Throwing a Bone to Kirk Cameron and Ken Ham—WHAT???

I haven’t written anything about the creation/evolution debate or Ken Ham for quite a long time. In fact, it has been almost a year. Yet although my writing on the topic has decreased quite a lot, I still follow some of goings on in those circles. And since it is the beginning of the new year, I thought I’d take a little time commenting on a few things I’ve noticed over the past few weeks.

Kirk Cameron’s Book As You Grow
First, there is the recent dust up involving Kirk Cameron’s new children’s book, As You Grow. It seems that as he has been trying to promote the book by having events scheduled at various public libraries throughout the country, quite a few libraries have refused to let him use their facilities. I’ve seen numerous articles and blog posts expressing quite a lot of anger toward Cameron and (not surprisingly) applauding the move by these libraries to not allow him to have his events, because, you know, Cameron is a homophobic, transphobic, white supremacist fascist.

Obviously, when I read that, I was intrigued. Now, I have never been a fan of Kirk Cameron. I never watched Growing Pains, I thought his character of Mike Seaver was lame, and I found his partnership with YECist Ray Comfort to be pretty laughable. In fact, for those of you who know a bit of my story about how I was forced out of my job as a Biblical Worldview teacher at a small Christian high school, the YECist headmaster who did that to me once had the entire high school watch a Kirk Cameron movie that focused on US History, emphasizing its Christian roots. I remember at the time, while we were watching it, rolling my eyes on numerous occasions—not so much because what Cameron was saying was a lie, but that it was such a shallow, oversimplification of US History and its Christian roots.

In any case, after reading about how homophobic, transphobic, white supremacist, and fascist Cameron’s recent children’s book tour was, I really wanted to read the book! Unfortunately, the best deal I could find was to spend $20 for it on Amazon. Sorry, there’s no way I’m going to spend $20 on a children’s book by Mike Seaver, especially when, after reading a number of reviews from people who liked the book admitted that there really weren’t even a whole lot of words in the book. It was mostly pictures.

Still, I was able to find a video of Cameron reading about half the book to some children at some library event somewhere in the Midwest. Apparently, the “plot” of the story is about a tree that starts off as a little acorn that grows into a great big tree known as “the sky tree,” that gives shade and basically a home to many animals on “Freedom Island.” Cameron himself says that the book teaches children about biblical wisdom and the fruit of the Spirit.

Bottom line, from what I could find out, there wasn’t anything homophobic, transphobic, white supremacist, or fascist about the book. So, let’s be honest, the reason for the uproar isn’t really the book itself. It’s because Kirk Cameron, in addition to supporting YECism, has also been outspoken on a lot of controversial and touchy social issues from gay marriage, transgenderism, and critical race theory. Therefore, because he is vocal about his objection to those politically progressive views, he must be a fascist…and even this innocuous 48-page children’s book with hardly any words in it is basically the equivalent of a swastika or a KKK hood.

Sorry, but that is pretty silly.

Back in 2016, when I wrote my book The Heresy of Ham, the aim of the book was to educate Evangelicals (and anyone else, for that matter) a bit about Church history, proper biblical exegesis/interpretation, and the actual claims and evidence regarding evolution. And in doing all that, I wanted to warn Evangelical Christians about the toxic rhetoric of YECists like Ken Ham.

In the book, one of my main criticisms of Ham and many YECists was that their real concern wasn’t really about science or the proper understanding of the Bible, particularly Genesis 1-11. Their real concern was “fighting the culture war,” and they were using pseudo-science and really bad biblical exegesis to present “true Christianity” with essentially political conservative positions. By doing so, they were mistaking Christianity with a certain political party, and that was wrong to do. As soon as you say, “If you don’t agree with my political views, then you’re not a real Christian,” and as soon as you start manipulating science and the Bible to justify that stance, then you’ve taken a really bad turn. And that was what I was convinced YECists like Ken Ham had done. And I still think that.  

At the same time, though, I warned that such an attitude wasn’t limited to just people on the right hand side of the political spectrum. And indeed, over the past six years, I’ve seen the same tendencies in conservative and progressive Christians alike. Both sides are guilty of politicizing their faith, equating certain political stances with “true Christianity,” and then utterly demonizing anyone who doesn’t share their political views. And that inevitably creates a lot of hatred.

Like I said, I’ve never been a fan of Kirk Cameron. He is wrong on so many things. At the same time, he’s not wrong on everything…and his new children’s book seems pretty harmless. A children’s book that emphasizes the fruit of the Spirit, even if it comes from Kirk Cameron, isn’t some fascist conspiracy. I don’t get the hatred and hysteria over it. Well, actually I do—it comes from the poison of wedding Christianity with strident, ideological political positions. In that kind of “marriage,” the strident political ideology always becomes the spousal abuser.

Kirk Cameron’s Chat with Ken Ham
Secondly, I happened to come across a somewhat recent interview between Cameron and Ken Ham himself that focused on some of the standard creation/evolution issues. First, allow me to give a short summary of a few of the questions-and-answers, followed by a few comments of my own.

(1) Kirk: “Tell me Ken, what are some of your favorite designs in nature?”

