Huddled in near-zero degree weather in a Himalayan base camp in Pakistan, outdoor guide Tom Vail spent hours reading his new Bible. In his tent, pitched at 12,500 feet, he pored over the pages, aided by the light of candle and headlamp. Repeatedly, he turned to the “salvation prayer” the lady who had given him the Bible had written therein.1

Vail’s main job back in America was leading raft trips down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Before 1983 Vail had worked as an MIS director for a Fortune 500 company. He spent his first decade on the river teaching tourists that the canyon had taken millions of years to form, consistent with the evolutionary story. He drank too much; his talk was rough; he was spiritually dead. But the Lord had redemptive plans for Tom, and they surfaced in the person of a passenger named Paula. When she boarded the raft in 1994, neither she nor Vail dreamed that she would lead him to the Lord and that they would one day become husband and wife.2

Reading the opening chapters of Genesis and other biblical references to “global scale dynamics” (e.g. Psalm 104:8), Vail became convinced that God created the world in a short period of time and that Scripture spoke of great catastrophes and upheavals as well as periods of uniformity. He came to believe that the Grand Canyon itself was cut in less than a week. As he talked with “young earth” creationists, he came to the conviction that the receding waters of Noah’s flood left deep layers of sediment and massive lakes on the landscape. On this model, one of these lakes burst its natural dam and rushed through the “wet concrete” of what is now northern Arizona. It carved a deep and wide gorge, depositing material far to the west, including the outskirts of San Diego.

He began to see possible evidence for this notion, e.g. folds in the limestone and fossils traversing strata lines.3 Armed with this new perspective, he and Paula founded Canyon Ministries in 1997 and began teaching his passengers to see the canyon with new eyes. In due season, he did a book on the subject, Grand Canyon: A Different View, rich in Scripture, photographs, and the observations of scientists, 14 with Ph.D.s in pertinent fields.4

It seemed like a natural for the National Park Service’s bookstores along the rim, but approval was slow and opposition fierce. Seven prominent scientists wrote a joint letter, urging that the “anti-science” book be removed.5 One park geologist sneered, “This is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan.”6 In a TIME column, journalist Leon Jaroff (B.S. in electrical engineering)7 observed, “The creationists have demonstrated again that they are scientifically illiterate, and out of step with the 21st century.”8

Despite the insults, the National Park Service, with encouragement from the Alliance Defense Fund, continues to offer the popular book in its canyon stores. As NPS spokesman Elaine Sevy observed, “[T]his country is based on freedom of religion and freedom of speech. . . . We feel like a full spectrum is part of our culture.”9 Besides, those who object to the sale of Vail’s book, charging it with “religious nonsense,” are less than consistent, for as Sevy noted, the same NPS bookstores have featured, without complaint, books “based on Native American [spiritual] beliefs for many years.” So the problem with Vail’s book is its scientific seriousness. Of course, many devout Christians do not share Vail’s convictions on these matters, but they can certainly join the ADF in urging that the book’s perspectives get a hearing in the NPS stores, and, indeed, in the Church itself.
 
Footnotes:
 
1  Tom Vail, Grand Canyon: A Different View (Green Forest, AR: Master, 2003), 97. Also, see New York Times photo of Vail, New York Times Website, http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/10/05/national/06canyon.2.ready.html (accessed August 24, 2008).
 
2  Tom Vail, “About Canyon Ministries,” Canyon Ministries Website, http://www.canyonministries.com/content/view/53/56/ (accessed August 24, 2008).
 
3  In addition to speaking of limestone folds and trans-strata fossils (22-23), Vail’s book also discusses the evidentiary value of cross-bedding (22-23), knife-edge contact between layers (42), helium concentration in crystals (41), the Colorado River elevation (62), and the example of the Spokane Flood, which carved out the Scablands in eastern Washington (87). See also Nova’s student handout, “The Spokane Flood: Mystery of the Megaflood,” PBS Website, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/activities/3211_megafloo_02.html (accessed August 24, 2008).
 
4  Including Steven Austin (geology, Pennsylvania State), John Baumgardner (geophysics and space physics, UCLA), Ken Cumming (biology, Harvard), Duane Gish (biochemistry, California [Berkeley]), Werner Gitt (engineering, Aachen), Russ Humphreys (physics, Louisiana State), Alex Lalomov (geology, USSR National Research Institute of Ocean Geology), Henry Morris (hydraulic engineering, Minnesota), John Morris (geological engineering, Oklahoma), Andrew Snelling (geology, Sydney), Larry Vardiman (atmospheric science, Colorado State), Tas Walker (mechanical engineering, Queensland), and Kurt Wise (paleontology, Harvard).
 
5  Presidents of The Paleontological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the Association of American State Geologists, the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, the American Geological Institute, and the Geological Society of America. For a copy, see Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Website, http://www.peer.org/docs/nps/sevenscientists.pdf (accessed August 24, 2008).
 
6  “How Old Is the Grand Canyon? Park Service Won’t Say,” Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Website, December 28, 2006, http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801 (accessed August 24, 2008).
 
7  “Biography: Leon Jaroff,” TIME Website, http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,493997,00.html (accessed August 24, 2008).
 
8  Leon Jaroff, “Faith-Based Parks?” TIME Website, November 17, 2004, http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,783829,00.html (accessed August 24, 2008).
 
9  Keith Hinson, “Grand Canyon Bookstore Reorders 300-Plus Copies of Book,” Baptist Press Website, January 27, 2004, http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?id=17512 (accessed August 24, 2008).
from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located across from the Principio Health Centr on Route 40, one and a half miles east of Rt. 222.