century

England’s Ollie Pope scores a century in second day fightback of first Test against India.

Ollie Pope and his latest century spearheaded England to 209-3 after India was bowled out for 471 on Day Two, Saturday, of the test series opener at Headingley.

Pope was 100 not out and the leading scorer as England slashed its deficit to 262 runs by stumps and won the day.

Pope was far from perfect. He survived a testing opening spell from speedster Jasprit Bumrah in gloomy bowler-friendly conditions, narrowly avoided lbw on 34 and was dropped on 60.

He rode his luck to his ninth test hundred and second against India.

Bumrah was England’s greatest threat as expected and took all three home wickets: Zac Crawley in the first over; Ben Duckett on 62 to break his and Pope’s 122-run second-wicket partnership; and Joe Root on 28 to break his and Pope’s 80-run third-wicket partnership.

Bumrah would have had a fourth wicket in the day’s last over — Harry Brook without scoring — but he overstepped for the third time in the over. The world’s best fast bowler was also the victim of two dropped catches in the field.

England wasn’t expected to be batting soon after lunch.

India was 430-3 about half an hour before lunch. A total of at least 550 was on the cards but the demise of captain Shubman Gill for 147 sparked a collapse of 41-7 in 68 balls bridging lunch.

Fire changes whatever it encounters. Burns it, melts it, sometimes makes it stronger. Once fire tears through a place, nothing is left the same. Kelly Ramsey wasn’t thinking of this when she joined the U.S. Forest Service firefighting crew known as the Rowdy River Hotshots — she just thought fighting fires would be a great job.

But fire changed her too.

In her memoir, “Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West,” Ramsey takes us through two years of fighting wilderness fires in the mountains of Northern California. She wrote the book before January’s deadly Altadena and Pacific Palisades fires, and what she encountered in the summers of 2020 and 2021 was mostly forests burning, not city neighborhoods. But at the time, the fires she and her fellow crewmen fought (and they were all men that first year) were the hottest, fastest, biggest fires California had ever experienced.

“My first real year in fire had been a doozy, not just for me but my beloved California: 4.2 million acres burned,” she writes, in the “worst season the state had endured in over a hundred years.” That included the state’s first gigafire — more than 1 million acres burned in Northern California.

The job proved to be the hardest thing she’d ever done, but something about fire compelled her. “At the sight of a smoke column, most people feel a healthy hitch in their breath and want to run the other way,” she writes. “But all I wanted to do was run toward the fire.”

Ramsey’s memoir covers a lot of ground, skillfully. She learns that being in good shape isn’t enough — she has to be in incredible shape. She learns how to work with a group of men who are younger, stronger and more experienced than she is, and she figures out how to find that line between never complaining and standing up for herself in the face of inappropriate behavior.

She also writes about the changes in her own life during that time: coming to terms with her alcoholic, homeless father; pondering her lousy record for romantic relationships; searching for an independence and peace she had never known.

“It wasn’t fire that was hard; it was ordinary life,” she concludes.

Sometimes her struggles with ordinary life threaten to take over the narrative, but while they humanize her, they are not the most interesting part of this book. What resonates instead is fire and all that it entails — the burning forest and the hard, mind-numbing work of the Hotshots. They work 14 days on, two days off, all summer and fall, sometimes 24-hour shifts when things are bad. They sleep rough, dig ditches, build firebreaks, set controlled burns, take down dead trees and, in between, experience moments of terrifying danger.

Readers of John Vaillant’s harrowing 2023 book “Fire Weather” — an account of the destruction of the Canadian forest town of Fort McMurray — might consider Ramsey’s book a companion to the earlier book. “Wildfire Days” is not as sweeping or scientific; it’s more personal and entertaining. It’s the other side of the story, the story of the people who fight the blaze.

