I learned today that there is an exhibit about my father in the famous creation museum near Cincinnati. This museum is a multi-million dollar project set up by creationists as a pro-bible "natural history" museum that shows dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, and how the flood carved the Grand Canyon and much more. It's all completely bullocks and a number of satirical articles about it have been written, including the account by SF writer John Scalzi.

While almost all this museum is about desperate attempts to make the creation story sound like natural history, it also has the "Biblical Authority Room." This room features my father, Charles Templeton in two sections. It begins with this display on bible enemies which tells the story of how he went to Princeton seminary and lost his faith. (Warning: Too much education will kill your religion.)

However, around the corner is an amazing giant alcove. It shows a large mural of photos and news stories about my father as a preacher and later. On the next wall is an image of a man (clearly meant to be him though the museum denied it) digging a grave with the tombstone "God is Dead." There are various other tombstones around for "Truth," "God's Word" and "Genesis." There is also another image of the mural showing it a bit more fully.

Next to the painting is a small brick alcove which for the life of me looks like a shrine.

In it is a copy of his book Farewell to God along with a metal plaque with a quote from the book about how reality is inconsistent with the creation story. (You can click on the photo, courtesy Andrew Arensburger, to see a larger size and read the inscription.)

I had heard about this museum for some time, and even contemplated visiting it the next time I was in the area, though part of me doesn't want to give them $20. However now I have to go. But I remain perplexed that he gets such a large exibit, along with the likes of Darwin, Scopes and Luther. Today, after all, only older people know of his religious career, though at his peak he was one of the most well known figures of the field. He and his best friend, Billy Graham, were taking the evangelism world by storm, and until he pulled out, many people would have bet that he, rather than Graham, would become the great star. You can read his memoir here online.

But again, this is all long ago, and a career long left behind. But there may be an explanation, based on what he told me when he was alive.

Among many fundamentalists, there is a doctrine of "Once Saved, Always Saved." What this means is that once Jesus has entered you and become your personal saviour, he would never, ever desert you. It is impossible for somebody who was saved to fall. This makes apostacy a dreadful sin for it creates a giant contradiction. For many, the only way to reconcile this is to decide that he never was truly saved after all. That it was all fake. Only somebody who never really believed could fall.

Except that's not the case here. He had the classic "religious experience" conversion, as detailed in his memoir. He was fully taken up with it. And more to the point, unlike most, when much later he truly came to have doubts, he debated them openly with his friends, like Graham. And finally decided that he couldn't preach any more after decades of doing so, giving up fame and a successful career with no new prospects. He couldn't do it because he could not feel honest preaching to people when he had become less sure himself. Not the act of somebody who was faking it all along.

However, this exhibit in the museum doesn't try to paint it that way. Rather, it seems to be a warning that too much education by godless scientists can hurt your faith.

So there may be a second explanation. As a big-time preacher, with revival meetings filling sporting arenas, my father converted a lot of people to Christianity. He was one of the founders of Youth for Christ International, which is today still a major religious organization. I meet these converts from time to time. I can see how, if you came to your conversion through him, my father's renunciation of it must be very hurtful -- especially when combined with the once-saved-always-saved doctrine. So I have to wonder if somebody at the Creation Museum isn't one of his converts, and thus wanted to tell the story of a man that many of the visitors to the museum will have forgotten.

Here are some other Charles Templeton links on my site:

• Home Page
• Jesus, a bible in modern English
• Anecdotal Memoir

Right now I'm in the process of scanning some of his books and will post when I have done this.