Gaining Attention: Recent Press
Righting America at the Creation Museum has received some notable press lately, all of which is very exciting for us. In addition to readers’ reviews on Amazon (which are always a treat!) and responses from our Facebook page, we’re also pleased to see reviews that have appeared both nationally and locally.
As we noted last month, essayist and author Colin Dickey published an excellent review of Righting America in the May 12th issue of the L.A. Times. More recently, Dickey’s review was re-printed in the June 6th issue of the Chicago Tribune.
Locally, we’ve had the good fortune to be featured in articles on WHIO, a local CBS/Cox Media affiliate, as well as the Dayton Daily News.
This coverage would not be possible without the continued support of our academic home, the University of Dayton, who kindly published a stellar press release promoting our book. We also remain indebted to Johns Hopkins University Press for their continued promotion of our work.
And we’d love to hear more from you, our readers, about your impressions of our work, the questions and arguments it raises for you, and how you respond to Righting America at the Creation Museum. Feel free to let us know in the comments!
6/26/16: Update: Our interview with The New York Times appears in Laurie Goodstein’s latest piece on the Ark Encounter.
The Selling of Ark Encounter
by William Trollinger
The Ark Encounter is scheduled to open on July 7 near Williamstown, Kentucky. The public relations campaign is in full swing, with billboards (including one here in Dayton) and press releases and interviews with journalists and – as reported in our last blog entry – the June 10 visit of President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter to the Ark.
One component of this PR campaign involves persuading individuals who are not Christian Right devotees that they will be treated hospitably. Hence Ken Ham’s June 18 blog entry: “Who Is Welcome at Ark Encounter?” In this piece Ham expresses surprise that “secularists” would imagine that “those who may disagree with us are not welcome at the Ark.” Ham hypothesizes that these “secularists,” who are “often intolerant of Christians personally,” wrongly imagine that “Christians will act the same way toward” secularists. He goes on to warmly encourage gays, atheists, Jews, and Muslims to visit the Ark and thus “encounter the truth of God’s Word and the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Related, Ham also mentions in this blog entry that he had the opportunity to explain to Carter “the biblical and evangelistic nature of the exhibits,” even though the former president “does not accept Genesis as straightforward history” (the latter point having been omitted from the AiG press release). Ham is praying that “he will be able to do this with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and President Obama.”
It seems likely that Ham and others connected with Ark Encounter are sincere in their commitment to hospitality. In our seven visits to the Creation Museum we never had any problems. Of course, and as we mentioned in an earlier blog entry, we are middle-aged white heterosexuals without tattoos and piercings, and whose attire is anything but adventurous. It is possible that, say, individuals who wear politically or religiously provocative T-shirts or LGBT couples who engage in public displays of affection may face hostility at Ark Encounter. But we take Ham’s promise of hospitality at face value.
More than this, it seems obvious that Ark Encounter seeks to be evangelistic and – as a for-profit entity – seeks to make money. So on both counts it is in their interest not to frighten away paying customers who may be converted to their very particular form of Christianity.
Of course, the art of selling involves saying certain things (“this car is a dream to drive, and we are offering very favorable terms”) and not saying certain things (“this car is last in its class when it comes to safety, and we will be discontinuing this model in six months.”)
In the category of not saying things, it makes sense that Ken Ham – in inviting gays to Ark Encounter — does not reiterate what AiG spokespersons have previously proclaimed: individuals who choose homosexuality are “’choosing a perversion of God’s good design’”; homosexuality is “’a sin that has been particularly associated with the slippery slope of sinful attitudes and lifestyles leading to ever greater rebellion, social degradation, disease, and spiritual blindness throughout history’”; gay marriage will eventually result in the “’dissolution of the family unit’” in America (as quoted in Righting, 167-168).