Ramsey’s gender is an important part of this book; as a woman, she faces obstacles men do not. It’s harder to find a discreet place to relieve herself; she must deal with monthly periods; and, at first, she is the weakest and slowest of the Hotshots. “Thought you trained this winter,” one of the guys tells her after an arduous training hike leaves her gasping for breath. “I did,” she said.

“Thinking you shoulda trained a little harder, huh,” he said.

But over time she grows stronger, more capable, and more accepted. In the second year, when another woman joins the crew, Ramsey is torn between finally being “one of the guys” and supporting, in solidarity, a woman — but a woman whose work is substandard and whose attitude is whiny.

“Was I only interested in ‘diversity’ on the crew if it looked like me?” she asks herself. “Had I clawed out a place for myself, only to pull up the ladder behind me?”

But competence is crucial in this dangerous job, and substandard work can mean deadly accidents.

For centuries, natural wildfires burned dead trees and undergrowth in California, keeping huge fires in check. White settlers threw things out of whack.

“The Indigenous people of California were (and still are) expert fire keepers,” Ramsey writes. “Native burning mimicked and augmented natural fire, keeping the land park like and open.”

But in the 20th century, humans suppressed fires and forests became overgrown. “Cut to today,” she writes. “Dense forests are primed to burn hotter and faster than ever before.”

Ramsey’s descriptions of the work and the fires are the strongest parts of the book.

“We could hear the howl — like the roar of a thousand lions, like a fleet of jet engines passing overhead — the sound of fire devouring everything,“ Ramsey writes.

Later, she drives through a part of the forest that burned the year before to see “mile upon mile of carbonized trees and denuded earth, a now-familiar scene of extinguished life.”

But she also notes that the burned areas are already beginning to green up. “New life tended to spring from bitterest ash,” she writes.

“The forest wouldn’t grow back the same, but it wouldn’t stop growing,” she observes earlier.

There is a metaphor here. Ramsey’s memoir is a moving, sometimes funny story about destruction, change and rebirth, told by a woman tempered by fire.

Hertzel’s second memoir, “Ghosts of Fourth Street,” will be published in 2026. She teaches in the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction program at the University of Georgia and lives in Minnesota.

Hobbling captain Temba Bavuma and hundred-hitter Aiden Markram pushed South Africa to the brink of a sensational victory over Australia in a gripping World Test Championship final at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London.

Bavuma, elevating the drama with a strained left hamstring, and opener Markram capitalised on ideal batting conditions on Friday.

They partnered for an unbroken 143 runs against one of Australia’s greatest bowling attacks to have South Africa 69 runs from an historic triumph.

Chasing 282 to win, the Proteas were 213-2 at stumps on Day Three in a stirring bid to win a first ICC trophy in 27 years.

Bavuma was 65 not out from 121 balls, his running restricted but not his batting technique, and Markram was 102 not out from 159, easily the highest individual score of the final.

Defending champion Australia bombarded them with four of its top-10 all-time test wicket-takers – more than 1,500 wickets in total – but they were not able to part the Proteas pair, and hardly troubled them.

In South Africa’s huge favour, the Day Three pitch flattened, offered the bowlers little and was far easier paced than the first two chaotic days, when 14 wickets fell on each. Only four wickets were taken on Friday, and none after tea.

South Africa will not go to bed entirely comfortably, though. The men’s team has a heartbreaking history in ICC tournaments of blowing winning positions. It is the reason its only ICC trophy is the ICC Knock Out in 1998.

“This would be massive for our country,” Proteas batting coach Ashwell Prince said. “Both in terms of what we want to do in test match cricket and what we want to achieve going forward. We’ve fallen short in some white-ball competitions with teams that have been favourites at times. History says we haven’t done it yet, so we have to knuckle down.

“Not sure how I’m going to sleep tonight. Whether I can fall into a deep sleep, I’m not sure!”

It is certain serial champion Australia still believes, too.

“In the morning, we’ve got to come back and try and form a plan,” Beau Webster said. “The boys will be looking at any advantage we can get. Strange things happen in this game.

