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| "This Christian Leader cannot be trusted" ....said Ken |
You can be quite sure that Ken Ham, the fundamentalist "Answers in Genesis" theme park supremo, voted Trump in the 2024 US elections (See here). He also appears to have linked his interpretation of the Christian cause with the emerging far-right where, presumably, AiG's supporting and financing community lies. For example in one of his posts where he mentions the persecution of Christians he says:
Will
persecution ramp up against Christians/conservatives?
Yes, it may be that persecution will increase, but who are these "conservatives" Ken mentions and why bundle them together with Christians? Can we talk about Christians/liberals? After all, in spite of vociferous tribal squabbling between Christians Christianity is a very broad church (unless one has a fundamentalist perspective), a church which actually includes people from both the "woke" and the "unwoke" tribes. God is good to quarrelling humankind.
I used to think of myself as a conservative; I still do in fact: I largely support capitalism (intelligently regulated), the democratic status quo, the academic & scientific establishment, and I'm a constitutional monarchist. But somehow I don't think I'm the sort of "conservative" our Ken has in mind! I wonder if he would equate my criticisms of his kind of conservative with "persecution?
Among the "conservatives" who Ken does allude to I have an inkling one can find some or all of the following sentiments....
1. Aspirations to destroy our argumentative & complex democratic administration on the basis of conspiracy theories about a "deep state".
2. A highly ideological form of economic libertarianism...such would likely create a political vacuum giving opportunity to plutocratic authoritarians who would enforce their libertarian ideology, thus bringing in draconian regulation by the backdoor.
3. Seeking to protect cultural Christianity with nationalistic concepts & boundaries.
4. Telling us to shelve the concept of "empathy" because it's too "woke" or "new-age" (See here)
5. Sympathies with the social and market Darwinism of Ayan Rand.
6. There is nothing wrong with raising a question or two over climate science, but many of those "conservatives" are declaring "climate alarmism" as a hoax, a leftist conspiracy, perhaps promoted by China. The result: Climate complacency.
7. Widespread support for Donald Trump, a pathological liar who appears to have a personality disorder.
There are inconsistencies in this list but in our passionate and polarized culture-war blatant internal contradictions are easily overlooked (*1). Moreover, the far-right are so far-right, that a conservative like myself looks like a "radical woke leftist". But of course Ken isn't thinking of my kind of conservative. In using the term "conservative" Ken is sending out a virtue signal to his constituency - namely, to the far-right Christians who think of their Trump supporting culture as the only true "conservativism" (and. perhaps, a corollate of the only true, or at least the best form of Christianity); consider for example those otherwise conservative Republicans who oppose Trumpism and who are categorized by the radical-right as "Rinos". ("Republican in name only").
Such are the people who finance Ken's business interests and he can not afford to alienate them because those business interests depend on them (*2). Moreover, it is in the interests of Ken's business to bring to bear the most spiritually intimidating language when he calls down hell and hamnation on influential Christians who hold views which contradict Ken's young earth literalism, a literalism which is the foundational rationale for the Answers in Genesis organization. For just how spiritually bullying he can get even with very devout Christians see here for example; but I'm also going to comment on a recent post by Ken where he bad-mouths Hugh Ross, an influential Christian who believes in an old Earth, and tells us that Ross "cannot be trusted"; once again testament as to just how extreme Ken's language gets even toward devout and very committed Christians. But then this is just what is meant when somebody earns the label "fundamentalist".
***
Hugh Ross, leader of the old Earth Reasons to Believe ministry promotes the idea that the Bible and Creation are two books of Revelation. Ken is really riled by Hugh's old Earth views as he is any other influential Christians who hold views contrary to the rationale behind his theme park. I would go along with Hugh's old earth views but I don't accept the two books notion myself. That's because no book written in natural language can be read in a cultural vacuum; the interpretation of natural language necessarily employs huge resources from the rest of the created context; from the cognitive, through the cultural to the historical. Thus, in my view the Bible is organically joined to the rest of creation thus forming an integrated body of Revelation; a medium through which signals from the Divine mind are transmitted. But all that's by the by. What I want to do now is critique a paragraph from an article by Ken where he made his accusation that fellow Christian Hugh Ross is untrustworthy.
***
In a blog post titled "Did God give us two books?" Ken asks "Is nature really the 67th book of the Bible?". Ken does not think so because...
SAYS KEN: Nature is cursed. We aren’t looking at the world as God made
it. According to biblical history, we’re looking at a creation that was once
“very good” but is now cursed with death and suffering (because of sin) and was
judged by a global flood. We can’t look at this creation and figure out what
happened in the past without the eyewitness revelation of the Creator (given in
Genesis 1–11).
MY COMMENT: Strictly, the Genesis 3:17ff doesn't say nature is cursed, it says the ground and man's working of it is cursed. That's not necessarily the same as saying the whole Earth or the whole Universe is cursed: The ground and man's working of it is the agricultural foundation of all human production and civilization. From Genesis 3:17ff the most we can say is that human production is cursed whether through human sin or through direct Divine declaration. Fundamentalists like Ken also tend to miss that the serpent of Gen 3:1 suggests that a created but fallen being existed before the fall of man. So humanity did not find itself in a perfect creation before the human fall.
Romans 8:20ff, which tells us we are in a less than perfect world is ambiguous; it is ambiguous about the cause of this lack of perfection. Is 8:20 referring to God, Satan or man? But Ken doesn't like ambiguity; being a true fundamentalist and young earth literalist Ken bills himself as being blessed with utter certainty. It is this arrogant habit of mind which he believes entitles him to blowhard hard on what he considers to be heretics.
But whatever! Imperfect though it may be there is so much about the creation which is still very good although man's relationships revolving around the means of production are certainly hindered by the curse of sin.
Rather than accepting Ken's authoritarian annunciations about the past and forcing them into Scripture, we must always start with Scripture first and allow God’s Word to be our authority.
Footnotes
*1. But see this article on Science & Culture which does identify a right-wing split.
*2. See for example a post by Ken titled "The most important part of a church service" dated 20th Feb. As usual he complains about the "compromised" church as it attacks Ken's interpretation of Genesis with "the lies of evolution/millions of years". Towards the end of the post Ken then stresses the need for the financial support of his organization (The emphasis is Ken's):
"Your prayers and financial support are vital to helping us boldly continue the ministry that the Lord has called us to do — would you prayerfully consider sending a generous gift today at AnswersDonate.com? Your donation of any size will be a great blessing to AiG.
Thank you for being part of our Answers in Genesis family and supporting us prayerfully and financially. Please know that support is an investment in eternity as we reach as many as we can with the truth of God’s Word and the saving gospel.
I wonder if AiG is a bit strapped for cash at the moment?
