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Junkie
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Onward Christian soldiers!
Interesting article from today's Sydney Morning Herald.
Quote:
Onward the new Christian soldier
Evangelists who hold the Bible as literal truth are reshaping the face of modern Christianity, writes Paul Sheehan.
Hundreds of millions of people believe the Bible is the literal truth. God created the world in six days, 6000 years ago. Evolution is wrong. Soon these beliefs will be exhibited in a state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar museum that portrays and honours the beliefs of creationists. It is called the Creation Museum.
Only in America, you might think. Yes, the first stage of the museum is nearing completion in northern Kentucky. Yet the vision and drive for the museum has come largely from an Australian, Ken Ham, a former high school teacher from Brisbane. Ham is president of Answers in Genesis, one of the largest evangelical congregations in the United States.
He is also a warrior. "It's a war, it's a real battle between world views," he says of the battle against secularism and for the hearts and minds of Christians. He describes the Answers in Genesis ministry as "a Christian apologetics ministry that equips the church to uphold the authority of the Bible from the very first verse".
There will be plenty of "apologetics" when the Creation Museum opens this year. It will be dominated by life-size dinosaurs and large movie screens depicting epics from the Old Testament. A planetarium will demonstrate how God made the Earth in six days. Inside a re-creation of Noah's Ark visitors will hear water lapping outside, and perhaps even people screaming. (That touch is still under consideration.)
Animated figures will re-create Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with a Tyrannosaurus rex pursuing them after their fall from grace. Dinosaurs feature prominently in the museum, and will form the visual centrepiece and a marketing key for children.
Readers may ask how a modern museum could depict dinosaurs and humans cohabiting the Earth when the fossil and geological records show dinosaurs and humans missed each other by about 60 million years. In response to such yawning contradictions, Ham advises people (in one of the many video clips available on the Answers in Genesis website) to offer this omnibus retort: "Were you there?"
Creation Museum will provide the Biblical interpretation of the mass extinction of the dinosaurs in a display known as "The Fate of the Dinosaurs". The room will shake and rumble as a dinosaur walks by. Visitors may even feel the creature's warm breath on their necks. A display showing ancient Babylon will feature the Tower of Babel. Another exhibit will lay responsibility for AIDS on homosexuals. Disease and famine will be portrayed as the byproducts of mankind's fall from grace. The climax of the exhibitions will be the life of Christ with a three-dimensional depiction of the crucifixion. A "Bible Authority Room" will warn visitors: "Everyone who rejects His history - including six-day creation and Noah's flood - is 'wilfully ignorant.' "
All this will cost at least $US20 million ($26 million), with room for expansion. Answers in Genesis is seeking to raise the funds by selling 20,000 charter memberships of the museum at $US1000 apiece. The museum's site has been chosen for its strategic location. It is six kilometres from an airline hub, Greater Cincinnati International Airport, and near Florence, Kentucky, headquarters of the Answers in Genesis worldwide ministry. As Ham explains, "One of the main reasons we moved there was because we are within one hour's flight of 69 per cent of America's population."
Sixty-nine per cent of America is a very big market: 200 million of America's 290 million people, including the entire American south. The potential market for the Creation Museum is huge. In a Gallup poll in 2003, 46 per cent of Americans described themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. Opinion polls have shown that more Americans believe in creationism than evolution. The President, George Bush, has been careful not to criticise creationism.
Even the huge evangelical population in the US is dwarfed by the numbers of evangelical, born-again, fundamentalist and conservative Christians in Latin America, which has almost 500 million Christians, Africa 360 million, and Asia more than 300 million. Evangelism is the boom area of global Christianity. In America, polls show two-thirds of Americans favour teaching both creationism and evolution in schools.
Not many people in Australia paid much attention to Ham before he moved to the US from Queensland in 1987, along with his wife, Mally. They have five children. After completing a bachelor's degree in applied science (biology) and a diploma of education, Ken Ham taught science in Queensland high schools before committing full-time to creationism. His ministry's website describes the journey: "Over 20 years ago, Dr Carl Wieland, Ken Ham and others saw that the church in their own country, Australia, was struggling and often compromising its biblical integrity in the face of the ever-increasing attacks from those hostile to Christianity. They realised that most Christians were not equipped to provide answers to a doubting world in a so-called age of science."
Ham's move to America has proved to be highly successful - he is one of the most influential creationists in the world - and in the American south and Midwest he is tilling some of the world's most fertile ground for adherence to the literal meaning of the Bible. The battle with secularism is ceaseless. Last Thursday, a US federal judge ordered schools in an Atlanta suburb to remove stickers placed in biology textbooks stating that "evolution is a theory, not a fact".
Judge Clarence Cooper concluded the stickers, although worded to avoid religious reference, amounted to an endorsement of "Christian fundamentalist or creationist" beliefs. The Cobb County School Board adopted the stickers in 2002 after parents protested against sections on evolution in a new biology textbook.
Creationism may be regarded as closed and dangerously regressive by secular liberals, who dominate the Western media, but it is the muscular intransigence of creationists and the zeal of evangelists who are reshaping Christianity at the beginning of the 21st century. "The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning," Professor Philip Jenkins wrote in his book The Next Christendom (2002). "The face of change is undeniable ... So little did we notice this momentous change that it was barely mentioned in all the media hoopla surrounding the end of the second millennium."
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REF: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/...810774805.html
People are entitled to believe what they wish. So what if 20,000 charter memberships to the museum? I'm totally OK with this. The only issue is when Creationism and fundamentalism begins to affect the organs of government. In my opinion this is a bad thing.
I find it interesting that we're seeing the effects of fundamentalism not only in the Middle East but now it is rearing its head in "the West" as well.
Thoughts?
I'm also surprised to hear that "two thirds" of Americans favour the teaching of Creationism along with evolution in schools. I had thought the number was far less. I'm also a bit unsure as to religious studies in American schools. Is religion taught there at all?
I was educated by the (now infamous) Christian Brothers. It never did me any harm. The Catholic Faith does not argue against evolutionism; indeed, it accepts it. Perhaps it's just the "evangelical" and fundamentalist Christian churches that support Creationism.
Mr Mephisto
Last edited by Mephisto2; 01-16-2005 at 10:20 PM..
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