It also makes sense that Ken Ham – in suggesting that he would love to give Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton a tour of the Ark — does not reiterate the rhetorical question he asked the attendees of the July 2013 Answers Mega Conference: “’If . . . America is under judgment” for having removed God from the culture, “how should we view the president of the United States, who has promoted gay marriage, pushed the gay marriage/homosexual agenda in a big way, has condoned the killing of 55 million children that makes what Hitler did at the Holocaust pale in comparison?’” (as quoted in Righting, 169).
Maybe it will work. Maybe Ken Ham and AiG can successfully and simultaneously employ two rhetorics: one evangelistic rhetoric of welcome for the general public and the national media, and another vitriolic rhetoric of culture war for the Christian Right faithful. Maybe one audience won’t notice what is being said to the other audience. Maybe.
Ken Ham and … Jimmy Carter?
by William Trollinger
On June 10 Answers in Genesis (AiG) scored a public relations coup when former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn toured the Ark Encounter construction site. As reported in the AiG article celebrating the visit, the Carters were there at the behest of “close friend and Habitat [for Humanity] colleague LeRoy Troyer of the Troyer Group, who is building the Ark along with some Amish craftsmen.”
According to Ham, “it was a thrill to have a special time of fellowship with President Carter as we chatted and walked through the Ark.” According to Carter: “The Ark is remarkable. And it’s some of the best wood-working I’ve ever seen. My friend LeRoy Troyer has done a remarkable job.”
This is Carter’s one quote in the article. Who knows what else he said while he was touring the Ark. But there would be good reason for him to have confined his comments to his friend’s carpentry achievements, given the dramatic differences between him and his hosts.
For example, contrast what Jimmy Carter told the Huffington Post in a 2012 interview with the positions held by Ken Ham and AiG (and as documented in Righting America):
On Biblical Inerrancy
Carter: “When we go to the Bible we should keep in mind that the basic principles of the Bible are taught by God, but written down by human beings deprived of modern-day knowledge. So there is some fallibility in the writings of the Bible.”
AiG: God spoke every word in the Bible and thus there are no errors (Righting, 112).
On Creation Science
Carter: When the Bible was written there “was a limitation of knowledge of the universe or physics, or astronomy . . . [but] today we have shown that the earth and the stars were created millions, even billions, of years before.”
AiG: The Bible is factually accurate in matters pertaining to history and science. Hence, the universe was created a few thousand years ago in six twenty-four hour days. (Righting, 113-114).
On Gender Equality
Carter: “I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women [and their role in church], because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women.”
AiG: There is to be male headship in the family and in the church, a hierarchical structure modeled by Jesus’ functional subordination to God the Father (Righting, 173-176).
On Gay Marriage
Carter: “Jesus never said a word about homosexuality . . . I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies . . . [And] if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine.”
AiG: Jesus clearly taught against gay marriage, the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize it is a sign of America’s rebellion against God, and churches allowing gay marriages is a sign of ever-increasing apostasy in American Christianity (Righting, 166-170, 223-224).
These differences are just the tip of the iceberg. Contrast Carter’s recent attack (reported by Laurie Goodstein) on Donald Trump’s willingness to “tap a waiting reservoir . . . of inherent racism” with Ken Ham’s good words for Trump’s “blunt and not politically correct” rhetoric.
In Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter Randall Balmer tells the story of how, in the 1980 presidential election, the evangelical Carter was rejected by an emergent Christian Right that was angered by Carter’s support for equal rights for women, gays, and lesbians. That Christian Right is still very much with us. But now one of its mainstays is the Answers in Genesis creationist juggernaut. Yes, Jimmy Carter visited the Ark. Yes, Jimmy Carter praised his friend’s woodworking. But Jimmy Carter does not belong in Ken Ham’s world. His politics are not Ham’s politics. His Christianity is not Ham’s Christianity. It could not be clearer.