“We tried some new things with the bowling attack, but they were just too good in the end … and both of them were chanceless, so complete credit to them.”

The odds were in Australia’s favour when South Africa’s chase began straight after lunch.

To win, a work-in-progress batting lineup needed to equal England’s most successful-ever run chase at Lord’s from 2004.

By the time pacer Mitchell Starc removed Ryan Rickelton and Wiaan Mulder, South Africa was 70-2, but flying.

There was positive intent missing from the first innings, and the strike was rotated constantly. Australia managed only three maidens in 56 overs, all by spinner Nathan Lyon.

Starc could have reduced South Africa to 76-3 when Bavuma, on 2, thick-edged to first slip.

But a helmeted Steve Smith, standing closer than usual to the wickets because the ball has not been carrying to the cordon all game, could not hold Starc’s 138 km/h delivery and broke his right pinkie finger. He immediately left for a hospital, was out of the final and probably the following three-test tour of the West Indies.

Given life, Bavuma was on 9 when he hurt his hamstring 10 minutes before tea. Prince said he was adamant about continuing, but noticeably limping. The captain soothed his dressing room with pulls and sweeps and hobbled runs, each one rousing the South Africa fans. Bavuma reached his 50 off 83 balls.

Meanwhile, Markram was cutting and driving to 50 off 69 balls. The best of his 11 boundaries was a late cut off Starc expertly sliced between two fielders. His reaction to his eighth test century five minutes from stumps was muted. He had enough strength to raise his bat to all sides and receive applause and a hug from his captain.

South Africa’s celebratory end to Friday the 13th contrasted starkly with the deflating start to the day.

The Proteas would have expected to begin the chase by bowling out Australia, resuming on 144-8, half an hour after the start of play. Lyon was dismissed early and gave Kagiso Rabada his ninth wicket of the match, but tailenders Starc and Josh Hazlewood resisted for almost two hours.

Starc achieved his 11th test fifty, and first in six years. He and Hazlewood’s third 50-plus partnership for the 10th wicket tied the all-time test record.

The stand ended on 59, Hazlewood out for 17 to part-timer Markram. Starc was not out on 58 from 136 balls. He had entered at 73-7, when Australia led by 147, and combined mainly with Alex Carey and Hazlewood to conjure 134 more runs.

Those runs and South Africa’s 20 no balls appeared to put Australia beyond reach. But Bavuma and Markram had the confidence and the pitch to defy nearly all expectations.

The scale of the challenge facing South Africa when they began their innings was not quite the summit of Everest, but it certainly felt a fair way above base camp.

At the start of their innings, WinViz gave South Africa a 38% chance of pulling off the joint second-highest successful chase for a Test match at Lord’s.

England chased down the same target against New Zealand – for the loss of three wickets – in 2004 while West Indies managed a nine-wicket victory against England in 1984 in pursuit of 342.

In the 148-year history of Test cricket – in excess of 2,000 matches – there have also been just 26 occasions when the team batting last has scored the highest total of the match as South Africa require here.

Having been rolled for 138 in the first innings, and up against an Australian bowling attack with more than 1,500 Test wickets between them, it felt like big ask.

The burden of history and data did not seem to weigh too heavily on the shoulders of Markram and Bavuma, though, as bat truly dominated ball for the first time in this contest.

South Africa lost Ryan Rickleton – who chased an away swinger from Starc and edged into the gloves of Alex Carey – but it did not stymie the Proteas’ intent.

Markram and Wiaan Mulder were positive rather than tentative during a 69-run stand for the second wicket which provided a solid foundation.

Mulder had reached 27 before he rather tamely chipped Starc, who had swapped to the Nursery End, into the hands of Marnus Labuschagne in the covers.

That brought Bavuma, South Africa’s leading run-scorer in Tests since December 2019, to the crease and he had an escape when Steve Smith grounded a tough chance when he was on just two.

