A couple of weeks ago, on one of the Creation/Evolution Facebook groups I follow, there was a thread about how Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis, had spent about five pages in his book, Six Days, lambasting someone in the Facebook group because this person didn’t accept Ken Ham’s views. People were getting a good laugh about it. Out of curiosity, I popped over to Amazon to see if Ken Ham had written anything new lately, and lo and behold, he was just coming out with another book, Divided Nation: Cultures in Chaos and a Conflicted Church. And so, I made a crack about how the people in the Facebook group could start a book group to “study” Ken Ham’s new book. Knowing that I have written a number of book analyses on my blog over the years, someone joked, “I’ll just wait for your review of it!”
Well, apparently, didn’t think I’d take that little joke as a challenge! To be sure, I paid my $5.00 on the Kindle version of Ham’s new book, sat down to read it…and was pretty much done within a couple of hours. Not wanting that $5.00 go to complete waste, I thought I’d write one, solitary blog post on it. Being only 100 pages long, there is no way I could write a multi-post “analysis” of the book anyway.
I have written plenty about Ken Ham’s work in the past, when I was working on my book, The Heresy of Ham. In fact, if you want to take the time to get into the nitty gritty regarding what is so wrong with Ken Ham’s take on science and the Bible, I invite you to subject yourself to my ingenious analysis in the follow blog series (dated from 2016-2018):
My Visit to the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Inside the Nye/Ham Debate Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10
Is Genesis History? Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Already Compromised Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Six Days Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Gospel Reset Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The reason I don’t write much on Ken Ham and AiG anymore is, quite frankly, I’m tired of it. In any case, though, every now and then, I check in on what the latest is from AiG. Pretty much all the time, the “latest” is just the “same old thing.”
That takes us to Ham’s new book, A Divided Nation…
What’s the Book About?
If you are familiar with Ken Ham and his AiG organization, I can guarantee you that there is absolutely nothing new in Ham’s “new” book. It doesn’t matter if you love him or hate him, any objective person will conclude he has said the exact same things in his previous books. Still, for the sake of this post, allow me to summarize the seven chapters in 550 words or less!
Chapter 1: A Divided Nation—Our culture is becoming more secular and anti-Christian. Young people are leaving the church. Public schools have thrown God out of the classroom.
Chapter 2: There is No Neutrality—Public schools indoctrinate our children with atheism, moral relativism, and the agenda of the Left (LGBTQ+, Abortion, Critical Race Theory). Churches tell kids to not worry about Genesis, and to just, “Trust Jesus, Johnny.” But if the first part of the Bible isn’t true, then none of it is! We need apologetics resources!
Chapter 3: Everyone Has a Religion—Public schools are brainwashing our children in anti-God religion! The Bible used to influence our culture (like in the 50s), but not anymore. Churches present the Bible as just a guidebook for life—that’s too shallow. Churches need to read the Bible more and sing more “theologically solid” songs.
Chapter 4: Only Two Religions—We know what happened 6,000 years ago. It’s really either God’s Word or Man’s word. The Genesis 3 attack is still going on today. Many church leaders and Christian scholars are compromisers. Modern church music is too shallow. More solid apologetics teaching is need to teach Christians how to defend the faith, specifically, how Genesis 1-11 is historical. The world used to be perfect, but not anymore. Things like natural disasters and cancer are the result of sin. “The world around us is full of death, disease and suffering…” and it’s our fault.
Chapter 5: Ready to Give an Answer—We need more Bible/Creation apologetics, so Christians can answer questions about Adam and Eve, Cain’s wife, Noah’s flood, Fossils, Evolution, Gay marriage, and how Muslims and Christians don’t worship the same God. Most churches teach the “good news” and stuff about Revelation, but not Genesis 1-11—that has to change, because Genesis 1-11 is the foundation for the entire Bible. Just consider AiG’s Seven “C’s” of History—it explains it all. We need to call “compromisers” back to the authority of God’s Word. The fact is the church isn’t impacting the culture because it doesn’t focus on Genesis 1-11.
Chapter 6: Thinking Foundationally—You develop a truly Christian worldview by focusing on Genesis 1-11, because it provides the answers to issues like gender, abortion, marriage, death and suffering. Remember, “This is not a beautiful world. It’s filled with ugliness because of sin. The original world was beautiful” (70). Is the world millions of years old? No! Add up the genealogies in Genesis 1-11 and you get about 6,000 years. What about racism? Just look in Genesis 1-11. All the people of the world can be traced back to the Tower of Babel, and then genetically back to Adam and Eve.
Chapter 7: The Sand vs. The Rock—It’s all about foundations. Build your worldview on Genesis 1-11, and your house is built on the rock. Build your worldview on “man’s word,” and your house is built upon the sand.
Chapter 8: Take a Bold Stand—Christian leaders don’t take a bold stand on Genesis. I’m not saying they’re not Christians, but they are undermining biblical authority.
