Rev Dr Peter Barnes has been a strong advocate of Religious Right causes for many years now. He holds down jobs at the Revesby (NSW) Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Theological Centre and spends some of his spare time supporting Rev Fred Nile’s enterprises such as the Festival of Light and the Family World News (FWN) monthly journal.

Barnes strongly favours the physical punishment of children - ‘part of God’s plan to deliver souls from hell’, according to him (FWN, Mar. 1997, 9) - and is adamant that wives should ’submit’ themselves to their husbands (FWN Mar. 2003, 6).

As for homosexuals, well:

The real world of the typical homosexual is a combination of the Sleaze Ball and terrible loneliness … [Homosexuals] are sad and alienated personalities. Homosexual relationships are the ultimate in counterfeit relationships. (’Homosexual marriages’, FWN, Apr. 2004, 1)

Having been so impressed by Peter’s warm, loving, Christian attitudes over the years, I looked forward to reading his article entitled ‘Who’d be a Fundamentalist?’ in the July 2007 issue of FWN (p.10). My eye was immediately caught by his assertion that:

… Historically, therefore, ‘fundamentalist’ really only refers to a Christian. A person who does not believe in the resurrection of Christ, for example, is not a Christian. To the fundamentalist, a liberal Christian was no Christian at all.

Now, Barnes’ switching of tenses here left me in some doubt as to whether he considers himself a fundamentalist or not. However, towards the end of his piece he began to take the Calvinist, and specifically anti-Pentecostalist line that we associate with good Presbyterians:

… [F]undamentalism did become increasingly linked to a certain brand of Protestantism which owed very little to the Reformation of the 16th century. [Brian Houston, are your ears burning?] It became linked to a kind of vaudeville presentation of the gospel in some places, legalistic rules to replace God’s law, attempts at picking the date of the Second Coming, and manipulative evangelism. [Glass of water for Mr Houston.] A practice like snake-handling was even regarded in some circles as a fundamental proof that one possessed true faith …

In his final paragraph, Barnes lays his cards on the table:

Well, am I a fundamentalist? Is it a badge of honour or a term of derision? In its historic sense, any evangelical Christian is a fundamentalist.

Ah, so Barnes probably does believe that ‘a liberal Christian is no Christian at all’!

Do I believe the Bible is God’s inerrant Word? Yes, I do. Do I believe that Christ will come again? Yes, I do. Do I believe that he will reign for a thousand years from Jerusalem? No, I do not.

Well, if Barnes chooses to reject a perfectly straightforward reading of Revelation, it’s his neck, not mine. Be that as it may, he succumbs to meaningless generality in his concluding line:

A better approach [than terming oneself a fundamentalist] would be to claim to be a Christian resting on the perfect work of the perfect Lord revealed in His perfect Word.

Peter, having just contradicted a literal reading of Revelation, you’re in no position to make glib assertions about God’s ‘perfect Word’, but we’ll let that pass as I want to return to one of your earlier statements.

Readers will not be surprised to learn that, like many conservative Presbyterians, Barnes is a creationist. Indeed, his church at Revesby will shortly play host to Philip Bell from the UK branch of Creation Ministries International (top right-hand corner). In his FWN article, Barnes makes this claim:

The modern film ‘Inherit the Wind’ mocks the fundamentalists in an inaccurate way and ignores inconvenient facts, such as the evolutionists’ belief in Nebraska Man, despite the fact that he turned out to be only the tooth of an extinct pig!

This tale has been spread around for years by creationists from Duane Gish to Jack T. Chick, but here’s the full story from Mark Isaak’s (2007) The Counter-Creationism Handbook (104):

The tooth was never held in high regard by scientists. Osborn, who described it, was unsure whether it came from a hominid or from another kind of ape, and others were sceptical that it even belonged to a primate …

So from a scientific viewpoint, ‘Nebraska Man’ never moved beyond an early hypothetical stage. As Isaak concludes:

Nebraska Man is an example of science working well. An intriguing discovery was made that could have important implications. The discoverer announced the discovery and sent casts of [the tooth] to several other experts. Scientists were initially sceptical. More evidence was gathered, ultimately showing that the initial interpretation was wrong. Finally, a retraction was prominently published.

It’s worth adding that the ‘life’ of Nebraska Man was very short - roughly five years from description of the tooth in 1922 to its rejection in the journal Science in 1927; see also www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/wolfmellett.html

And yet here we have Rev Dr Peter Barnes talking about ‘the evolutionists’ belief in Nebraska Man’ some 80 years after science categorically disposed of this hypothesis.

Kind of careless, to say the least.

Filed in: Creationism, Fundamentalism, People