Bodies of the Bible, Bodies of the Saints
by Peter Cajka
In today’s post, Dr. Pete Cajka continues his series on the Creation Museum and Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics. While yesterday’s post explored how visitors at each site read artifacts and relics with the religious imagination of each space, below Dr. Cajka examines the presence of bodies – biblical and religious, artificial and real – in each site to consider what these bodies contribute to visitors’ experiences.
IV: Bodies of the Bible, Bodies of the Saints
Both the Creation Museum and the Maria Stein Shrine & Museum have human bodies on display. Often scholars can separate Protestant and Catholics into binaries of word/flesh or absence/presence. A comparative analysis of the two sites reveals that flesh is present at both sites but to very different ends. Saint Victoria currently rests in a glass case underneath the reliquary’s main altar.
Encased remains of St. Victoria (c. 304) in the Maria Stein Reliquary. Copyright: Heritage Museum at Maria Stein Shrine, 2017
Her body, unlike other saints in the Catholic tradition, is said to have decayed– her bones are encased in wax and dressed in garments. The glass case and the wax might ask the visitor to consider what time has done to the saint’s flesh. Victoria was martyred in the third century, according to legend, by a “pagan” husband (it was an arranged marriage) who grew enraged by Victoria’s persistent commitment the faith. Victoria rested in the catacombs for some time before being brought to western Ohio. The visitor to Maria Stein cannot locate Victoria in her third century context – and the keepers of the reliquary have made no attempt offer such guidance.
Visitors to the Creation Museum behold incorruptible simulacra of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As the Trollingers note, “These human figures appear in multiple biblical scenes such as when Adam names the animals, just after Eve was created from Adam’s rib, and when Eve presents the forbidden fruit to Adam.” (Righting America, 32-33). The unblemished bodies at the Creation Museum – white and Western in appearance – are displayed alongside animals as well as dinosaurs.
The bodies at these two sites offer very different lessons on the passage of time. The visitor to the Creation Museum finds himself or herself in the fleshy presence of various biblical personages. The visitor to the Creation Museum encounters a number of healthy bodies. A robotic Noah speaks to the visitors. Craftsmen work away on the arc and craftswomen weave their baskets.
But the bodies at Maria Stein are literally in pieces. Pilgrims to the shrine are in the presence of small chunks of hundreds of saints. Victoria’s bones are encased in wax; her flesh is long gone. Not only has Saint Victoria decayed, she rests underneath a number of other relics – many of them fragments of bones or chips of bones, and some of them particles of holy objects. Biblical Bodies are produced by the correct reading of Genesis. The Catholic bodies are subject to the erosion of time.
Reading Holy Objects
by Peter Cakja
Today’s post continues Dr. Pete Cajka’s series on religious imaginations and the design of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY and the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics in Maria Stein, OH. In this third installation, Pete addresses the problem of reading and interpreting the artifacts and relics at both sites.
III: Reading Holy Objects
Both the Creation Museum and the Maria Stein Shrine deal with the problem of “reading.” Texts and objects cannot impose their wills absolutely on a receiving subject. As the Trollingers note, the bible, like other texts, can be read multiple ways. It is difficult – if not impossible – to control the lessons readers will derive from texts. The Creation Museum attempts to reduce the possibility that the bible might be interpreted in ways other than their own by selecting and omitting particular verses from Genesis in the museum’s displays and on placards.
Voice of the Lord Prayer Area at Maria Stein Museum. Copyright: Heritage Museum at Maria Stein Shrine, 2017
Maria Stein must also confront the problem of reception. Objects cannot impose a meaning on those who behold them. Visitors to Maria Stein’s museum can visit a small room with three religious objects. The first is a stained glass window on which the Holy Family appears. The second is a small statue of Mary holding the Christ child with her right hand, with Christ leaning on her shoulder for support. The third is a paper mache Jesus suffering on the cross, blood pouring out of the wound inflicted by the Roman soldier with a spear.
Paper Mache Jesus on the Cross. Copyright: Heritage Museum at Maria Stein Shrine, 2017
What lessons should the visitor take from the crucified Christ, the Christ Child, and the Holy Family? The visitor might understand such pieces as art. Is Mary present in the statue or is this just a representation of Mary? How should the blood flowing from the paper mache Christ be assessed by the visitor? The intention of the museum in putting such items on display is not entirely clear. Thus, any direct lesson could be lost upon the visitor. Or, a pilgrim could potentially draw his or her own lessons from the presentations of these materials.