Odd Panel and Good Questions
by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger
Last Thursday, we presented our paper, “Dinosaurs in Eden: Fundamentalism and the Plain People,” at a conference on the Amish (called “Continuity and Change”) at Elizabethtown College. You can find a much-reduced version of that paper in our previous blog entry.
Oddly, our paper on the importance of Amish enthusiasm for the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter appeared in a session titled “Amish Homes and Amish Women.” We are still scratching our heads as to why our paper was placed on that panel. Just to be clear, Amish men visit the Creation Museum in as great a number as Amish women and it is Amish men who are building Ark Encounter. Given all that, we wondered if anyone attending our session would be interested in our paper.
To our surprise, the session was packed and attendees were interested in our paper. A good number asked questions. In the course of the Q&A, attendees referred to us as “the fundamentalist group.” We thought that was pretty funny! After a few did that, we invited them just to call us Bill and Sue, which they did.
Some attendees wanted to know why the Amish go to the Creation Museum and whether they might just be going because it is thought to be a “safe” destination for Amish people? Great question! Yes, we agree that many Amish view the Creation Museum in that way. But there is more to it than that, as certain Amish affiliations are starting to incorporate fundamentalist doctrine in their Ordnung (the agreed upon and shared rules of community life) and given that what the Creation Museum and AiG teach contrasts so sharply with what the Amish have believed about the importance and meaning of the teachings of Jesus.
Others wanted to know why we think the Amish are attracted to fundamentalism and the Creation Museum. Another great question! The Amish people we interviewed indicate that Amish Biblicism (their focus on taking the Bible seriously) seems to dovetail well with fundamentalism’s and the Creation Museum’s literal reading of Genesis. That said, the Amish have always focused much more on the teachings of Jesus than on Genesis. Also, the Amish hold to a two-kingdom theology whereby the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world operate according to two very different logics—the former driven by love, forgiveness, and cooperation whereas the latter is all about violence, competition, and individualism. The culture war logic of the Creation Museum can seem to mirror that two-kingdom theology when, in truth, it does not. As we say in the paper, the Amish make terrible culture warriors believing as they do that a primary task of every Christian is to forgive others as God has forgiven them.
A fascinating fact emerged in the course of our Q&A. Karen Johnson-Weiner, who convened our session and who is a great scholar on the Amish, informed us that many Swartzentruber Amish (one of the most conservative or tradition-minded Amish affiliations) believe in a flat Earth. This was news to us, but it makes sense. Indeed, as we point out in our book, these Amish are not alone among Christians who take Ken Ham and the Creation Museum to task for not taking the words of Genesis literally enough!
If you have questions or comments regarding our paper, please let us know on this blog. We’d love to hear from you.
Dinosaurs in Eden: Fundamentalism and the Plain People (an excerpt)
by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger
Greetings from the 2016 Amish Studies Conference at Elizabethtown College! As we’re taking part in this week’s conference, Continuity and Change: 50 Years of Amish Society, we’d like to share an excerpt from the paper we’re presenting. You may recall that we shared portions of this paper in our previous post, in which we discussed our impressions of the Amish visitors to the Creation Museum. If you’re curious to know more about our interviews with the Amish, please let us know in the comments section!
“Dinosaurs in Eden: Fundamentalism and the Plain People”
Each time we visited the Creation Museum, we saw groups of Old Order Amish. We wondered: Have the Amish embraced the young-earth creationism of contemporary fundamentalism? If so, what does this mean for the Amish?
To begin an answer to these questions, we interviewed Amish people. One thought leader among the Amish expressed surprise at our surprise. He reported that neither he nor his wife knows of any Amish adult who has not visited the Creation Museum at least once.
In an August, 2015 interview, Ray Miller and Nathan Yoder, two leaders in the Ohio settlement, agreed, saying that most Amish they know have visited the museum one or more times. They reported that belief in young earth creationism is common among the New Order and the New New Order Amish. Miller observed that “there is no way now in a New Order church that you could go against the idea of dinosaurs on the earth with humans.” Young earth creationism is influencing the Old Order via the New Order. An Old Order Amish bishop confirmed this saying that New Order ideas “infiltrate the Old Order, and this is a real threat to the Old Order.”
