Righting America at the Creation Museum by Susan L. Trollinger & William Vance Trollinger Jr

Author:Susan L. Trollinger & William Vance Trollinger, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2016-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Eden as Patriarchal Paradise

At the Creation Museum, heterosexuality and heterosexual marriage are the norm, established by God in the Garden of Eden. In more subtle fashion, the museum makes clear that God also ordained a particular form of heterosexual marriage. Let us return to the scene in which the beautiful Adam and Eve look upon each other for the first time. There, as noted above, the visitor encounters a placard titled “Male and Female,” accompanied by a quote from Jesus: “Have you not read, that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?” Below that is the museum’s take on this all-important gender binary: “Eve (like Adam) was specially fashioned by God and did not come from an animal. Eve was not made from dust but from the side of Adam. God made male and female fit for different roles from the beginning.”

“Fit for different roles from the beginning.” While this phrase certainly suggests that the division of humans into male and female carries with it significant social implications, nowhere does the museum elaborate upon what these implications are. But one certainly gets a clue from the fact that women are largely absent or relegated to secondary roles in the museum. The ubiquitous voiceovers are male. Most of the talking heads on the various video screens are male, with Georgia Purdom the most prominent exception. Men in White features, well, men in white sent to rescue Wendy, the damsel in distress. The Dig Site features two male archeologists actively bringing the dinosaur skeleton to the surface, followed soon thereafter by the model of a small female ape, “Lucy,” trapped in a glass case. The Biblical Authority room is filled with male authority figures from the Bible, followed in the Biblical Relevance room by the figure of Martin Luther. In the Ark Construction room we see Noah and his male craftsmen performing an almost inconceivable creative act as they construct the Ark, while nearby the only two women in the scene sit quietly by (neither is animatronic) weaving baskets. In the Voyage of the Ark we see women quietly engaged in domestic tasks on behalf of Noah’s Ark project, listening to Noah speak authoritatively, or drowning in the Flood.

There is one apparent exception to the rule that men drive the museum narrative: Eve. She is half of the perfect couple, loving Adam in paradise. She is the one who is tempted: near a model of the glowering serpent visitors find a placard entitled “God’s Word Questioned,” with a quote from Genesis: “The serpent said to the woman, ‘Has God really said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’”39 And as seen in the next diorama, in which Eve is giving the fruit to Adam and which is accompanied by a placard entitled “God’s Word Is Abandoned,” she is the one who succumbed to temptation and who successfully enticed her man to join her in sin.

It turns out, however, that, in the museum’s telling, Eve played at most a supporting role in the drama of the Fall.

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