The materials that appear in Maria Stein’s museum also allow for multiple interpretations the way a text is open for a number of readings. Indeed, placing such objects in a museum for the purposes of edification may challenge the presence previous generations of Catholics found in such materials. The ways such images are received are visitors and pilgrims would also change over time. Are current generations looking at these pieces in a “museum” whereas earlier generations of Catholics viewed them as invested with presence? The German Catholic community, especially its first wave that settled in Ohio in the nineteenth century, would have understood the suffering Christ, with blood gushing from his open wound, in different ways than certain twentieth century “American Catholics.” Putting statues or images on display in a museum risks making such images appear as atavistic, draining them of their real presence and vital life force. In this way, the pilgrim to Maria Stein may encounter mixed messages as they move between reliquary and museum.
The Biblical Imagination and the Presence of the Saints
by Peter Cajka
Today we feature the second in a five-part series by our colleague, Dr. Pete Cajka. Dr. Cajka’s previous post introduced readers to his extended analysis comparing the Creation Museum and the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics. Below, Pete examines the ways both sites shape how visitors experience their faith within each space.
II: The Biblical Imagination and the Presence of the Saints
The two sites have been created with divergent “religious imaginations.” We might say that the developers of the Creation Museum went about their task with a biblical imagination.
The biblical imagination is constructed with words, and these words police the boundaries of the imagination. The message of the Creation Museum, as the Trollingers show, is based on a selective reading of the bible, particularly the book of Genesis. The words of the bible, as presented at the museum, clarify the past. Visitors are confronted with a stark choice in the present: obedience to the Word or a false elevation of Reason over the Word. Sin brought people to read the bible the wrong way (reason flowed from pride), and the Creation Museum exists to show people how the bible should be read. While Ken Ham and the architects of the museum tout the clarity of the bible, the Trollingers make the point that, curiously, very few bibles are made available for visitors to read.
Front view of Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics. Copyright: Maria Stein Shrine, 2017
The founders of Maria Stein, on the other hand, built a convent and reliquary with an imagination informed by “presence.” For Catholics, presence flows most abundantly from the Eucharist (the transubstantiated host), which brings the Real Presence of Christ into the world.1 Presence reifies in turn as saints and their relics place it more fully in into the mundane. A physical site built with concern for logos (even selectively so) concretizes in a different fashion than a building meant to house “Precious Blood” and relics.
If the words of the bible tell readers “what really happened” – presence does something very different. The reliquary and Victoria’s bones are “additions” to the Christian tradition, arriving in time well after the biblical story. Presence flows from words Christ spoke at the Last Supper (“take and eat, this is my body” Matthew 26:26) but it can be planted into fresh contexts by its practitioners. Indeed, presence must be brought into the world, often through rituals, and rooted in a soil. The creators of Maria Stein want to make the saints present – they are not attempting to show “what really happened.”
But the reliquary at Maria Stein still makes claims about how life should be lived on earth. The pilgrim is prodded to enter into a relationship with the communion of saints. Perhaps these visitors, like those to the Creation Museum, are confronted with a stark choice about eternity: live as a saint or risk the fires of hell! But the failure to make a choice to become a saint would not be responsible for a catastrophic, worldwide flood.
In tomorrow’s post, Dr. Cajka examines the problem of reading the artifacts, displays, and relics in the Creation Museum and the Maria Stein Shrine.
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1 On presence, see Robert Orsi, History and Presence (Harvard, 2016).
A Tale of Two Sites: The Creation Museum and Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics
by Peter Cajka
This week we are featuring a series of posts by our colleague Dr. Pete Cajka, Postdoctoral Research Associate the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame. He is an intellectual and cultural historian of the twentieth century United States with interests in Catholicism. He received a PhD in American religious history from Boston College in 2017. His dissertation is entitled, “Rights of Conscience: The Rise of Tradition in America’s Age of Fracture, 1940-1990.” He has published essays in American Catholic Studies and Ohio History, and he has a forthcoming article in US Catholic Historian. He received a Dissertation Fellowship from the Louisville Institute for the Academic Year 2016-2017.