Ernest and Orie Lehman, two Amish brothers who organized crews of Amish workers to build AiG’s Ark Encounter, said they are thrilled to build the ark. As one put it, “I almost feel as if we were born for this – this is a culminating experience.” They have visited the museum twice and appreciate the museum’s emphasis on reading the Bible literally and its use of science to explain how everything happened just like the Bible says.
Like the Creation Museum, the Amish have always taken the Bible seriously. They do not believe in evolution, favoring instead the account in Genesis which tells of a creation made in “six [twenty-four-hour] days.” Thus, they reject the idea of an old Earth. And they do see a fundamental tension between the church and the world.
Still, there are differences. The Amish have never mobilized science to prove the Bible, since the Bible stands on its own. They have never been interested in an alternative science to confirm a literal reading of Genesis. Moreover, they teach humility in all things and especially in one’s knowledge of God, God’s will, and the Bible. Finally, they have never focused on Genesis. They have always favored the New Testament and, especially, the teachings of Jesus. Their Confession of Faith attests to this as it grounds its 18 articles in 160 quotations from the Bible. Of those, 133 (83%) are taken from the New Testament whereas just 27 come from the Old Testament.
Following Jesus is the goal of Amish life. Doing that requires obedience not to a set of beliefs grounded in creation science but to the church and to Jesus who calls Christians to suffering and nonresistance. Put simply, as followers of the Prince of Peace, the Amish make terrible culture warriors.
Should we be surprised and concerned to find the Amish not only at the Creation Museum but embracing the arguments of AiG? Yes!
For the Amish to resist the modernism AiG’s young earth creationism, they will need strategies as powerful and purposeful as those they have used against modern technologies and other modern ideologies. Otherwise, they risk losing what is most dear to them: their ability to follow the Prince of Peace, to forgive as God forgives, to love the enemy.
The Educational Conundrum of the Faithful Creationist Parent
by Adam Laats
RACM is very pleased to showcase our first guest post! Historian and author Adam Laats offers his insights on the history of mainstream science in creationist education and the difficulty this history poses for evangelical parents eager to provide their children with a well-rounded education.
We all want the best for our kids. For most of us, that means spending a lot of time driving them to seemingly endless piano lessons, soccer practices, cross country meets, and the like. Young-earth creationists (YECs) have to do all that, but they also face a unique YEC conundrum. On the one hand, they want to make sure that their children are properly indoctrinated into the YEC worldview; on the other hand they want their kids to have the best introduction to the world of modern knowledge. Can they ensure both? If so, how?
This conundrum is for real. Just a few years back, one especially thoughtful YEC homeschooling mother reached out to me because she was worried that the fundamentalist textbooks she was using weren’t doing their job. She wrote
“Dear Dr. Laats,
As a Christian homeschool mom I am not trying to protect my sons from learning evolution. . . . I am going to teach my kids about evolution, somehow.”
Importantly, this mom was not expressing some basic doubt about YEC or her faith. On the contrary, she was just trying to be the best parent she could. For her, that meant making sure that her children heard the best from both sides. Pat reassurances from Christian textbooks, Christian museums, and Christian colleges weren’t doing the trick for her. She wanted to give her children the best education possible, but can she when she is teaching YEC science?
YEC parents can feel real anxiety that the critics might be right. By teaching them young-earth science or sending them to a private Christian school that does, are they robbing their children of a real education and dooming them to learning only a second-rate pseudo-science?
To reassure these parents, creationist institutions do their darndest to demonstrate that their young-earth science is not only equal to mainstream science, it’s better. As the Trollingers point out in Righting America at the Creation Museum (page 66), the folks at Answers in Genesis bend over backwards to argue that their science is the only non-deluded science out there. In his February 2014 debate with “Science Guy” Bill Nye, for example, Ken Ham made himself into the “Even-More-Science” guy. He used the word “science” over a hundred times, many times more than Bill Nye did.
