Reports of the National Center for Science Education
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Volume
27
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No.
5-6
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September-December
2007

The Answers in Genesis Schism


Jim Lippard reported in RNCSE at the end of 2006 on a split within the Answers in Genesis ministry that pitted the officials running the affiliate in the US against their counterparts in Australia, where the ministry began (Lippard 2006). Although Lippard reported several efforts between the two factions to negotiate a solution to various issues that divided them, it appears that those efforts have fallen apart yet again.

Creation Ministries International (CMI) — the name of the breakaway group in Australia — published an update on its website in early January 2008 (http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5563/). The page — entitled "CMI-AIG: What's the dispute all about?" — details the history of the schism and CMI's complaints against AIG.

However, the most remarkable feature of this update is an index with links to documents on the web that lay out various details of the conflict, outcomes of various investigations and legal actions, and CMI's version of the current state of the dispute.

In contrast to the prominence that CMI has given to the dispute, it is difficult to find any mention of the disagreement on the Answers in Genesis web page. Searching for "CMI" and "Creation Ministries International" at http://www.answersingenesis.org returned no results. However, it is possible to get an overview of AiG's position on the conflict by reading through its History page (http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/history). This page lacks most of the details about the schism, saying only that there were no differences in doctrinal or scientific positions and that most of the disagreement was over management and operations. It is interesting that the AiG website lists the acronym "CMI" in its history page, but nowhere gives the full name of the Australian organization.

It is clear that this conflict will not be resolved soon, but it seems from the content of the web pages that CMI may be more affected by the split than is AiG. Except for the new details, the current state of the relationship between these two creationist organizations does not seem to have changed significantly over the past year.

References
Lippard J. 2006. Trouble in paradise: Answers in Genesis splinters. RNCSE 26 (6): 4-7.

By Andrew J. Petto
This version might differ slightly from the print publication.