Introduction
Presuppositions – our initial, core intellectual commitments – matter. The founders of the Creation Museum presuppose that the bible tells the real story of the earth’s creation. A commitment to this idea underwrites the museum’s exhibits, dioramas, displays, and films. The clarity of the bible also guides the political aspirations of the museum to wage a culture war against “Godless America.”1
Travel just 130 miles north of Petersburg, Kentucky and you will find the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics. The shrine opened its doors in 1875, and though it has far fewer visitors that the Creation Museum, it is also a key religious site of America’s Midwest. The shrine’s founders and the subsequent generation of custodians and devotees have very different presuppositions than the evangelicals and fundamentalists to their south who frequent the Creation Museum. The Catholics at Maria Stein assume that it is good to be in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or in the company of the saints. Presence enhances the efficacy of prayer. The importance of presence – the physical presence of saints’ bones – defines Maria Stein.
The upcoming blog posts in this series place the two sites in a comparative framework, despite the divergent presuppositions outlined above. Both sites are involved in the “formation” or “constitution” of their visiting subjects. Both sites draw upon the religious vitality of America’s Midwest. The Creation Museum and Maria Stein both have bodies on display. Both sites struggle with dilemmas of reading, interpretation, and message control. Each has a vision of politics in the modern world.
What follows in this series, then, is the tale of two religious sites. Both sites draw visitors into a built environment, constructed to affirm the presuppositions of each group. But one site used the bible as its blueprint and the other site is in the “presence” of the saints.
I. Museums and Shrines
The Sisters of the Precious Blood, the founders of the Shrine of Holy Relics, arrived in Ohio in the 1840s. Priests fleeing the Risorgimento and the Kulturkampf brought relics to the Midwestern United States throughout the 1870s and 1880s, entrusting them to women religious like the Sisters of the Precious Blood for safe-keeping. Gradually, over the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the sisters turned Maria Stein into an important place of devotion and adoration for fellow Catholics. Over one thousand relics – including the bones of St. Victoria –have come to rest at Maria Stein. Visitors today can also visit a Heritage Museum found on the building’s second floor.
Both the Creation Museum and Maria Stein feed off the robust highway system of the modern United States. Both sites are in reach of highway 75, a major north-south thoroughfare, by way of some of its major tributaries. This land, a corridor that stretches from northern Kentucky and western Ohio, has been fantasized about by Catholics and Protestants in widely divergent ways. Protestants like Lyman Beecher worried that “Papists” would settle the American West – a fear that German Catholics like those who founded Maria Stein stoked. Catholics imagined the American Midwest as a “safe house” where religious objects and artifacts could be protected from the violence that wracked Continental Europe in the wake of the French Revolution.
We begin by drawing an obvious distinction: whereas the Creation Museum claims to be a museum, Maria Stein is today a hybrid site of both reliquary and museum. The shrine of the holy relics opened its doors in the late nineteenth century and the Heritage Museum its doors in 2015. This initial observation raises two questions. First, how would the combination of reliquary and museum shape a visitor’s experience?
Reliquary at the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics. Copyright: Maria Stein Shrine, 2017
Subjects are invited to pray and learn while on site. The kneeler positioned in front of the reliquary at Maria Stein beckons visitors to bend their knees in prayer. The rows of flickering candles between supplicant and relics helps silent intentions offered at the reliquary to endure after the worshipper departs.
Second, would a physical space set aside for prayer help a visitor reflect critically on an institution’s message? The choice the Creation Museum wants its visitors to make (to be with the “inerrant word” or against it) offers little room for worship or prayer. Some visitors to Maria Stein have ventured to this specific place to adore the relics. The adjacent museum would help them to foster a dual identity of learner and supplicant. Such a dual identity is not what the developers of the Creation Museum had in mind.
This quick comparison highlights the absence of a space at the Creation Museum set aside for prayer. While the space at the Creation Museum itself would not make it impossible for visitors to offer spontaneous prayer (perhaps in the parking lot or silently whilst in an exhibit), the absence of contemplative space demonstrates further the intention of the site’s architects to impress a particular worldview on its visitors. The absence of a space to pray has implications for the “constitution of the subject.” The teleology of Graffiti Alley and the excessive signage encourage acceptance rather than reflection. Prayer or reflection might destabilize the site’s message. The visitor to the Creation Museum might have to head for one of the gardens to escape the bombardment of information.
In tomorrow’s post, we’ll explore further the distinctions in the designs of the Creation Museum and Maria Stein and the significance of these designs for visitors’ experiences in each space.