Facade of the science building on Bob Jones U’s Greenville, SC campus. Rest assured, the building tells parents, your kids will get the best modern scientific education. And they won’t have to give up their Bibles to do it. Photo by Adam Laats
And, as the Trollingers argue (see pages 36-38), the Creation Museum insists that it gives visitors both sides—creationist science and the mainstream evolutionary kind. Creationist colleges often make the same claim. At creationist schools and colleges as well as museums, this pose of open-minded science superiority serves an important purpose. Believe us, YEC administrators imply, your children will learn the best of everything if they bring their tuition dollars to our school.
There’s nothing new about these sorts of latent anxieties and hurried reassurances. For decades, YEC school administrators have wooed parents with promises that their science departments were absolutely top-notch, whether they were judged by mainstream science standards or evangelical purity standards.
At fundamentalist Bob Jones University, for example, the founder Bob Jones Senior assured parents that students at his school learned the best science available. As Jones put it back in 1944,
“We say we believe in the creation of man by the direct act of God. But we want our students to know what Darwin taught; we want them to know what Huxley taught; we want them to know what Spencer taught. We tell them that these men were just guessing.”
At evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois, school leaders made the same fetish of publicizing their unimpeachable scientific credentials. In one pamphlet from mid-century, President Raymond Edman promised nervous parents, “The Division of Science is one of the strongest areas in the College.” The professors almost all had PhDs, Edman assured readers. But don’t worry; they were also all men who “worship Christ as their personal savior and as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.”
Wheaton loves science! Photo by Adam Laats
Wherever creationist parents look, they see reassurances that they are indeed providing the absolute best possible science education for their children. Nevertheless, some YEC parents still fret. As my homeschooling YEC correspondent told me, “I am making an honest attempt to understand [evolutionary theory] so I don’t teach it incorrectly.”
Is she the only one? I doubt it. Given the amount of loud promises and expensive advertising done by schools such as Wheaton and Bob Jones U over the years, I imagine that plenty of YEC parents have shared her anxiety. Like parents everywhere, they are not willing to compromise their children’s welfare. At the same time, like YECs everywhere, they are not willing to compromise their fidelity to the answers in Genesis.
The exaggerated emphasis on excellence in science education at evangelical and fundamentalist colleges—at least in part—has tried to bridge this anxiety gap. Just as the folks at the Creation Museum have done, the leaders of America’s conservative evangelical colleges assure nervous YEC parents over and over again: Our science includes the best of both creationist and mainstream science, and we can prove to your kids exactly why creationist science always comes out on top.
Adam Laats is an historian at the Graduate School of Education at SUNY-Binghamton. He is the author of books such as The Other School Reformers (Harvard UP, 2015) and co-author of Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation (Chicago UP, 2016). He is currently working on a new book about evangelical and fundamentalist higher education, Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education.
Donald and Ken: Were You There?
by William Trollinger
When Donald Trump purchased a golf club on the Potomac River in 2009 he not only redesigned the club’s two courses. He also installed a flagpole above the river, with a plaque containing the Trump family crest and — as reported in the New York Times — this inscription:
“‘Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’”
In keeping with other Donald Trump assertions — for example, his claim that he saw live footage of thousands of Americans Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks — this one turns out to be false. Historians are adamant: there is absolutely no evidence of a Civil War battle there, and there certainly was no “River of Blood.”
In response to the historians, Trump — who says he is a “‘big history fan’” — replied: “‘How would they know that? Were they there?’”
Interestingly, Trump’s response is strikingly similar to the Answers in Genesis (AiG) campaign to teach children — as Ken Ham told “hundreds of kids” at a Baptist church in North Carolina this spring — “to respectfully ask evolutionists, ‘Were you there?’”
