Ken Ham’s “Gospel Reset: Salvation Made Relevant” (Part 1): AiG’s Attempt to Clarify What the Gospel Is…and Why They Get Everything Wrong

Earlier this year, Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis sent out to countless pastors and churches throughout the country their new short book entitled, Gospel Reset: Salvation Made Relevant. All in all, it was a little over 100 pages, had quite a few of the standard cartoons and charts that AiG peppers all its publications with, and took all of 45 minutes to read. For all intents and purposes, it seemed pretty clear to me that the underlying motivation for sending out free copies to pastors and churches across the country was to promote AiG’s own Bible materials and curriculum, which, as anyone familiar with AiG knows, boils down to the standard AiG talking points about how a literal/historical reading of Genesis 1-11 is the foundation for the Gospel and how “millions of years” is part of the atheistic religion of evolution.

Back when I was writing more about Ken Ham and YECism, I quickly noticed that the real focus of AiG wasn’t really science, or even proper biblical interpretation. The real focus was on fighting the culture war—regardless of whatever pseudo-scientific or exegetical argument they made, it always came back to any one of the controversial cultural issues that are always in the news. Well, Gospel Reset isn’t anything new. Nevertheless, since AiG pushed this book out to so many churches over the past few months, I thought it might be worthwhile to give it a read and see precisely how they view the Gospel and salvation. Well, 45-minutes after I picked up the book, I got to the back cover and realized that my thoughts were going to take up about 2-3 blog posts.

On one hand, like I said, Gospel Reset isn’t anything new when it comes to AiG. On the other hand, since the book was specifically pushed as a call to get back to the basics of the Gospel and to make salvation relevant again, I thought it would be worth going through the book and interacting with it. Now, if I was to summarize this already short book, it would have to be this:

The Western world used to be Christian—just look back to the Billy Graham Crusades of the 50s. But once liberals took prayer out of public schools and indoctrinated our kids with evolution, all morals have gone out the window. The only way to save Western culture is to get back the heart of the Gospel and teach our children (with AiG curriculum, of course) that the universe is 6,000 years old, that Adam and Eve were originally perfect, but once they sinned, dinosaurs became carnivores and we got things like cancer, floods, and death. If you don’t believe that, then Christ died for nothing and the liberal agenda will win.

That, in a nutshell, is the Gospel according to Ken Ham. But it won’t do to just dismiss it out of hand and ignore it. The fact is that within certain Evangelical circles, AiG has become quite influential. If you think that what the AiG Gospel message is wrong, then you had better be able to go through it, point by point, and articulate precisely why it is wrong and why it is a distortion of the actual Gospel. Furthermore, you need to also acknowledge any specific points they might get right. That is how one comes to a firmer grasp of the truth. So let’s see what Gospel Reset looks like.

The Foundational Problem…According to Ken Ham
In the first few chapters of Gospel Reset, Ken Ham attempts to articulate the problem facing Christians in today’s culture. His basic argument is that America today isn’t like the America of the 1950s. Back then, there was prayer in public schools and society was, by and large, more Christian. Today, though, we live in much more of a secular/atheistic culture where liberals have taken prayer out of public schools and have indoctrinated children with the “religion of evolution.”

Consequently, there is a growing divide between the older generation, who is familiar with basic Christian beliefs and language, and that of the millennial generation, who is largely ignorant of Christian beliefs and who isn’t even that familiar with Christian terminology and language. Hence, the problem is that Christians today don’t know how to effectively communicate the Gospel to the younger, millennial generation. A major reason why this has happened, according to Ken Ham, is that churches and so-called Christian schools have “compromised” the message of the Gospel with the message of evolution and millions of years and have failed to show the younger generation of church-goers how to defend their faith. As he states:

“Sadly, most of our churches, pastors, Sunday school teachers, seminary professors, Bible college professors, and Christian college professors are instructing coming generations that they don’t need to believe in a literal Genesis. Instead, they’re propagating the lie that a Christian can believe in evolution and millions of years.”

That’s right: according to Ham, most Church leaders are lying to people and telling them that a Christian can believe in evolution and millions of years—because, according to Ham, that’s not true: you simply can’t be a Christian if you believe in evolution and millions of years. Why not? Here’s Ham’s reasoning:

“How you view Genesis dictates how you see and interpret the rest of the Bible. If Genesis cannot be trusted to be an accurate account of mankind’s beginnings and the origin of sin and God’s provision of salvation, then how can we trust it or any other books of the Bible when they make truth claims?”

Hence, if you don’t Genesis 1-11 is a straightforward literal account of historical people and events, then you can’t believe the historical truth claims regarding Jesus and his ministry, life, death, and resurrection. The basis for believing in Jesus must be that of a literal/historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11. But not only is a literal/historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11 the foundation for the Gospel and belief in Christ, it is, according to Ham, the foundation to address the various social issues in the culture wars (i.e. gay marriage, abortion, racism). Without that proper foundation of a literal/historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11, not only can you not be a Christian, you also can’t fight against gay marriage, abortion, and racism.