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1 On the importance of presuppositions in Evangelical history, see Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford, 2014).
Ken Ham’s Glass House
by William Trollinger
GQ’s Jeff Vrabel toured Ark Encounter a few days after its July 7, 2016 opening. In his hilarious and insightful article on his Ark visit Vrabel begins by observing that:
Noah’s ark is the first left after the gas station, down the street from the Mexican restaurant . . . Given that it constitutes a $100 million boat-shaped Bible theme park and the self-proclaimed “largest timber-fame structure in the world,” I’d expected a more dramatic approach. Maybe some animatronics. At least a little traffic.
Because we are approaching the anniversary of the Ark’s opening, we recently made a third visit. While we were not keen on returning, it turned out to be a very productive trip. Over the next month, we will have a number of posts on the troubling and strange world of young Earth creationism as presented by Answers in Genesis (AiG) at Ark Encounter.
But for this post, we will remain outside the Ark. And we can report that the Ark Encounter exit off I-75 remains as undeveloped as the day Jeff Vrabel visited last July. El Jalisco’s and the gas station are still there, plus two sleepy hotels that clearly need updating. That’s it.
Nothing is happening there, and nothing is happening just down the road in little Williamstown. In a May 24 Washington Post article Karen Heller reports that
A year after the ark opened, downtown Williamstown, about two miles from the tourist attraction, still isn’t much more than a collection of resale and “antiques” shops and shuttered storefronts. At lunchtime on a spring weekday, Main Street was devoid of pedestrians, tour buses, or open restaurants, except for a coffee shop with a tattoo parlor in the back.
Every day that goes by, it becomes increasingly obvious that AiG misled (at best) Williamstown city officials. In 2013, the town issued $62m of junk bonds and then loaned the proceeds to Ark Encounter. Over the next thirty years, ¾ of what Ark Encounter would have paid in property taxes will instead be used to pay off the loan.
Of course, groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State are deeply troubled by the fact that this fundamentalist theme park is afloat thanks to this large government subsidy. But Ken Ham resolutely refuses to acknowledge this point, which is why we keep bringing it up. See, for example, his recent article, “Atheists Taking Over the Ark? Time to Debunk More Lies!,” in which he addresses “just a couple of the many outright lies” in the Freedom From Religion Foundation video, “Atheist Exposes Ark Encounter”:
Lie #1: The Ark was “built with millions in taxpayer subsidies.”
Truth: Not one dollar of state taxpayer money has been used – the Ark’s construction has been totally privately funded . . . All the funds for building the Ark came from our supporters who made donations (about 43,000 people/families) and other supporters who funded the bond offering. Also the numbers visiting the Ark are exceeding our expectations this spring.
Two questions regarding this highly problematic statement:
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- Linking “supporters who made donations” with “supporters who funded the bond offering” elides the essential difference between these two groups: the former made gifts to Ark Encounter, and latter lent money – lots of money – to Ark Encounter and thus expect to be repaid, with interest. Given that 75% of what Ark Encounter would have paid in property taxes will go to paying off the loan, in what sense can Ham claim that the Ark is “totally privately funded”
- Ham told the Washington Post reporter that the Ark “is on target . . . to attract more than a million visitors in the first year.” Given that he and other AiG representatives repeatedly predicted 1.4m-2.2m visitors in year one, in what sense can Ham claim that the numbers “are exceeding our expectations”?
In his attack on FFRF Ham sniffs that “when Christians ask me why atheists spread false information, I remind them that . . . non-Christians are spiritually blind and are ‘willingly ignorant of the truth.’”
The phrase “people in glass houses” comes to mind here.
Narrowing God’s Word and the Proper Christian at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter
by Susan Trollinger
Last Wednesday, Sue presented our co-authored paper, “Sacred Rhetoric Turned into Culture War Rhetoric at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter,” at the Sacred Rhetorics conference, which was held at Winebrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, Ohio. Just one of the approximately thirty people in attendance had visited the Creation Museum and/or Ark Encounter, so it was a good thing that we had some images to share with the audience. The Q&A that followed the presentation was very engaging and tended to focus on the ways that AiG seems to restrict our understanding of the Bible and who counts as Christian.
- Q: Why does AiG think it is so important to read Genesis literally?