For Ham and AiG, this is a tried and true approach. In a 2011 blog entry Ham celebrated a nine-year-old girl — “brought up on AiG resources” — who used “were you there?” to challenge a presenter who claimed the moon rocks at a NASA display were 3.75 billion years old:
“Praise the Lord, Emma has such a strong foundation in God’s Word and won’t fall for the atheist lies in their attempts to shake their first at their Creator God.”
When it comes to anti-intellectual populism Donald Trump and Ken Ham sound strikingly similar. So perhaps it is not surprising that Ham, while he doubts that Trump “truly understands what real Christianity is,” has many good things to say about the GOP presidential nominee:
“Many people are rallying behind Donald Trump because in our sea of political correctness and liberal media . . . he is prepared to ‘call it as he sees it,’ even if it’s blunt and not politically correct. And he will deal with the media as he sees fit . . . I think the average person will respond positively to such a person . . . because many people want a leader who comes across as genuine and is prepared to lead with authority.”
(As regards to how Trump “will deal with the media as he sees fit,” see his recent responses to inquiries about gifts to charities that benefit veterans.)
Ham concludes “The Donald Trump Phenomenon” by addressing his readers: “In case you were wondering: will I vote for Donald Trump? I will judge any candidate’s beliefs against the absolute authority of God’s Word, and vote accordingly.”
Will Ham vote for Trump? Of course, we can’t say for sure.
What we can say, and as we document in Righting America, the AiG young earth creationist Word of God is used again and again as support for an arch-conservative culture war politics. So we would not be surprised in the least to see many devotees of the Christian Right line up behind Donald Trump.
In fact, the line is already forming.
Mercy Now
by William Trollinger
If we had given Righting America an epitaph it probably would have been this stanza from Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now”:
“My church and my country could use a little mercy now.
As they sink into a poisoned pit it’s going to take forever to climb out,
They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down.
I love my church and country; they could use some mercy now.”
Here in June 2016 it certainly does feel as if our church and country are sinking into a poisoned pit, with a Christian Right that is much more Right than it is Christian, with a Christian Right that is a very important constituency in a political party that will be nominating Donald Trump for president.
And in the end, this sinking into a poisoned pit is at the heart of Righting America at the Creation Museum. The Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis and the soon-to-open Ark Encounter are all about promoting a culture war politics that has precious little to do with either the Gospels or the American common good.
It took us a little while to realize that this is where our research was headed. But when it became clear that the museum and AiG were, first and foremost, Christian Right sites, we decided that we had to write for a broader public. That is to say, it became clear to us that this story mattered for all Americans, and we did not want to limit ourselves to a specialized scholarly audience. For the same reason, we did not want to limit ourselves to print, and thus we have established this website and (via Facebook) a social media presence.
A personal note: we wrote Righting America as Americans with strong faith commitments. In this regard, we have a word for the faithful. There is no need to follow Ken Ham and other Christian Right gurus into the poisoned pit of hateful culture war politics. Mercy is the name of the game. And we all need mercy now.
Noah, Cranes, and the Death of History
by William Trollinger
On March 8, 2016, Ken Ham published a to the AiG blog entitled “How Did Noah Build the Ark?” The exasperated Ham started his entry by noting that
“Sometimes I just shake my head when I read some of the comments people make concerning the life-size Ark that Answers in Genesis is constructing in Northern Kentucky, to open July 7 this year.”
Ham was especially frustrated by criticisms that the Ark project was making use of concrete, cranes, metal, and sophisticated tools, when none of this would have actually been available to Noah.
In response, Ham observed that the Bible does not specify “what materials Noah did or didn’t have” — there is no verse stipulating that Noah did not use concrete — and “does not tell us whether Noah did or did not use cranes.” In fact, “Noah may have used more metal than we do,” “Noah may have had tools and other impressive technology that we would be jealous of,” and “Noah may have had ingeniously designed cranes that would make us stand in awe today!”