Smith suffered a compound dislocation of the little finger on his right hand after shelling the chance and left the field to go hospital for further treatment.

All the while Markram was quietly going about his business, during an authoritative and measured knock offering barely a chance.

He carefully picked his moments to gracefully drive, square drive and guide boundaries alongside sensible accumulation on both sides of the wicket.

South Africa’s scoring rate slowed as the match headed towards stumps, but there was still time for Markram to reach three figures in the penultimate over of the day.

Hazlewood strayed on to his pads and Markram effortlessly flicked the ball square for four before he took off his helmet to salute the crowd.

When a landmark state environmental law threatened to halt enrollment at UC Berkeley, legislators stepped in and wrote an exemption. When the Sacramento Kings were about to leave town, lawmakers brushed the environmental rules aside for the team’s new arena. When the law stymied the renovation of the state Capitol, they acted once again.

Lawmakers’ willingness to poke holes in the California Environmental Quality Act for specific projects without overhauling the law in general has led commentators to describe the changes as “Swiss cheese CEQA.”

Now, after years of nibbling at it, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature are going in with the knives.

Two proposals have advanced rapidly through the Legislature: one to wipe away the law for most urban housing developments, the other to weaken the rules for most everything else. Legal experts say the efforts would be the most profound changes to CEQA in generations. Newsom not only endorsed the bills last month, but also put them on a fast track to approval by proposing their passage as part of the state budget, which bypasses normal committee hearings and means they could become law within weeks.

“This is the biggest opportunity to do something big and bold, and the only impediment is us,” Newsom said when announcing his support for the legislation.

Nearly the entire 55-year history of the California Environmental Quality Act has featured dueling narratives about its effects. On its face the law is simple: It requires proponents to disclose and, if possible, lessen the environmental effects of a project. In practice, this has led to tomes of environmental impact reports, including volumes of soil testing and traffic modeling studies, and sometimes years of disputes in court. Many credit CEQA for helping preserve the state’s scenic vistas and waterways while others decry its ability to thwart housing and infrastructure projects, including the long-delayed and budget-busting high-speed rail.

On the latter point, evidence supports both sides of the argument. One study by UC Berkeley law professors found that fewer than 3% of housing projects in many big cities across the state over a three-year period faced any litigation. But some contend that the threat of a lawsuit is enough to chill development, and examples continue to pile up of CEQA stalling construction of homeless shelters, a food bank and child-care center.

What’s clear is that CEQA has become embedded as a key point of leverage in California’s development process. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass once recalled that when she worked as a community organizer in the 1990s, Westside land-use attorneys who were successful in stopping development in their communities taught her how to use CEQA to block liquor stores in South L.A.

Organized labor learned to use the law to its advantage and became one of its most ardent supporters, alongside environmentalists — major constituencies within Democratic politics in the state. Besides carve-outs for individual projects in recent years, lawmakers have passed CEQA streamlining for certain kinds of housing and other developments. These fast-track measures can be used only if proponents agree to pay higher wages to construction workers or set aside a portion of the project for low-income housing on land considered the least environmentally sensitive.

Labor groups’ argument is simple, said Pete Rodriguez, vice president-Western District of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners: CEQA exemptions save time and money for developers, so some benefit should go to workers.

“When you expedite the process and you let a developer get the TSA pass, for example, to get quicker through the line at the airport, there should be labor standards attached to that as well,” Rodriguez said at a Los Angeles Business Council panel in April.

The two bills now under debate — Assembly Bill 609 by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and Senate Bill 607 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) — break with that tradition. They propose broad CEQA changes without any labor or other requirements.

Wicks’ bill would exempt most urban housing developments from CEQA. Wiener’s legislation, among other provisions, would in effect lessen the number of projects, housing and otherwise, that would need to complete a full environmental review, narrowing the law’s scope.

“Both are much, much more far-reaching than anything that has been proposed in living memory to deal with CEQA,” said Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis law professor who tracks state environmental and housing legislation.