- A: Their argument is that if you don’t read Genesis literally then you are not getting God’s Truth as He intends it. Moreover, they argue, if you don’t read the first book of the Bible literally, then you likely won’t read any other book in the Bible (such as Revelation) literally. To fail to take Genesis literally is to fail to take seriously what God is trying to tell Christians from the first page to the last page of the Bible.
- Q: If you believe in inerrancy and an old earth, would the people at AiG say that you are a faithful Christian?
- A: They say that believing in an old earth is not a salvation issue. That is, one would not be denied God’s gift of salvation on the basis of one’s belief in an old earth. That said, they also argue that believing in an young earth is crucial since doing so shows that you take the Bible seriously as the inerrant Word of God. For AiG, the Word of God, to be True, must be understood as the inerrant-young-earth Word.
- Q: Why does AiG think that reason is opposed to God’s Word?
- A: AiG sees reason as a human faculty that can lead to error. Evolution is one of their prime examples of such an error produced by human reasoning. And the big problem with that error is that, according to them, it contests the true account of Creation in Genesis. By contrast, God’s Word is the universal truth that is without error and never changes over time. It is absolutely trustworthy, if it is read the right way—that is, literally.
- Q: Does AiG shoot itself in the foot when it makes all kinds of arguments based in science given that it insists that believers should not rely on reason?
- A: AiG makes a two-part argument regarding reason. The first argument is that good Christians need to make sure they always privilege the literal, young-earth-creationist interpretation of God’s Word over reason. If reason tells them one thing (that limiting marriage only to couples consisting of a man and a woman is wrong) but God’s Word says otherwise when read literally (that God commands that marriage only occur between a man and a woman), then Christians must adhere to what God’s Word says rather than what reason might indicate. Reason can be helpful, but only when its conclusions reiterate the truths that are revealed by a literal, young-earth-creationist Word. Anytime reason appears to contest that literal word, it must be rejected.
- Q: How do children who have learned about science in school respond to what the Creation Museum is saying about the age of the Earth and the Flood? Do they laugh?
- A: In our eight visits to the Creation Museum, we witnessed very little in the way of children laughing at or saying anything to indicate that they thought the exhibits were silly or preposterous. What we did see (as we wrote about previously) was parents (typically mothers) directing their children’s attention to this or that placard. Given the volume of home schooling material AiG sells, we think it likely that many parents bring their children to the Creation Museum and/or Ark Encounter as a home schooling field trip.
- Q: Why don’t the Amish get as much attention as the Creation Museum or Ark Encounter since they seem to have important things to say about what it means to be a Christian today?
- A: Sue got very excited about this question because, of course, her previous book was about the visual rhetoric of Amish Country tourism. Here’s her answer. The Amish actually get a lot of attention. About 11 million people visit just the three largest Amish settlements in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana each year. By contrast, predictions are that about 2 million people will visit the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in 2017. And they do present a powerful witness to an alternative way of being in the world. Just one example—whenever a tourist gets stuck in traffic behind an Amish buggy, they are provided with a vivid (even if brief) experience of the very slow pace of Amish life. It they are paying attention, they might take that experience as an opportunity to think about the pace of mainstream life and what might be lost in that pace. In this way and others, the Amish put a mirror up to our culture and invite us to ask important questions about much that we take for granted in our culture and our lives.
In response to our paper and another, Professor Ronald C. Arnett made the following observation, which we think captures a crucial problem about the kind of Christian belief AiG advocates: “AiG’s project seems to be all about preservation and reification. But, faith isn’t about preservation or reification. It’s about death and resurrection.”
Amen.
Does Ark Encounter Intend Visitors to See the Global Flood as a Sci-Fi Fantasy Tale?
by Kiersten Remster
Today we welcome to the blog Kiersten Remster, a 2017 University of Dayton graduate who won the university’s 2016 Herbenick Award, given to the student who best exemplifies the Core Integrated Studies Program’s commitment to interdisciplinary integration. Kiersten has also won the prestigious 2017 Austrian Federal Ministry of Education Teaching Assistant Award, which is administered by Fulbright Austria. She will spend the 2017-18 academic year teaching English and America culture at a Catholic high school in Hollabrunn, Austria, and then will head to New York University to commence graduate work in art history.
When I arrived at UD in the fall of 2013 I had never heard of young Earth creationism. But in my very first semester at UD in the fall of 2013 I had a class with Dr. William Trollinger, who talked about his scholarly research into creationism and the contentious pop culture attraction that is the Creation Museum. I was fascinated, and when Ark Encounter opened in the summer of 2016 I knew I had to visit, which I finally did this past spring, during my last semester at UD.
