Ken Ham Thinks Vegetables Undermine the Authority of Scripture: (Ham’s Beef with Phil Vischer, the State of Evangelicalism Today, and My Take of it All)

Last Friday, on December 11^th, Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales, put out a very good and informative video entitled, What is an “Evangelical”? in which he gave a brief history lesson on where modern Evangelicalism came from and the challenges it now faces. Yesterday, on December 15^th, Ken Ham of the YEC organization Answers in Genesis, took to Twitter to condemn Vischer. Why? Well, that is what this post is about.

Vischer’s Video: “What is an ‘Evangelical’?”
Concerning Vischer’s video, it is only 23-minutes long and is well-worth your time, especially if you are unaware of the development of both Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the 20^th century. If you don’t want to spend 23 minutes watching a very informative video, though, here are the main points Vischer makes:

1. The 19^th century saw the emergence of a certain kind of Biblical Studies in academic circles heavily influenced by modernism that claimed the Bible was full of errors and that miracles don’t happen. In addition, it also saw the birth of Darwinism, which claimed that all life on earth evolved over time.
2. In the early 20^th century, a number of Biblical scholars, pastors, and academics pushed back on the modernist skepticism to the Bible by writing a series of pamphlets and essays entitled, The Fundamentals, which sought to defend the Bible against modernism’s attack on the Bible, as well to define what they considered the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith. In all these essays, though, they hardly touched upon Darwinism, because the original “Fundamentalist movement” didn’t see it as a problem necessarily.
3. After the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, though, a new kind of “fundamentalist movement” emerged that lumped opposition to modernism’s attack on Scripture with opposition to modern science and Darwinism. These fundamentalists (like Bob Jones) withdrew from society and started their own Bible colleges.
4. Not all Christians were like those fundamentalists, though. A number of key Christian figures (Harold Ockenga, Carl Henry, and Billy Graham) began in the 50s what is known now as the modern Evangelical movement. In fact, Henry had taught at Wheaton College and then was instrumental in the beginning of Fuller Theological Seminary. [Side Note: Both my parents went to Wheaton College, and my dad attended Fuller for a couple of years as well!]. Billy Graham, of course, had gone to Wheaton College as well. [Side Note #2: Yes, I have been in the Billy Graham Center!]. This new Evangelical movement sought to uphold the sanctity of the Bible, yet still re-engage with the greater society as a whole.
5. The result was that for a time in America, there were sort of three “strands” of American Protestant Christianity: (1) The Modernists, (2) The Fundamentalists, and (3) The Evangelicals.
6. In the mid-70s though, when the IRS threatened to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University (and other Fundamentalist schools) if it insisted on maintaining their racist and segregationist policies, Jerry Falwell Sr. managed to get political, create the Moral Majority, and rally most Fundamentalists and Evangelicals to support politically conservative causes (the main one obviously being opposition to abortion).
7. Whereas Evangelicalism used to be quite distinct from Fundamentalism, that distinction pretty much has gotten blurred ever since. The irony is that both Wheaton College and Bob Jones University are now considered “Evangelical,” even though Bob Jones Jr. (a Fundamentalist) condemned Billy Graham (an Evangelical) as a heretic.
8. Sadly, Vischer laments at the end of the video, some of those “old currents of Fundamentalism are resurgent” within Evangelicalism that have served to politicize the Gospel and detract from the actual biblical message and the core ideals of the original Evangelical movement. Some of these “old currents of fundamentalism” are that of anti-intellectualism and the wholesale rejection of modern science.

The Wrath of Ken (Khan?) Ham
It is the last two minutes of Vischer’s video that caught the attention of Ken Ham, who took umbrage to Vischer’s criticism of YECism’s rejection of mainstream science. In response, Ham took to Twitter and (as is par for the course) first accused evolution and the big bang theory (the actual theory, not the TV show) of being a “pagan religion.” He then accused Christians like Vischer (again, as is par for the course) of being compromisers who undermine biblical authority and who are the reason why the church is so lukewarm and losing the younger generation.

Vischer responded on his Twitter account—as can be seen in the corresponding screenshot. All in all, it is a little more historical background on the origins of the YECist movement.

Now, it would be very easy to go after the “low-hanging fruit” and beat up Ken Ham (and Fundamentalists like him) for engaging in pseudo-science, practicing horrible biblical interpretation, and politicizing the Christian faith. All of that is true (I’ve written about in my books, The Heresy of Ham and Christianity and the (R)evolution in Worldviews in Western Culture), but I want to comment on something else that came to my mind as I watched Vischer’s video and read Ken Ham’s reaction—the further implications that this “marriage of Fundamentalism with Evangelicalism” has had for American Christianity as a whole.

Even though I grew up within the Evangelical world of the 70s-80s, my spiritual journey eventually took me to Orthodox Christianity, to where I officially joined the Orthodox Church in 2005. The reason why I left American Evangelicalism wasn’t because of any political stance commonly associated with Evangelicalism or any anger or disillusionment I had with it. To be blunt, it all just seemed, however sincere and well-intentioned, to be nonetheless extremely shallow. What one would hear in a Sunday morning adult service really wasn’t altogether different than what one would hear in 5^th grade Sunday school.

I remember reading C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity as a 16-year-old kid and thinking, “Now this is challenging, intriguing and interesting.” But I realized that the Evangelical Christianity I grew up with simply paled in comparison to the Christianity Lewis was describing. Eventually, I came across the writings of the Catholic monk Thomas Merton, and then later various Orthodox writers as well. What attracted me to those writers (and to Orthodoxy) was the sobriety, seriousness, and focus of cultivating a truly spiritual life.