What?
The key term in each of the statements above, of course, is “may.” Noah may have had tools, he may have designed, he may have had access to technologies superior to our contemporary ones. Ham points out that the question of Noah’s tools is itself a question based on insufficient evidence. But so is his answer. Instead of acknowledging that in the 21st-century AiG is building a replica of a boat described in the Bible, and thus is using technology unavailable in ancient history, Ham’s go-to answer is to say that Noah may have had technology that matches or surpasses what we have today.
Following this line of thinking, why stop with cranes, concrete, and sophisticated metals? Why not suggest that Noah and his crew quite possibly used semitrailers, computers, or robots? Why not float (sorry) the possibility that Noah designed and installed a security system with sirens that would go off if some poor drowning soul tried to make their way onto the Ark?
Why not, indeed? There is absolutely nothing in Ham’s logic that would preclude him from making such claims. Following this argument, there really is very little sense that our ideas, our science, our technology, or even our consciousness build upon the past.
Weeks later, AiG published a follow-up post entitled, “Ancient Non-Stick Frying Pans,” in which Ham again addresses critics of the technologies used to build the Ark replica. He reminds readers that such notions reflect “an evolutionary view of mankind.” Such a view, Ham would remind us, is the most fallacious of all. Given that pre-Flood human beings were as “intelligent, resourceful, creative, and innovative” as we are today, and that they “were also living over 900 years– imagine what geniuses like Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, or Thomas Edison could’ve accomplished if they’d lived that long!,” there is every reason to believe that “they may have had technology we would envy today.”
As we discovered again and again while working on Righting America, science is not the only casualty at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and AiG. History itself is also a victim.
The Specter of Young Earth Creationism
by William Trollinger
Note: This post is a continuation of last week’s discussion about judgment and evangelical colleges and universities.
A specter is haunting evangelical higher education.
Evangelical and fundamentalist schools are tuition-driven institutions. Many or most of the parents paying the tuition and sending their children to these schools expect that these schools will uphold the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, to be read plainly and “literally,” and to be understood as the final authority on all matters on which it speaks.
In this regard, it’s a given that the idea of evolution is antithetical to the first three chapters of Genesis. To avoid controversy, one longtime strategy at some evangelical colleges has been to replace the word “evolution” with the word “development” in biology and related classes. This approach is in keeping with how publishers modified science textbooks in the wake of the 1925 Scopes Trial. For more on this approach, see Bill’s review of Adam Shapiro’s book Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools.
But as young earth creationism has supplanted old earth creationism in much of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism — a trend which began with the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood — the pressures on evangelical higher education have expanded exponentially. Biology is not the only minefield; now, because so much of what it means to be a “Bible believer” in the conservative Protestant world presumes young earth creationism, mainstream geology and astronomy have joined mainstream biology as suspect, dangerous, anti-Christian.
Hence Ken Ham’s power when it comes to conservative Protestant higher education. His young earth creationist constituency is the same constituency that sends students and money to evangelical and fundamentalist colleges.
Some schools have sought to reassure Ham’s constituency by having their presidents affirm in writing the Answers in Genesis (AiG) “Tenets of Creation,” including the affirmation that:
…the entire universe including, but not limited to, the earth, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and Adam and Eve were created in six, consecutive, literal (essentially twenty-four hour) days . . . between about 6,000–10,000 years ago.
For those evangelical and fundamentalist schools that do not sign AiG’s statement or that do not include young earth creationism in their official faith statements, it has become increasingly important that their faculty not say or do anything to suggest that young earth creationism is bad science or bad Biblical interpretation.
In this way evangelical schools can stay off Ken Ham’s radar — and that matters. Of course, the implications for hiring, teaching, and scholarship are significant. One does not have to be on the AiG list of “Creation Colleges” to be, in some fashion, a “Creation College.”
