If you’re going to call a well known someone an unspiritual sinner and permanently ban that someone and his ministry because they impolitely called out false doctrine at your event, please be so kind as to not continue marketing and promoting using the banned person’s brand to promote your own services.
As of today, the Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc. (“GHC”) is still promoting Answers in Genesis as part of GHC’s conference packages on their blog home page. At first you would think it to be an oversight, however GHC disabled the purchasing links on the ad itself. They’ve removed the ability to purchase, but continue to use the AiG brand to promote the GHC conferences, even after banning the ministry in perpetuity from their future conferences. GHC is still publishing the following on their blogsite promoting their conferences:
Fantastic Savings from Answers in Genesis & the Creation Museum
Posted July 11th 2010 at 6:07 am by bdean
We love the incredible work being done by our friends at Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum! If you’ve not yet had the chance to visit the Creation Museum, you are missing out on an incredible experience. This 70,000 square foot facility is really state-of-the-art, and it truly brings the pages of the Bible to life!
As we are such fans of the work of Answers in Genesis, you might imagine our enthusiasm when they approached us with an SPECIAL PACKAGE OFFER for our convention attendees that reflects a savings of 75%!! And so, we’re quite happy not only to provide you with this information, but to also recommend it sincerely.
See here and here. It’s difficult impossible to reconcile GHC’s marketing statements with their cursory treatment of Mr. Ham and the AiG ministry and GHC’s subsequent refusal to talk. “Friends” don’t fire friends via midnight emails out of the blue, particularly when the “friend” was doing what the friend has been doing for years: calling out and condemning false doctrine and attacks on scriptural authority.
GHC made a bad decision and then displayed institutional hubris in carying it out. Mr. Dean at GHC should call Mr. Ham directly, as a friend, and try to work this out with love.
UPDATE: someone pointed out to me that on the day GHC “expelled” AiG and said they were too busy to discuss it by phone, they called Dr. Bauer to inform her of their decision to ban AiG. Interesting that GHC had the time to call her and felt the need to as well. See Dr. Bauer’s statement re call here.
Additional posts on the topic:
A Time to Keep Silent, and a Time to Speak by Henry Morris III, D.Min.
Free Love Christians by Nathan Ham
Related: The Inerrancy of Scripture: The Fifty Years’ War . . . and Counting by Albert Mohler (reviewing Enns); Creation vs. Evolution — The New Shape of the Debate by Albert Mohler
Sapphire Sky 