Old World/Old Faith into a new soil. Whereas Maria Stein offers an escape from the violence of the nation-state, the Creation Museum prepares soldiers for a Culture War here in America.
Both the shrine and reliquary imply that nation-states are sites of trouble that might not be worth redeeming. Maria Stein joins the Creation Museum in critiquing the secularization that resulted from various projects sponsored by modern nation-states, but the Catholics at Maria Stein offer a divergent response: they flee the nation-state. On one level, the museum and the reliquary are forming people to emulate saints or to join in the communion of saints in a lifelong effort to save their souls. On the political plane, however, the shrine suggests that leaving a nation-state to plant the faith in different soil is a reasonable response to secularization. The museum shows the German founders of the shrine to be highly mobile. The reliquary communicates a similar message. Victoria left the catacombs for western Ohio; she was murdered by a pagan who rejected the faith. Catholicism can be uprooted, moved across an ocean, and put in a new soil.
Conclusion
American religious historians often write about particular religious imaginaries in their work. It is difficult enough to empathize with one particular group of people, let alone many others, all in the space of one book. The story of how two vastly different religious imaginaries inhabit the same land, and use physical spaces to form individuals to very different ends, is a story that has been unfolding since the Reformation in the early sixteenth century. If one begins with the Bible or starts with the desire for presence, the results, particularly in the form of a built environment, are quite different. Still, teachers in booth religious subcultures struggle to convey their messages to their followers. Both of these groups struggle with the coercive power of the modern nation-state. Both, to some extent, are ill at ease in the hyper pluralist context of the early twenty first century United States.