Now, even though I became Orthodox in 2005, in many ways I never completely left the Evangelical world. I continued to teach in Evangelical schools for a time, and where I live now there isn’t an Orthodox Church within 70 miles, so I still am living in a very Evangelical “American Christianity” type world. Thus, I never have had any kind of animus or hatred towards Evangelicalism. Even though (as I’ve written about before) I’ve been the victim of the kind of zealotry displayed by Ken Ham, I never have developed the kind of seething hatred for anything associated with Evangelicalism that I’ve seen some now have. I know far too many godly, intelligent, thoughtful, and Christ-like Evangelicals to do that.

Having Said All That…Here’s My Point
Now, Phil Vischer is absolutely correct to point out that Evangelicalism has become more and more influenced by the kind of right-wing Fundamentalism of Ken Ham, Bob Jones, and the Falwells. And he is absolutely right that for far too many Evangelicals, the actual Gospel of Christ has been effectively replaced by secular (and conservative) political positions, to where it seems that the GOP party platform is mistaken for the Kingdom of God. As was true when I was a kid, and even more so today, far too many Evangelicals, upon hearing someone might have what they consider to be a “liberal” political position on something, automatically assume that person can’t be a real Christian. All of that should be seen as the bitter fruit of the politicization of Evangelicalism ever since the rise of the Moral Majority movement, when Fundamentalists got political and began to wield an undue influence within Evangelicalism.

That being said, though, this politicization of Evangelicalism by Fundamentalism has also bore another kind of bitter fruit, namely with many ex-Evangelicals. For every conspiracy-minded, bitter, and hateful Evangelical who broadbrushes every Democrat or liberal with the term “Communist” or “godless,” you can find an equally conspiracy-minded, bitter, and hateful ex-Evangelical who broadbrushes every Republican, conservative, or Evangelical with terms like “fascist,” “racist,” and “white supremacist.” This is what happens when one’s real religion becomes one’s politics. This is what political idolatry looks like—and it is happening, not just in certain segments of Evangelicalism, but it also, quite frankly, among many of the self-proclaimed ex-Evangelicals. Needless to say, it already is the real religion of secular America as a whole.

Sadly, what this means is that it is virtually impossible for anyone to have any kind of thoughtful and meaningful discussion on the various political and societal issues that need to be hashed out and discussed. Vischer said in another one of his podcasts [speaking about Evangelicals], “We are mixing secular political positions with the Gospel and the New Testament is being choked out.” A friend of mine also recently commented in a private conversation that the big problem he saw with so many with Christian progressives (although it can apply across the board) is that they have no real sense of biblical virtue, and “in its absence, we create these pieties that have nothing to do with our Christian faith and everything to do with secular forces.” Both Vischer and my friend hit the nail on the head.

Let me just throw out a couple of examples to highlight the problem. People rightly criticize Ken Ham and YECists for being “anti-science” because they reject evolutionary theory. But then some people’s outright hatred of Ken Ham (and Evangelicalism) cause them to take the exact opposite position of anything he (or Evangelicals) say about any given political or social issue to the point of absurdity. Take abortion, for example. It is a very complicated issue (and I’ve written about my view here), but the fact is if you deny human life begins at conception, then you are every bit as much a “science-denier” on that issue than Ken Ham is on the issue of evolution. Or if you deny that Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner is a biological man or that Ellen (now Elliot) Page is a biological woman, then, again, you are every bit as much as “science-denier” as Ken Ham is.

Anyone who takes those positions is not taking them because science leads them to those positions, but rather because they’ve allowed certain liberal political positions and secular forces to trump reality. In that respect, such stances are not really different than Ken Ham’s YECism, which sees (in some bizarre way) the argument for a young earth as essential in the “culture war” against liberalism. It is all secular madness. Before you can even begin to adequately discuss and wrestle with modern social issues, you have to first insist on seeing reality clearly. To state that human life begins at conception, or that a biological man is a man doesn’t mean you want women to die in back alleys or that you want to people to suffer. And just because you acknowledge evolution doesn’t mean you have a shrine to Karl Marx in your basement and that you want drag queens to read children stories in your local library. It all just means that you insist on stating the truth clearly so that there can be an informed discussion about certain issues.

And that is what is so sad about the mess Evangelicalism is in right now. It is splintering into fanatical “culture warriors” on the political right and equally fanatical “ex-Evangelical culture warriors” on the political left. Back in 1995, Mark Noll wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, that argued the “scandal” is that Evangelicals are afraid to use their minds. It echoed what I was in the midst of discovering about Evangelicalism as I made my spiritual journey into Orthodoxy. It isn’t that Evangelicalism is necessarily bad. It is just that because it is so cut off from the spiritual tradition of historical Church, it is pretty much rootless (or at least its roots have never been that deep), making it very hard for Christians within Evangelicalism to truly grow, spiritually as well as intellectually. The Moral Majority effectively tried to “re-root” Evangelicalism in the soil of secular politics—and we are now seeing the bitter, divisive fruit of all that, on both on the political right and political left.

Although I am now Orthodox, I fully agree with Vischer at the end of his video, when he expresses his hope that Evangelicalism can somehow reclaim the values and aims the original Evangelical movement of Graham, Okenga, and Henry. I, too, want to see a vibrant Evangelicalism that is able to be salt and light to modern American culture. I don’t want to see people abandon their faith or Evangelical churches simply because people like Ken Ham are wielding their influence. Stay there, state the truth, and be prepared to take a beating…and then try not to repay in kind. Simply put, try to be like Christ, both in your church that might be a mess right now, but also in the greater society as well.