Cameron Strang, the publisher of Relevant Magazine and the subject of much discussion this summer when he first accepted, then declined an invitation to pray at the Democratic National Convention, posted an informal poll question in his Facebook and Twitter statuses yesterday: “I’m curious, Facebook and Twitter friends: God is the creator, but do you believe in a young earth or old earth? Interesting debate here.”
Cameron had over 40 responses to the question on his Facebook page, perhaps more on Twitter (I can’t see responses on his Twitter profile). The overwhelming majority of respondents said they believed in a young earth–a world about 8,000 years old. I’m not sure about the protocol in quoting comments from Facebook, so I’ll not do so here, and you’ll have to take my word for it: Cameron’s Facebook friends voted for a young earth by a landslide.*
As a Christian who takes Genesis 1-3 as inspired but who long ago decided it has little to do with scientific history, I was shocked as I skimmed Cameron’s responses. But I shouldn’t be. Just this morning the AP reported strong attendance numbers for Ken Ham’s Creation Museum. And for all of its embrace of mainstream popular culture, Relevant’s readers are conservative evangelicals. They** may no longer see a contradiction between loving Jesus and loving Kanye, but in many other ways young evangelicals have not shifted from the views of their parents. Lots of people–myself included–are trying to figure this out. Are young evangelicals more progressive or not? (And is “progressive” even the right word for what we’re trying to describe?) We heard lots of noise earlier this year about an evangelical crackup and young Christians going in for Obama, but the most current wisdom suggests that all that noise was just that.
What do you make of all this?
*Though young earth won Cameron’s poll, the most dominant theme in the responses was that the young earth/old earth issue doesn’t really matter. This might be what’s most new about young evangelicalism: a desire to move past old left-right, fundamentalist-secular rhetoric. They may not be shifting in terms of ideas, but they are exhausted by the culture wars they grew up watching their parents fight, and are hoping those wars won’t be the central aspect of their own lives and their own Christian witness.
**Every time I write “they” I wonder if I should write “we.” My own anxiety over my place in/proximity to evangelicalism/fundamentalism is not only a major part of my experience of Christianity–it’s a major issue for every young evangelical I’ve ever known. More on that, no doubt, anon.
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