The brown state signs indicating that we were indeed approaching Kentucky’s “Answers in Genesis, Creation Museum” caught me a bit off-guard, not because it wasn’t our plan to go, but because of my overly comic expectations of a “museum” in someone’s doublewide with accompanying lawn-sculptures of grazing T-Rexs and Adam and Even hand-feeding velociraptors. I didn’t foresee state road signs.
But validity comes in a certain package.
And so, after exiting the highway, we drove through the gate in the stone wall with the sculpted metal triceratops atop it, were directed in the parking lot by a state trooper, and then walked up to the huge glass-fronted crescent of the anything-but-a-double-wide Creation Museum. The price-tag was legitimate too, $26 per person (w/tax). But my girl-friend and I, rounding out a pretty fantastic road-trip, decided it would be worth it, if only (and likely only) for the priceless memories.
I should probably put my theological cards on the table at this point. I have lots of them (you collect them like baseball cards at seminary, I even have a few signed). But to the one that seems most pertinent: I do not ascribe to modern evangelical ‘creationism’ - the belief that the Genesis narrative is the literal scientific account of the creation of the universe, fall, and flood. I say “seems most pertinent,” because this opinion rests ultimately on a certain hermeneutic, which is a fancy word for the theory or method behind how you read a text, or how you make sense of the world. I am purposefully avoiding the word “interpretation,” because one of the claims typically (but not always) made by proponents of creationism is that they are not interpreting, but just reading what is there - that, they say, is their only “method.” I’ll come back to this in the second post.
So, in all honesty, I went in knowing that upon leaving, my mind would not be changed on the matter. That is not to say I didn’t think I might learn something, but what I learned ended up being more frustrating and disheartening than edifying (and in a much deeper and different sense - I hope - than an “academic elite” might be thought to feel in view of the beliefs of the “common Christian.”) Let me explain.
After passing a few glass cases that pose some ‘interesting conundrums’, meant to get you thinking about how the world really came to be, you come to the first main exhibit. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to correctly refer to most of these exhibits because the museum provides no online map of their facility and their website either overlooked mentioning a good number of sections (those focused primarily on witnessing), or simply lumped them into the “Natural Selection is not Evolution” exhibit. True to form, the museum here utilizes a common evangelical witnessing tactic: the bait-and-switch. The museum first publicly presents itself as solely addressing the scientific validity of “biblical history,” and then, once you’ve paid your $26, presents Scripture as the key not only to the Earth’s past, but to your personal salvation. And it is the goal of this first exhibit, and the next several, to drive this latter point home.
The question put to you in this first room is simple: God’s Word or human reason? Here is where hermeneutics come into play. The question they are posing is whether you use God’s Word (the Bible) or human reason to make sense of the world, of how it got here and why it is the way it is. And here lies the root of the problem of modern evangelical creationism, a root that lies hidden because what good, self-respecting Christian would question for a moment that he or she should begin with anything but God’s Word? The problem is two-fold. First, the unnecessary and deleterious bifurcation of faith and reason. Second, the assumed and unquestionable (and thus hidden) biblical hermeneutic of modern creationism. I hope to shed some light on the first part of this problem in this first post (of hopefully three).
First, allocating faith and reason to their own separate realms in which to operate has a long history and has had both theological and political implications. What is pertinent here is that, in the modern era, the division meant that any and all public discourse had to be conducted on rational grounds without appeals to faith. With that, faith communities (or at least, talk about their faith) were forced, to some degree, out of the public sphere, since their justifications were not universal to all mankind. You had (publicly) “pure reason” and (privately) “pure faith.”
But what has taken place over the last few decades, especially in America, is that those faith communities are now demanding their voices be heard and legitimized by those very powers they feel have tried to silence them in political matters. Hence in both the US and the Middle East, many religious conservatives lash out against governmental powers that do not acknowledge or appeal to religion in public debate or policy. But what often happens, and what results in “liberals” calling foul, is that while “conservatives” want to influence public policy, they argue from a faith that belongs to them alone.
Truth cannot have a foot in each. A house divided cannot stand.
But the division is illusory.
The limits of reason do not show it ultimately defective, but, in the eyes of faith, are the opening for speaking of God. And speaking of God will, at times, turn what we thought was reasonable on its head, and blessedly so. But in the end, what is holy is the fulfillment, not the rejection, of what is natural, including our “reason.”
So, back to the exhibit. That simple question (“God’s Word or human reason?”) can be seen as arising from the exorcism of reason from faith in an attempt to keep faith “pure,” undefiled. The house can’t be divided if you kick-out the competition. What was missed though, is that “human reason” isn’t competition.
But because human reason is set in stark competition with faith, because it’s set against that which is held most dear, it’s rejected. “Human reason” becomes an enemy; it is the theoretical name for the tangible political and social ostracism that is externally enforced upon (and unknowingly internally perpetuated within) modern evangelical Christianity. If you are a more conservative Christian, the scales are already tipped in the first exhibit’s ability to draw up those feelings (however slight) of victimization from which the rest of the museum is prepared to vindicate you.
The question, loaded as such, plays on a common human response. Victimization makes us all the more prepared, if not eager, to denounce anything which bears the oppressor’s name. Now, if you think this too abstract, that most people wouldn’t reject it simply because it’s called “reason” since they aren’t familiar with that history, let me say two things. First, as a reminder, it is put in contrast and thereby competition with Scripture. Secondly, “human reason” is displayed as the creator and sustainer of evolutionary theory.
For the Creation museum, there is no third way. You are either the righteous victim (who holds fast to Scripture) or the godless oppressor (who counts it as straw). And if we know ourselves well enough, we might be able to acknowledge that we love being the victim. The problem with the museum isn’t that it knows this and is exploiting it, but that it is, in itself, the unwitting manifestation and legitimization of it.
The first exhibit reveals and encapsulates the self-assertion of a faith community that it is not irrelevant, that it will not abide victimization (even while harnessing it to spur on the troops), that it too can legitimately speak in the public sphere . . . as is made evident by that shiny facade that just screams “validity.”
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