The Return of the Creationists
How can we expect political sense or reason from people who cannot distinguish empirical reality from ancient myth?
I have spent so much of the past few years publicly bemoaning the anti-free-speech craziness—driven mostly by the Left—at American universities and scientific institutions, that I had almost forgotten that, in the not-too-distant past, the most severe threat to rational discourse and policy came from religious fundamentalists.
The pendulum is not yet swinging back, but there are worrying signs that it might. Last month Mike Johnson was elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives, a role that puts him third in line to the presidency. That Johnson’s political and social views are extremely right wing, and that he was a strong supporter of Donald Trump’s efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election are well known—but, even more worryingly, he espouses a fundamentalist Biblical literalism, which informs all his views on policy issues.
Not since the days of Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee under Trump’s administration has such a strongly evangelical Christian fundamentalist been a major figure on the US political stage. The term “Christian nationalist” seems tailor-made to describe Johnson, who recently told Congress that the separation of church and state was designed to stop state incursion into religion, not the other way round.
Johnson has argued that to understand his political views, you just have to read the Bible. Unsurprisingly, he wants to recriminalize homosexuality and criminalize abortion nationwide. These are standard tropes of the religious right, about which informed debate is possible. But fundamentalism of any sort, be it religious or secular, is a dangerous worldview that ultimately produces divisive and counterproductive public policies. An unshakable belief that the details of biblical myths are historically accurate is deeply irrational.
Emily Willoughby
Johnson has made his perspective very clear. He helped secure public funding for the Answers in Genesis Ark Encounter theme park, designed by Australian creationist Ken Ham. The Ark Encounter and its Creation Museum contain life-like displays of humans cavorting with dinosaurs. Ham and Johnson handwave away all of modern science to dogmatically insist on a 6,000-year-old Earth, without evolution, which began with God, not the Big Bang. As Johnson put it in a podcast he hosts: “The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth, that, you know, what we read in the Bible are actual historical events.” This is outlandish.
It is impossible to know whether Johnson’s Biblical fundamentalism forms the basis of his opposition to the notion of anthropogenic climate change, or whether his stance on Israel and Gaza might derive from the apocalyptic myths in The Book of Revelation. But that it doesn’t seem implausible is chilling. How can we expect political sense or reason from someone who cannot distinguish empirical reality from ancient myth?
Thankfully, the Speaker of the House has only limited powers to enact legislation, as the events of the past year have demonstrated, as Speaker McCarthy did battle with his own caucus and ultimately had to compromise with the White House on budget matters. But we have also seen how effectively the Speaker can stymie the activities of government in the name of ideology. Political partisanship is one thing, but religious fundamentalism goes far deeper, and—as recent events in Gaza, Afghanistan, and Iran have demonstrated—it can be far more divisive.
Elizabeth Weiss and James W. Springer
Johnson’s ideological intransigence may hamper an effective response to foreign conflicts, including those in Israel and Ukraine, and the government’s ability to meet looming deadlines on borrowing. And the fundamental problems that will more profoundly affect American health, welfare, and national security in this century all call for technological solutions based on the real world, not an imagined one. Can a Speaker of the House who treats the Bible as a scientific document rationally address the real challenges the United States faces today?
We can only hope that he heeds the admonition of St. Augustine, who wrote two millennia ago, “We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers.”