The legislation wouldn’t have much of an effect on rebuilding after L.A.’s wildfires, as single-family home construction is exempt and Newsom already waived other parts of the law by executive order.

The environment inside and outside the Legislature has become friendlier to more aggressive proposals. “Abundance,” a recent book co-written by New York Times opinion writer Ezra Klein, makes the case that CEQA and other laws supported by Democrats have hamstrung the ability to build housing and critical infrastructure projects, citing specifically California’s affordability crisis and challenges with high-speed rail, in ways that have stifled the American Dream and the party’s political fortunes.

The idea has become a cause celebre in certain circles. Newsom invited Klein onto his podcast. This spring, Klein met with Wicks and Wiener and other lawmakers, including Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), the leaders of the state Assembly and Senate, respectively.

Wicks and Wiener are veteran legislators and former chairs of legislative housing committees who have written much of the prior CEQA streamlining legislation. Even though it took bruising battles to pass previous bills, the resulting production hasn’t come close to resolving the state’s shortage, Wicks said.

“We need housing on a massive scale,” Wicks said.

To opponents of the bills, including dozens of environmental and labor groups, the effort misplaces the source of building woes and instead would restrict one of the few ways community groups can shape development.

Asha Sharma, state policy manager for Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, said her organization uses CEQA to reduce the polluting effects of projects in neighborhoods already overburdened by environmental problems.

The proposed changes would empower public agencies and developers at the expense of those who would be affected by their decisions, she said.

“What folks aren’t realizing is that along with the environmental regulations comes a lot of public transparency and public engagement,” said Sharma, whose group advocates for low-income Californians in rural areas. “When you’re rolling back CEQA, you’re rolling back that too.”

Because of the hefty push behind the legislation, Sharma expects the bills will be approved in some form. But it remains uncertain how they might change. Newsom, the two lawmakers and legislative leaders are negotiating amendments.

Wicks said her bill will not require developers to reserve part of their projects for low-income housing to receive a CEQA exemption; cities can mandate that on their own, she said. Wicks indicated, however, that labor standards could be part of a final deal, saying she’s “had some conversations in that regard.”

Wiener’s bill was gutted in a legislative fiscal committee last month, with lawmakers saying they wanted to meet infrastructure and affordability needs “without compromising environmental protections.” Afterward, Wiener and McGuire, the Senate leader, released a joint statement declaring their intent to pass a version of the legislation as part of the budget, as the governor had proposed.

Wiener remained committed to the principles in his initial bill.

“What I can say is that I’m highly optimistic that we will pass strong changes to CEQA that will make it easier and faster to deliver all of the good things that make Californians’ lives better and more affordable,” Wiener said.

Should the language in the final deal be anything like what’s been discussed, the changes to CEQA would be substantial, said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. Still, he said the law’s effects on housing development were overblown. Many other issues, such as local zoning restrictions, lack of funding and misaligned tax incentives, play a much larger role in limiting construction long before projects can even get to the point where CEQA becomes a concern, he said.

“CEQA is the last resort of a NIMBY,” said Elkind, referring to residents who try to block housing near them. “It’s almost like we’re working backwards here.”

Wicks agreed that the Legislature would have to do more to strip away regulations that make it harder to build housing. But she argued that the CEQA changes would take away a major barrier: the uncertainty developers face from legal threats.

Passing major CEQA reforms would demonstrate lawmakers’ willingness to tackle some of the state’s toughest challenges, she said.

“It sends a signal to the world that we’re ready to build,” Wicks said.

The sky is clear and PCH is open for the first time since January — summer is approaching in L.A. Celebrate the ease in traffic with a coastal road trip complete with pit stops for coffee and Santa Maria-style barbecue, maybe treating yourself to a stay at the iconic Madonna Inn along the way.

But there’s plenty to do if you decide to stay local. You can enjoy uninterrupted views from one of the city’s towering rooftop restaurants, or cheer on the Dodgers at a stadium-adjacent brewery or taqueria while the season is in full swing.