With my BA in Art History from UD, and my ongoing interest in visual studies, I experienced this 510 feet long wooden structure through a lens of visual aesthetics.
Answers in Genesis (AiG) built this multimillion dollar complex in order to make the case for the biblical account of Creation, Adam and Eve coexisting with dinosaurs, and the global flood and Ark (in which Noah could fit a host of animals). But instead of focusing on making this case, from a visual logistics perspective AiG devotes nearly a third of all wall card descriptions to castigating skeptics and atheists rather than supporting their own arguments.
[Note from Bill and Sue: This failure of Ark Encounter to focus on making the case for the creationist argument is akin to what we found at the Creation Museum: “Only two placards in the Flood Geology room that offer arguments on behalf of a biblical creation reason in the traditional scientific way – that is, from observations to conclusions – and mobilize scientific evidence that passes muster as observational science. Put another way, just 5 percent of all of the placards in the Flood Geology room reason from ‘real’ scientific evidence to a global flood” (Righting America 102).]
More than this, the crafting of the visuals throughout the exhibits ⎯ from religious allegories portrayed as comic book-rendered graphics or depictions of religious figures and scenes that seemingly mimic a Sci-Fi film poster ⎯ problematize the very purpose of why this structure exists. That is to say, in their marketing of visual content and general aesthetics the folks at Ark Encounter, perhaps unintentionally, contradict the purpose of their attraction, which is to make a case for a literal reading of Genesis 1-11.
These contested visuals are particularly obvious in the exhibit that displays the Creation. Here the designers have utilized modern graphics that grasp attention through vivaciously lush colors while providing an expansive space for the viewer to follow a path within these images, thus making it possible for visitors to identify with the subject of the scene. Moreover, in the seven panels – each of which displays one day of Creation – the images and figures are presented in animation-style. The graphics and colors themselves in these panels are very much reminiscent of any contemporary animation, similar to that of James Cameron’s Avatar.
So Ark Encounter seeks to appeal to visitors – seeks to make these scenes and stories believable – by making use of contemporary media and graphics. But there is something bizarre about creationists presenting what they see as literal history in a form that reminds viewers of action scenes from animated Sci-Fi movies. That is, they are casting their creationist arguments into what visitors will identify as Sci-Fi fantasies.
All of this is underscored by the fact that the font they use to describe what they understand to be literal history is the identical, or almost-identical, font as the iconic, fictional Lord of the Rings typeface. More fantasy!
All of this raises some very interesting questions:
- What does it mean for the creators of this creationist “non-fictional” propaganda to reach out to visitors with such conflicted visuals?
- Are the folks at Ark Encounter actually using this font and a visual animated style to bolster the chances that 21st-century visitors will find their historical message more believable?
- Are the folks at Ark Encounter risking that visitors will recognize this Sci-Fi style of storytelling, and will thus pass off the Ark account as yet another fantastical tale?
- When do animating religious figures and stories cross the line into fictional interpretations for the contemporary observer?
- In short, do the Ark Encounter’s visuals undercut the Ark’s message?
I think they just might.
Who is Intolerant? Who is Lying?
by William Trollinger
On the face of it, the notion that evangelicals in the United States are being persecuted seems absurd.
Just look at the 2016 election. Donald Trump becomes president, thanks in good part to the support of 81% of white evangelicals. His Vice President is an evangelical (and young Earth creationist), his cabinet is filled with evangelicals (including some more creationists), and he has appointed Jerry Falwell, Jr. to lead a task force to “reform” American higher education.
The Christian Right holds the levers of political power in the US. Nevertheless, according to Answers in Genesis (AiG) CEO, Ken Ham, the War on True Christians continues unabated.
As Ham complains In his May 20 post, “Are Bible Classes in Public Schools Unconstitutional?,” the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is supporting a kindergarten student and her mother who are suing the Mercer County Schools (WV) regarding its “Bible in the Schools” program. According to the FFRF complaint this program – which includes weekly Bible classes in the elementary and middle schools that are taught by itinerant teachers equipped with “’a degree in Bible’” – “advances and endorses one religion, improperly entangles public schools in religious affairs, and violates the personal consciences of nonreligious and non-Christian parents and students.”
