The Ham Wars…on Twitterfeed (and Josh Feuerstein to boot)

This week I wrote two posts regarding the movie God’s Not Dead 2. The first post was essentially a summary of the film, and the second was my analysis of it. The basic points I hoped that came across were these:

1. The “persecution narrative” that is often promoted within many Evangelical circles simply is not true. Yes, there will always be hostile people and points of contention, but the whole “the secular world has declared war on Christians” mantra is a fiction.
2. Sadly, the kind of unjust abuse depicted in the film (i.e. secular administrators try to silence and fire a Christian teacher) happens more often in Christian schools than public schools, only the silencing and firing tends to happen because a Christian teacher disagrees with a particular tenant of Fundamentalist ideology, like young earth creationism.
3. Evangelicals have to realize that the reason why more people don’t believe in God isn’t because Christians just haven’t memorized the right arguments enough; it’s because non-believers aren’t seeing Christ’s resurrection life being lived out in the Church.
4. Finally, the “persecution narrative” depicted in the film provides a platform for some really dangerous voices who claim to be Christian, but who are stoking the flames of extremism.

Ironically…Ken Ham
As fate would have it, the same day I posted my analysis of God’s Not Dead 2, young earth creationist Ken Ham was blowing up his Twitterfeed with calls for war. As always, the battle lines in Ham’s war is always the creation/evolution debate. And on this day in particular, not only did he have evolution in his crosshairs, he was taking direct aim at, you guessed, public schools. Within the span of a few hours in one day, Ham had tweeted out the following tweets:

1. Creation vs evolution is a part of the war around us for the hearts of people – at a foundational level the war is God’s Word vs man’s word
2. Doing business for the King means we’re soldiers in a war-a war that started in Genesis 3 between God’s Word and man’s word–a spiritual war
3. The teaching of evolution in schools is not just an interesting topic–it’s a declaration of war against the authority of God’s Word
4. Creation vs evolution–a battle between two religions–God’s Word & man’s word–evolution is the pagan religion of our day to do away with God
5. Public school textbooks define science as only to do with natural processes-naturalism is atheism- a religion imposed on generations of kids
6. Secularists are at war with God / at war with those who teach the truth of God’s Word & gospel – we are continually at war – a spiritual war

For the record, yes, quote #5 doesn’t actually have the word “war” in it, but within the context of the surrounding tweets, it’s clear that Ham sees public schools’ teaching of evolution as a hostile act directed toward students.

This is What Indoctrination and Brain-Washing Look Like
To be clear, the mere mention of the word “war” or “spiritual warfare” is not radical or extremist. Soldier and battle imagery is used throughout the Bible; Paul talks about “putting on the armor of God.” All of that is completely legitimate.

But we have to acknowledge that, at some point, the constant barrage of “War! War! Spiritual Battle! Evolution! War! Public Schools! War! Declaration of War!” is nothing less than pure indoctrination and a form of brain-washing. The effect is that is creates almost a Pavlovian-dog effect with people. If they hear someone, even a fellow Christian, say something like, “I believe evolution happens,” or “I don’t believe evolution undermines the Bible,” or “I don’t believe Genesis 1 is to be read literally,” the immediate, knee-jerk reaction is to hear Ken Ham’s propaganda in one’s head: “War! Spiritual Battle! Undermining God’s Word! Authority issue! Voice of the serpent! Liberal!” …and soon after that, “They must be for gay-marriage, no prayer in public schools, and abortion!”

That is what paranoia and indoctrination look like. And in extreme cases, this kind of persecution narrative leads to  guys like Josh Feuerstein (the “internet pastor” of “Starbucks has declared war on Christmas” fame) routinely ranting about how “the Christian holocaust has begun,” how “Christians need to start a revolution” and how if the government wants his guns, “they can have them, bullets first.”

Now the thing is, there really are challenges in our country regarding balancing the free exercise of religion with making sure the rights of all people are protected: the Oregon bakers and the gay wedding cake; Kim Davis and the gay marriage licences, the Little Sisters of the Poor and contraception in their health care coverage, to what extent should religious displays be allowed on federal government building, etc. And there are other controversial social issues like abortion and gun control.

On most of those issues, I probably lean right (although I’ve been called “liberal” by a Ken Ham acolyte). I’m smart enough to realize that in a pluralistic democracy, there has to be dialogue, discussion, and compromise. If you want change, you have to win people over and convince them. And if cooler heads prevail, most of the time things can be worked out. But people who are indoctrinated into believing that the government is out to get you if you’re a Christian, that public schools are “temples of atheism,” that evolution is a declaration of war against God, and that anyone who accepts evolution must be a gun-hating, abortion-loving, gay-marriage liberal who dreams of a Christian holocaust–they are going to go down a very dark and frightening road.

And I can guarantee you, it’s not the “narrow way” of Christ.

I used to think guys like Josh Feuerstein were fringe, just like I used to think that the young earth creationism of Ken Ham was a fringe sect within Evangelicalism. But Feuerstein has almost 2,000,000 followers on Facebook, and Ken Ham has raised a lot of money for his Ark Encounter–that money is pouring in from somewhere. If men like Ken Ham and Josh Feuerstein continue to grow in influence within Evangelicalism, then pretty soon, things are going to be about three steps away from David Koresh.

The sad fact is that while they are extremely successful in spreading fear and paranoia for personal gain, that kind of paranoid rhetoric make it virtually impossible for any meaningful discussion, debate and resolution to some very important and controversial issues to ever happen. Keep on declaring “war” long enough, that is what you are going to get…and a lot of people are going to be hurt.