Rachel Held Evans v Ken Ham

Sorry, Rachel. Just had to write that "v".

Rachel Held Evans who wrote Evolving in Monkey Town, a book high on my wish list, just wrote an open letter of sorts to Ken Ham in response to his response to an article about her. Rachel called for a truce in the culture wars, saying that the young generation was tired of fighting. "We are ready to move on," she said. Ken, as you might expect, wasn't ready to move on at all. With his usual spiel about God's authoritative word and all that, he insisted that more and more young Christians are joining him in his fight against evolution.

Ken Ham doesn't get it.

In her response Rachel sums it up perfectly.

The reason I speak out about this issue is not because I am passionately committed to the theory of evolution; it’s because I am passionately committed to the fact that it’s not worth leaving the faith over! And it's certainly not worth breaking fellowship over either.

Completely agree. Completely agree. In a crucial paragraph, she mentions her friends and fellow young Evangelicals.

What we are searching for is a community of faith in which it is safe to ask tough questions, to think critically, and to be honest with ourselves. Unfortunately, a lot of young evangelicals grew up with the assumption that Christianity and evolution cannot mix, that we have to choose between our faith in Jesus and accepted science. I’ve watched in growing frustration as this false dichotomy has convinced my friends to leave the faith altogether when they examine the science and find it incompatible with a 6,000-year-old earth.  Sensing that Christianity required abandoning their intellectual integrity, some of the best and brightest of the next generation made a choice they didn’t have to make.

Maybe this counts as culture warring, so if it does, I'm sorry. But I've warned against setting the stakes as high Ken Ham and his fellow leaders in creationism do. I feel the same frustration as Rachel does seeing friends turning their backs to Christianity because of patently ridiculous bullshit like creationism. Sorry, culture warring. It's hard to remain dispassionate. Earlier this year I wrote a post that I called "The idol and altar of creationism" about the whole thing.

But what does really offends me and makes me angry is when I see creationist leaders, like Ken Ham, raise the stakes so impossibly high... By tying the Gospel so closely to a specific and wrong interpretation of Genesis and to a specific and wrong understanding of science they are setting people up for a fall. Maybe they're simply not aware of this. Maybe they wilfully ignore it. Maybe they can live with it. But the fact remains: They have made creationism into an idol and are willing to sacrifice their followers on its altar. Thoughtful Christians inevitably find out that creationism simply isn't true. If they have been taught that rejecting creationism means rejecting the Gospel, that interpreting Genesis in non-literal ways means rejecting its truthfulness entirely, and that rejecting Genesis means rejecting the whole Bible - chances are that the dominoes will start falling. What creationists often say about a slippery slope from their view to atheism, via liberal interpretations, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The internet is littered with testimonies of "de-conversion" and the breakdown of creationism is frequently cited as an important factor, often the first step in the direction of unbelief and sometimes the main reason for rejecting the Gospel. While rejecting ones faith is a complicated process and shouldn't be simplified or, I think, attributed too much to intellectual factors, there's no doubt that some of the blame lies squarely at the feet of the leaders of creationism.

I agree with Rachel. Though I wish Ken Ham and his comrades would give up their creationism or at least shut up about it, I know that won't happen and I respect their right to believe and promote whatever message they want, however wrong that message might be. But that fact remains: We have, as Christians, far more things in common than we sometimes seem to think. And although it's important to fight and argue about these things, we should do so understanding that this is a minor disagreement and not something worth falling out over. As Rachel says,

I am not asking Ken to change his interpretation of Genesis or even his devotion to it.  If he believes it is the best interpretation, then he should continue to commit his outstanding energy, creativity, and resourcefulness to promoting it. I respect his conviction and I count him as a brother in Christ because, at the end of the day, Ken and I agree on what’s most important —that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

All I am asking is that he honor this common bond and join me in making peace, in acknowledging that there is enough room in Christianity for both of us and that we can talk about this issue without our weapons drawn. We don’t need a Church in which everyone agrees on the age of the earth. We need a Church that is committed to the Apostle Paul’s instructions that “if it is possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” (Romans 12:18).