In response, Ham asserts in his post that FFRF’s lawsuit has nothing to do with serious legal issues or the unfair treatment of nonreligious parents and children. The organization’s true motivations are much more nefarious:
Why does FFRF really want to rid schools of elective, voluntary Bible classes? Because its leadership hates Christianity! They are in rebellion against God and don’t want anyone to hear His Word. They aren’t content with having their religion of atheism taught as fact to millions in government schools across America – and using taxpayer money to do it. They also want to ensure that no student is exposed to alternative views, especially Christianity and the Bible.
One might imagine from this quote that what Ham wants is a public square and public schools in which there is a free exchange of ideas, with tolerance of alternative views as the rule. And one would be wrong. Ham understands the culture war as a cosmic battle in which
anti-Christian enemies use false ideas such as tolerance . . . to deceive and muzzle Christians. In this cosmic battle there are and can be no neutral positions, no neutral parties, no neutral public square, and no neutral educational system. (Righting America 163)
For Ham, tolerance is out, and alternative views are out, even (or especially) alternative Christian views. In this regard, it is not at all surprising to discover that the Mercer County “Bible in the Schools” program — which Ham is fighting to save — promotes a fundamentalist understanding of the Bible, replete with young Earth creationism. As documented in the FFRF complaint:
Lesson 2 includes having students imagine that human beings and dinosaurs existed at the same time. Lesson 2 says, ‘So picture Adam being able to crawl up on the back of a dinosaur! He and Eve could have their own personal water slide! Wouldn’t that be so wild?
What’s truly wild is the notion that a public school system would have no problem in having its pupils filled with such nonsense. And speaking of nonsense, Ham concludes his rant against FFRF by complaining about their anti-Ark Encounter video, “Atheist Exposes Ark Encounter.” According to Ham, this video is “filled with outright lies and misinformation,” including the untruth that the Ark benefits from huge taxpayer subsidies. Instead, Ham sniffs, “the Ark is a privately funded facility.”
As we have pointed out again and again, in 2013 the little town of Williamstown, Kentucky issued $62m of junk bonds and loaned Ark Encounter the proceeds to get its project going. It is a sweet deal for the Ark, made much sweeter by the fact that, over the next thirty years, 75% of what Ark Encounter would have paid in property taxes will go to paying off the loan.
Privately funded? Who is telling “outright lies”? Will Ken Ham ever come clean?
Defending Cedarville, and A Response
by William Trollinger
In response to our post, “Cedarville University: The Purification Continues!,” Jerry Schultz of http://thetrustworthyword.blogspot.com/ had this to say:
As a teacher, I wholeheartedly agree with the new policy at Cedarville University. For a Baptist school like Cedarville, or really for any Christian school, the new curriculum policy is simply supporting very basic values that all Christians should affirm and that we have every right to EXPECT our Christian schools to adhere to. Most of the policy with regard to decency and inappropriate classroom content, particularly that of a sexual nature, is just simple common sense and good policy for any academic institution to follow, especially a Christian one.
Thanks, Mr. Schultz, for your comments – we appreciate the feedback. More than this, we are confident that many evangelicals and fundamentalists would agree with you.
Of course, we do not. We do not agree that Cedarville’s “Biblically Consistent Curriculum Policy” is “just simple common sense and good policy for any academic institution.” For one thing, our antennae go up when anyone uses a “simple common sense” argument, as that generally signals that the matter at hand is neither simple nor obviously commonsensical.
More substantively, let’s take a look again at Philippians 4:8, which is said to be the basis of Cedarville’s “Biblically Consistent Curriculum Policy”:
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worth of praise, think about these things.”
There is so much packed into this one verse. So, why does Cedarville’s curriculum statement focus on the word “pure”? Why does fundamentalism always seem to reduce what is “true,” “honorable,” and “just” to questions of sexual morality?
Moreover, and as we argue in our post, Cedarville’s “Biblically Consistent Curriculum Policy” of 2017 is very much of a piece with Cedarville’s Great Purge of 2012-2013. The threat to faculty is unsubtle: “In all cases, faculty are wise to run material by their dean or chair prior to presenting it to students if it approaches the category of ‘unacceptable.’ Before God and the administration, faculty are accountable for their choices.”
Given the palpable threat, and given that the “Biblically Consistent Curriculum Policy” is extraordinarily vague, it seems that Cedarville faculty members have one of three choices:
- They can ignore the policy and run their classrooms as befits their training and their conscience, with the awareness that — as Cedarville’s history would suggest – there is a very good chance that someday the proverbial ax will fall.