Ken: “DNA is incredible! Those who reject God say that life came about by natural processes! Where did matter come from? DNA cries out, “In the beginning God”!

***Nothing new here. This is just standard “Ham-ese.” Anyone who has followed Ken Ham and AiG are well-familiar with this rhetoric.

(2) Kirk: “How can there be a good creation if the serpent was put in the garden? How do we reconcile the temptation of Adam and Eve with something that God called ‘good’?

Ken: “Well, God created everything, even angels, and the Bible says that everything was ‘very good.’ God didn’t create us to be puppets to be forced to love him. It was a test of obedience to see if Adam and Eve would obey God’s word. Satan came, though, and said, ‘Look to yourself and become your own god.’ Still, though, all we can say is that God created us because He wanted to redeem a people for His Son.”

***This response actually fascinates me, because some of what Ken Ham says here is actually true…and he’s even expressing a view quite similar to the early Church Father, Irenaeus! Yes, the Bible says that God’s creation was “very good.” Yes, we can say Genesis 3 is sort of a “test of obedience” that Adam and Eve failed (of course, I don’t see Adam and Eve as historical individuals, but rather as representing human beings—meaning, their story is our story. That’s what we do).

No, the serpent didn’t actually say, “Become your own god.” He actually said, “Disobey God, take the fruit, and become like God.” As many early Church Fathers have said, God had created “man” in His Image to be according to His Likeness, and the intent was for “man” to become more like God through obedience to God. What the serpent in Genesis 3 does, though, is promise a “shortcut” to being like God—and when Adam and Eve (and us by extension) listen to that and disobey God, we become enslaved to death.

Still (and this is what fascinated me), Ham is 100% right (and very Irenaeus-like!) when he says that all we know is that God allowed all this to happen so He could redeem a people for His Son. Irenaeus, in his work Against Heresies, says that God “predestined that the first man should be of an animal nature” so that “he might be saved by the spiritual One. For inasmuch as He had a pre-existence as a saving Being, it was necessary that what might be saved should also be called into existence, in order that the Being who saves should not exist in vain.” (Against Heresies V.22.3).

(3) Kirk: “What about dinosaurs in the Bible?”

Ken: “’Dinosaur’ is a modern word! Of course, it isn’t in the Bible. ‘Email’ isn’t in the Bible either!”

***Typical YECist nonsense. No one is claiming there was email in ancient Israel…and there is nowhere in the Bible where dinosaurs (or anything like dinosaurs) are mentioned. There just isn’t. “Leviathan” and “Behemoth” in Job are references to ANE mythological creatures, not dinosaurs. And the Book of Job isn’t history to boot—it’s in the category of Wisdom Literature.

(4) Kirk: “I know some Christians who are brilliant, love God, and hold to fidelity to the Scriptures. And they believe the universe is billions of years old. Can’t it be that God designed the universe, like an engine, then there was an explosion, and things have been running ever since. What’s wrong with that?”

Ken: “It’s not about what God could have done, or what you think He did. It’s a matter of what He said He did. It comes down to the issue of biblical authority. Genesis is historical narrative. If there is a contradiction, you don’t question God’s Word; it’s man’s fallible word that you question.”

***Ken Ham’s answer is his standard YECist/AiG misleading and woefully simple-minded boilerplate response. What I found interesting, though, was Cameron’s actual question. In it, he acknowledges that some God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians believe the universe is billions of years old. Now, what he describes is more like a deistic form of God as the Great Watchmaker—or maybe a bit like the argument of Intelligent Design proponents—but he doesn’t strike me as strident and condemning as Ken Ham typically is.

What that tells me is that although I think Cameron is wrong on so many things, it would be wrong to treat him, and anyone who might think the earth is only thousands of years old, or that Adam was a historical person, etc. as being monolith. Someone can be wrong about certain things, someone can associate with or listen to irritating dopes like Ray Comfort (sorry, but let’s just be honest), but that doesn’t mean that person automatically is the embodiment of the worst of everything we can think of. Sure, Cameron seems to think Ken Ham is some kind of respected authority on the Bible and science–yikes. That doesn’t mean some kind of despicable wretch we must silence at all costs.

So, What Is All This Getting At?
Like I said earlier, my biggest warning about YECism in my book Heresy of Ham wasn’t that Ken Ham was wrong about his scientific claims and interpretation of Genesis 1-11, although he clearly is wrong about both. By biggest warning was about the danger of letting political ideology subvert the Christian faith to the point where the results are just constant condemnation of any-and-everyone who disagrees with you, not just about science or the Bible, but on every touchy political and social issue under the sun. Now, we all have our views, and we all need to talk about them. But when those views become wedded with Christianity, they end up abusing it…and others. The person with a different view isn’t just wrong, he/she is…a baby-killer, a socialist, a fascist, a white supremacist. You get the idea.

Let’s not be that way…especially towards people with whom we simply disagree. Make arguments where you think they’re wrong, by all means. But when you get to the point where you’re accusing NT Wright and the Pope of not valuing Scripture (I’m looking at you, Ken Ham!), or accusing a children’s book of promoting fascism, ehhh…pump the breaks and do some self-reflection.