Bachmann’s World

By Karl Giberson:

Schaeffer was but the most charismatic of the evangelical experts that shaped the world views of believers in the 1970s. There were many more with different specialties. We learned that evolution had no scientific support from young earth creationists like Henry Morris and Ken Ham. When Bachmann says that “evolution has never been proven” she is simply repeating what our generation has heard from evangelical leaders as we were growing. I enrolled at Eastern Nazarene College seeking credentials that would enable me to join the creationists in their fight against evolution.

We learned that homosexuality is a choice made by people to live in sin, under Satan’s influence. The reparative therapy—“pray away the gay”—used at the clinic run by Bachmann’s husband was something we all endorsed, under the influence of evangelical social scientists like James Dobson, who had a PhD in child development and thus knew what he was talking about. We grew up hearing about the “gay agenda” and how it was being used by Satan to destroy traditional morality and faith in the Bible.

Christian “historians” like Peter Marshall and David Barton helped us understand that America was a “Christian Nation” and that recent travails, like the social upheaval of the 60’s that gave us drug abuse, promiscuity, and the homosexual agenda, were the result of abandoning America’s religious roots.

Many evangelicals, myself included, were fortunate enough to study under Christian scholars, like my professors at Eastern Nazarene College in the 1970’s or my colleagues today at Gordon College, who see through the nonsensical claims of people like James Dobson, David Barton, Francis Schaeffer, and Ken Ham—who runs the preposterous Creation Museum in Kentucky. Even as a college student I recall Schaeffer being examined rather critically and young earth creationism dismissed out of hand.

There are, fortunately, many evangelical scholars—NIH Director Francis Collins and historian Mark Noll come to mind—who are quietly raising alarms about all this dangerous anti-intellectualism, warning us about populist gurus who are marketing a “Christianized” version of knowledge that, on closer examination, turns out to be neither Christian nor knowledge.

Unfortunately, millions of evangelicals—and this would include much of the political base being courted by the GOP presidential candidates as well as the candidates themselves—are trapped in an alternative “parallel culture” with its own standards of truth. The intellectual authorities mentioned above—with the exception of Schaeffer who died in 1984—all have media empires that spread their particular version of the gospel. Millions of dollars every year support the production of books, DVDs, radio shows, school curricula, and other educational materials. Very few evangelicals grow up without hearing some trusted authority—perhaps even with a PhD—tell them that the age of the earth is an “open question.” Or that scientists are questioning evolution. Or that gays are getting spiritual help and becoming straight. Or that secular historians are taking religion out of US History.