This is a story about wheels within wheels.

Canadian Dr Darrell Furgason, a regular visitor to these shores, works with Christian Right leader David Noebel’s Summit Ministries in America. Furgason is as much to blame as anybody for the epidemic of ‘Christian worldview’ seminars currently on offer around Australia. His line is that everyone has to operate on the basis of some coherent ideology, most of which are very bad news:

If you’re not learning a biblical worldview, you’re learning another one, be it humanist, Marxist, Islamic or whatever. And that will affect your whole life, how you live your life. (Quoted in Carl Wieland and David Catchpoole’s interview with Furgason, ‘Islam and worldview: the big picture’, Creation (Creation Ministries International), Sept.-Nov. 2006, 52)

In an article published in Melbourne’s Salt Shakers Journal in April 2003 (pp.4-5), Furgason listed many other ‘false ideas and philosophies’ which might drive you away from the only acceptable, ‘biblical worldview’. These included naturalism, relativism, postmodernism, environmentalism, determinism, globalism and multiculturalism. Essentially, you needed to sweep away all these rotten, false ideas that had invaded your consciousness and instead develop a ‘biblical mind’. If you could simply achieve this, you would suddenly see why homosexual behaviour and abortion rights could not be countenanced, and would immediately begin telling other victims how they too might achieve salvation. Salt Shakers soon started running its own worldview seminars and groups like the Australian Christian Lobby and the Festival of Light thought it was a pretty good idea too.

Although he had originally been infected by the atheist-humanist worldview dominating Western education, Furgason found it unsatisfying. I mean, what can you do with a worldview that can’t give clearcut answers to questions like, ‘What is the purpose of life?’ or ‘What is truth?’:

I faced up to these questions for myself in Canberra in 1974 … I was walking down the street when a young law student invited me to a free coffee shop. It was there, over Milo and bickies, that I realise atheism didn’t have the answers.

In the end, Furgason came to the only reasonable conclusion:

… that it is God, revealed in his son Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life. Darrell Furgason then felt called by God to give up his backpack and get a university degree. (’Atheist backpacker re-views the world’, South Australian Festival Focus, Aug. 2003, 4)

When his faith was ’seriously challenged’ at university, Furgason ‘went back to Youth With A Mission’ (presumably the operators of the free coffee shop) for teaching on the biblical mind and later returned to Canada and founded the Centre for Worldview Studies.

Sara Diamond (1989), who has undertaken several major studies of the American Christian Right, has this to say about Furgason’s mentors, Youth With A Mission (YWAM):

[This organisation], which had 1,741 missionaries in the field as of 1985, is closely allied with the US Christian Right … YWAM founder Loren Cunningham … as of 1988 began studying the Reconstructionist writings of Gary North with the intent of incorporating ‘dominion’ or ‘kingdom’ theology into the ideological training given to YWAM missionaries. (Spiritual Warfare, 206)

For some background on the sinister nature of Reconstructionism and associated theologies, see http://www.unbelief.org/articles/theocracy.html. For divergent views on the allegedly cultic aspects of YWAM, see http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/3/4570.html?1158705365.

One of the most striking aspects of Furgason’s ‘biblical worldview’ is his unabashed creationism. According to his recent interview with Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International, Furgason:

… knows that the Genesis creation account, which he holds to absolutely, is a major battlefront. (54)

According to Furgason:

Creation ministry helps establish the Bible’s credibility in the minds of Christians, which is crucial - an assurance that the Bible is not a fool’s book, which makes them open to being taught on the applicability of the Bible in politics, economics, law, etc. Give away Genesis 1-11 and what is there left in the Bible? (55)

Furgason specifically acknowledges Carl Wieland’s direct influence on him through ‘a YWAM school in Canberra.’ (Wieland and Catchpoole op. cit. 55)

It’s hard to dig very deeply into the background of Australian Christian right organisations and personalities without coming across ‘training’ groups like YWAM and ideological constructs like creationism. The relatively ‘respectable’ Australian Christian Lobby is a good example of this. A gentleman named David Yates used to run the Australian end of Furgason’s ‘Centre for Worldview Studies’ with all the commitment to creationism which that entailed.

David Yates went on to become the Australian Christian Lobby’s National Chief of Staff.

What did I say about wheels within wheels?

Filed in: Christian Right, Creationism, People