***The book ends with a copy of the Statement of Faith at Answers in Genesis that goes on for 16 pages, with a lot of it related to statements stemming from Genesis 1-11.
My Thoughts
There is no need for me to specifically address any of the points made in Divided Nation, because they are all the same points made in all of Ham’s other books (and I’ve provided all those links, if you want to run down those rabbit holes). Instead, I just want to make a few larger observations about what I would hope should be obvious.
First of, I have to say that much Ham’s view of the world and human beings seems to be just an absolute killjoy: “The world sucks! It’s ugly…and it’s all your fault!” I mean, geez–can you imagine what he says to his wife whenever he gives her, let’s say, diamond earrings? “Here you go, honey–these diamonds are the result of SIN! This world used to be great, but BECAUSE OF SINNERS LIKE YOU, natural disasters happened, and things like heat and pressure were so great that they crushed parts of earth’s mantle DURING NOAH’S FLOOD to make these diamonds! They may look pretty, but they are a testament to death and sin! Happy anniversary!”
Second, for all his talk about science, history, and the Bible (specifically Genesis 1-11), Ham’s real interest and concern is about “fighting the culture war.” It is a very Fundamentalist concern about “fighting the secular system.” Ironically, I’ve found that is just a mirror image to the current Progressive concern about “fighting the current system of oppression” in America. (I highlighted this in my last book analysis series, when I went through Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne). For the stark political differences between Fundamentalists like Ken Ham and Progressives (like KDM), it disturbs me, quite frankly, to see their aims and actual worldviews are actually quite the same. Both are screaming, “We need to change the system, because changing the system is the key to our salvation.”
I’m sorry, but it’s not. It’s the antithesis of salvation and the Gospel. It reminds me of the problem that Peter and the disciples (and the Jews in Jesus’ day) had—they didn’t really understand what kind of Messiah Jesus was. They wanted a Messiah to lead a revolution against the system and establish their preferred political agenda as a means of “salvation.” And what was Jesus’ response to Peter when Peter tried to rebuke him for talking about sacrificing his life, being rejected and being crucified? That’s right, he said, “Get behind me Satan, for your mind is not on the things of God, but on the things of men!”
Third, that being said, I actually agree with Ken Ham when he says our current culture has gone haywire. There really are a lot of societal problems that are threatening societal stability. Now, I’m not going to get into the details about many of the current hot button controversies facing us today, but yeah, if you don’t think there is a problem with having transgender drag queens come into libraries to read children’s books about being a drag queen and then giving twerking lessons to grade schoolers—there is something fundamentally wrong with you. That being said, Ham’s accusation that all public schools are atheist indoctrination centers that are pushing moral anarchy is just too much. Are there some school systems that are out of control? Yep! But to suggest that all public schools are like the handful of school systems in a few selected areas of the country—sorry, that’s not honest.
Fourth, if you are going to address those controversial issues, you need to be thorough—and that is something Ham doesn’t do at all. For that matter, I don’t see too many people taking the time to be thorough about those issues either. Take Critical Race Theory, for example. For all the ink it is getting, I’m convince that 99% of people who are against it, and 99% of people who are for it, really don’t know much about it either way. All they see is basically either, “Oh, conservatives hate it—so I’ll support it!” Or “Oh, liberals are pushing it—I hate it!” Yes, it is a big issue. Yes, it has huge implications. But sorry, I’m convinced most people simply can’t articulate precisely what CRT even says and is suggesting. So my suggestion is this: If you’re just going to throw “CRT” out there without any real attempt to offer a “critical analysis” of what is says and claims, it’s better not to bring it up at all. It doesn’t help anyone, and it just furthers the emotionally-charged partisan “culture war.” The same holds for Ken Ham or anyone else.
Fifth, it strikes me as odd to see how much Ken Ham thinks that the key to “winning people to Christ” is to rationally and logically convince that Genesis 1-11 is scientific and historical. But let’s be honest, that mindset really typifies the “Western” way of thinking we find in Catholicism and Protestantism as a whole. It tries to arrive at the truth about God, human beings, and the Gospel of Christ solely through rational and logical means. I just read a book entitled, Thinking Orthodox, that makes the argument that the very way Catholics and Protestants even try to arrive at the truth about God is fundamentally different than Orthodoxy. I found the book fascinating, and I plan to do a book analysis of it in the near future.
Finally, on a serious note, I long for the day when more people realize that what is actually dividing the nation is actually self-proclaimed “Fundamentalist Christians” and “Progressive Christians” who have cloaked their hostile political agendas in a so-called Christian veneer in order to beat down their political opponents. That’s the sad irony to books like Divided Nation—what’s dividing the nation? Books like Divided Nation! But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking this division is only coming from one side of the political aisle. If it is any form of “party politics,” it is all about dividing the nation, period—and yes, like Jesus said to Peter, such politics are ultimately satanic, for their minds are set solely on the earthly things, and not the things of God.
