Matt Gunterman June 17th, 2007

Oy! These Creationists just can’t get along. You’d think people who push brother-on-sister incest as a divinely sanctioned form of love and procreation could get on more peaceably with their brothers and sisters in the Creationist movement.

Andy Mead of the Lexington Herald-Leader has the story, which is an excellent bit of self-contained work:

Museum group sued by fellow creationists
MONEY AND ‘ACTING IN AN UNBIBLICAL FASHION’ AT THE ROOT

There is trouble in paradise, with a fight of biblical proportions raging between a Kentucky-based creationist group and the Australian group from which it sprang.

Three days after the Memorial Day opening of Answers in Genesis’ $27 million Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky, a group called Creation Ministries International filed suit in the Supreme Court of Queensland.

Among other things, the suit claims the Kentucky group stole subscribers for its Answers magazine by claiming that the Australians’ Creation magazine was “no longer available.”

The suit is the most public move in what has been a growing rift between groups that are spreading the same Garden of Eden creation message on opposite sides of the globe.

Both groups believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, that the earth and everything else was created in six days around 6,000 years ago.

But in the last several years, they have increasingly feuded about finances and power.

Now each is accusing the other of acting in an “unbiblical” fashion — a serious charge for people who believe that the Bible is God’s infallible word.

“All I’ll tell you is those allegations are totally preposterous and untrue,” Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, said in a brief interview last week. “The Bible tells you not to have a lawsuit against your brother, so you can see who’s obeying the Bible and who’s not.”

[...]

In 1994, Ham arrived in Northern Kentucky — chosen for its proximity to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and a sizable portion of the nation’s population — and started Answers in Genesis.

The name was adopted by the Australian organization, which later changed its name again to Creation Ministries International.

It is CMI that is suing AiG.

In Kentucky, Ham began planning for his Creation Museum. The first order of business: building a financial base.

He spoke at churches. He conducted seminars. He launched a popular Web site. He started a radio program that eventually would be carried on 860 stations across the country.

All this allowed him to create a mailing list of people who were willing to give money. When the museum opened, it was paid for. Mark Looy, another AiG leader, said the average contribution to the $27 million effort was a little more than $100.

[...]

Australia’s only national daily newspaper, The Australian, has picked up on a sordid part of the Briese report: It says that Ham has questioned the timing of Wieland’s second marriage — to a woman who once was Ham’s secretary — only two weeks after divorcing his first wife. And it says that Ham is collaborating with an Australian who was excommunicated from his Baptist church because he once accused Wieland’s wife of witchcraft and necrophilia.

“I think to some extent CMI is bringing that up just for the unseemly aspect of it,” Lippard said.

[...]

Wieland said he still hoped for Christian arbitration with Ham. But, he said, CMI was left with no choice but to sue.

“At the end of the day … there has to be right-doing,” he said. “Things can’t just be swept under the carpet.”

• Anti-Science Agenda , Creation Museum , Creationism
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