In order to wrap all this analysis of the foundational problem in our culture, Ken Ham puts forth an over-arching metaphor that he uses throughout the entirety of Gospel Reset: (A) The America of yesteryear used to be like the Jews of Acts 2 who listened to Peter’s Pentecost sermon, whereas (B) the America of today is like the Greeks of Acts 17 who listened to Paul’s Mars Hill sermon. We will explore this extended metaphor in my next post, but for now, we need to do a little assessment of our own of Ham’s assessment of today’s culture.

So, What’s Right and Wrong about Ham’s Assessment?
To be fair to Ham, there are some parts of his assessment that actually are true.

• First, in many ways, the overall culture of America today is decidedly “less Christian” than it was back 50-60 years ago. Church attendance across the board is plummeted, and more and more people are identifying themselves as non-religious than ever before.
• Second, because of that, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to find that people today have a much poorer knowledge of basic Christian teaching and the Bible than they used to. That very much is true.
• Third, in many ways, there really is a cultural disconnect between the older generation and the current millennial generation, and that leads to the reality that it often is really hard to effectively communicate the Gospel to the current generation in American culture.
• And finally, the reason for this growing secularization and the mass exodus of the younger generation from churches is due, in large part, to a failure of church leaders. Let’s face it, if a whole bunch of sheep are routinely wandering away from the flock, the shepherd might be doing something wrong.

Of course, what is wrong about Ham’s assessment can be boiled down to two things. First, Ham has this really odd view of “the good old days” of the 1950s. For him, that is what a “Christian culture” was, because they had prayer in public schools and people often went to Billy Graham crusades. Given the fact that 1950s America was still a highly racist and segregated culture, I really have a hard time looking back at that time as some sort of cultural golden age of Christianity. The fact is that, although it was certainly more nominally Christian, in many ways it certainly did not reflect a truly Christ-honoring Christian culture.

We need to realize that much of the “Christian culture” of the 1950s was a result of America’s defeat of Nazism in WWII and the emerging Cold War with the USSR. It was at that time that the phrase, “One nation under God” was added to our pledge of allegiance (1954), and that we started putting “In God We Trust” on our money (1956). And why? Because we weren’t like the godless Communists in the USSR, that’s why. The popularity of Billy Graham’s crusades at the time also had a lot to do with people trying to come to grips with the horrors of war that the world had just experienced.

Now, much of that Christian revivalism was sincere—thousands upon thousands of people turned to Christ as a result of Billy Graham’s ministry. But still, we need to acknowledge the danger of wrapping up the United States in a Christian flag (or perhaps, wrapping Christianity up in a US flag)—for it blurs the line between Church and State, between being a patriotic American and being a follower of Christ. Yes, you can be both, but they are not the same thing.

In any case, the problem with Ham’s pining for the good ole days of the “Christian America” of the 1950s is that much of it was superficial at best. Yes, people were nominally Christian, but much of more about patriotism for America, in contrast with the godless communism of the USSR. It could be summed up in something my grandmother told my mother when she was a teenager and asked her if they were Christian. My grandmother said, “Of course we’re Christian! We’re Americans!” That kind of shallow and superficial brand of “patriotic American Christianity” was a thin veneer. Much of it was seeds planted on rocky ground—the plants that sprouted up soon withered and died in the 60s and beyond, precisely because they were not deeply rooted into good soil.

And hence, Ham’s pining for those times is incredibly naïve as it is shallow.

Second, this leads to Ham’s problematic assessment as to why so many in the younger generation have left Christianity. He (not surprisingly) lays the blame at the doorstep the “taking prayer out of public schools,” and “secularism’s indoctrination of evolution.” Indeed, as far as AiG is concerned, it’s not “the love of money” that is the root of all evil, but rather “the secular indoctrination of the atheistic religion of evolution.”

And, of course, Ham is completely wrong on this point. He is wrong because he has first and foremost blundered in his assessment of the so-called Christian culture 1950’s. For him, it was when we had God on the money and in the pledge of allegiance, and prayer in public schools, all was well. But then, when prayer was taken out of schools and evolution was put in, everything started going downhill.

That kind of over-simplistic understanding of the past is precisely what has led Ham to provide his over-simplistic assessment of the problems of today and his over-simplistic answers to those problems. He sees the American-patriotic brand of Christianity in the 1950s as the ideal golden age and never even bothers to look at it with a critical eye and through a truly biblical worldview. And so, when faced with a shifting culture and a more explicitly un-Christian society, instead of considering the possibility that the 1950’s brand of American Christianity was rooting in shallow soil (or perhaps we can say, “shifting sand”), Ham looks for an evolutionary scapegoat…and proceeds to build an ark. The end result is that he gets everything wrong, as we will see further in the next post.

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