- They can relentlessly censor themselves, making sure that they assign absolutely nothing that could be construed as an injudicious treatment of “artistic bareness” or that could come remotely close to serving as “a stumbling block to students.”
- They can run all lecture notes, Powerpoints, and assigned texts and films past their department chair and/or dean and/or VP and/or President White, for their approval.
Of course, few Cedarville faculty will choose option #1 (too dangerous, especially with the memory of the Great Purge so fresh) or option #3 (impractical given the demands of teaching day to day, and administrators will likely not appreciate such “information dumps” and may even receive them as attempts to challenge the policy).
So, most Cedarville faculty are likely to choose option #2: ceaseless self-surveillance to ensure adequate obedience to the vague “Biblically Consistent Curriculum Policy.” In the end, it is hard not to see this as the ultimate goal of this new policy. And that is truly unfortunate both because of the way it signals powerfully to faculty, albeit through back channels, a fundamental distrust of faculty (if they trusted their faculty, they would not need such an obviously “common sense” policy) and for the way it stifles creativity and critical thought.
Cedarville will surely continue to be the “safe school” that its fundamentalist constituency wants it to be, and that Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis demand that it be.
But will it be safe for its faculty? That seems unlikely.
Families, Politics, and Fundamentalism
by William Trollinger
Sunday was Bill’s fifth of five classes at Westminster Presbyterian Church here in Dayton on the history of Protestant fundamentalism. As was the case the first four weeks, there were approximately thirty people in attendance, and the discussion was very lively, with many great questions. Given that this final class brought the story of fundamentalism up to the present, many of the questions were particularly pointed and poignant.
Here are a few of the questions:
- What percentage of Christians in the US are evangelicals/fundamentalists?
When Bill answered this question with “approximately 25%” he was thinking of the data captured by the 2015 Pew Religious Survey, which established that approximately 25% of all Americans are evangelical. But if we pull out Jews, Muslims, other faiths, and the nonreligious, the percentage of evangelicals jumps to 35%. If we limit ourselves to Protestants, approximately half are evangelicals.
- Can you talk about the ways in which the fundamentalist movement has torn apart denominations, churches, and families?
The fundamentalist movement has been a remarkably divisive force in American Protestantism for the past century. As regards denominations, one of the most recent examples is the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, which involved students serving as spies in seminary classrooms, and which resulted in a host of academics and pastors finding themselves without jobs. As regards churches, the examples are legion, and go all the way back to the 1920s.
But what has happened in families may be the most heartbreaking. Sue and I have heard so many stories – even some from people who attended the Westminster classes – of family members being attacked (publicly and privately) and shunned for their failure to hold to this or that fundamentalist tenet. For Bill, the most painful moment came when he gave two talks on fundamentalism at a local church that welcomes members of the LGBTQ community. In the Q and A afterward person after person talked and wept as they told their stories about how their fundamentalist parents and siblings and friends and churches completely rejected them. For Bill, it was a miracle that they are determined to remain Christian.
- Do evangelicals/fundamentalists like Trump because he speaks in superlatives and certainties, as everything can be reduced to black or white?
I do think this is part of Trump’s appeal. Not only is fundamentalism all about certainty – “We KNOW that Genesis is literal history and that the universe was created in six, twenty-four hour days less than 10,000 years ago” – but it is also about binaries. God’s Word v. Human Reason. Heaven v. Hell. Regarding the latter, and as we observe in Righting America, Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) are quite certain they can know
who the true Christians are, and who they are not . . . who is holding to the True Word of God, and who is not . . . who is saved, and who is damned . . . The outcome is not in doubt. Ken Ham and AiG make clear again and again that they are on the right side of history. (191)
That is some pretty powerful certainty!
- What if you are a moderate Republican, and you don’t want to go with the liberals in the Democratic Party, but you don’t want to be part of a Republican Party that is now dominated by the Tea Party/Christian Right? What are you to do?
You don’t have good options, because you have lost your party. You can organize and take back the party – your best bet here is to hope that the 2018 elections are a disaster for the Republicans. Or, you can organize with an eye to creating a new political party. Or, you can decide joining with the Democrats is better than your other options.
The Christian Right is the most important constituency in the Republican Party, and they are not going away any time soon.
Thanks, Westminster, for your gracious hospitality and your lively engagement!