Local restaurants also need your support. On June 13, Here’s Looking at You, a lauded Koreatown restaurant with recurring appearances on The Times’ annual 101 Best Restaurants list, will close after nearly a decade of warm hospitality, late-night double cheeseburgers and tiki cocktails. Reservations are full, but you might get lucky with a bar seat or by showing up early.

It’s a reminder to support the institutions that feel integral to our city’s culinary identity, including landmark restaurants that have been around for close to (or more than) a century. With Rite Aid stores closing across the state, it could be your last chance to order Thrifty’s ice cream at the counter — a superior experience to scooping from a tub at home.

And if you need even more dining ideas this month, our Food writers have you covered, including a destination shopping center in San Gabriel, Gen Z-approved coffee in Historic Filipinotown and celebrity-backed barbecue in Century City.

SANTIAGO, Chile, May 25 (UPI) — Once viewed as peripheral players, Protestant churches have risen over the past two decades to become influential actors in the spiritual and political realms across Latin America.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, Protestants have increased from just 1% of the Latin American population at the start of the 20th century to nearly 20% by 2024. In contrast, the Catholic population has decreased to 69% from 94% over the same period.

The shift is especially pronounced in Honduras and Guatemala, where Protestants now outnumber Catholics, and in Brazil, where they account for 28% of the population.

This demographic growth has been accompanied by the increasing political involvement of religious leaders, many of whom have won public office or directly influenced state policies.

The power of Protestant churches stems from their close ties to local communities and their ability to offer concrete spiritual guidance. They also have shown political ability in shaping debates on conservative issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights and sex education.

The rise of the far right in Latin America and the growth of Protestant churches are not separate trends, according to Israel Vilchez, director of Christian news outlet Cosmovision.cl.

“They have a close connection that is reshaping political agendas and challenging the traditional Catholic dominance,” Vilchez said.

In Brazil, the Evangelical Parliamentary Front is one of the most powerful blocs in Congress and backed the right-wing government of Jair Bolsonaro under the slogan “family, homeland and God.”

In Guatemala, Protestant actor Jimmy Morales won the presidency in 2016 and aligned his policies with conservative groups.

In Costa Rica, pastor Fabricio Alvarado reached the presidential runoff in 2018.

In Mexico, the protestant Social Encounter Party supported President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in that year’s election.

In Argentina, Presidential Javier Milei received support from the Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches during his campaign, although some groups later raised concerns over policies they said could weaken social justice.

Protestant support for right-wing political parties is not based solely on ideological alignment, according to Chilean sociologist Felipe Cruz.

“It is primarily a strong opposition to so-called progressive public policies, such as same-sex marriage and gender identity laws,” Cruz said.

In Chile, Protestant churches represent 17% of the population, according to the Center for Public Studies. The Chilean Congress includes a Protestant caucus consisting of members from various right-wing parties and the Christian Social Party.

“Churches will identify more with right-wing parties as long as they support fundamental, non-negotiable values such as opposition to abortion, homosexuality and certain approaches to education,” said Bishop Emiliano Soto, president of the Expanded Board of Evangelical Churches of Chile.

With a growing social base and increasingly visible ties to political power, protestant churches are emerging as key players in Latin America’s future. Their influence is reshaping not only the region’s religious landscape but also its political map in a time of constant change.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. — As a colossal manifestation of the biblical Noah’s Ark rises incongruously from the countryside of northern Kentucky, Ken Ham gives the presentation he’s often repeated.

The ark stretches 1½ football fields long — “the biggest free-standing timber-frame structure in the world,” Ham says. It holds three massive decks with wooden cages, food storage urns, life-size animal models and other exhibits.

It’s all designed to try to persuade visitors that the biblical story was literally true — that an ancient Noah really could have built such a sophisticated ship. That Noah and a handful of family members really could have sustained thousands of animals for months, floating above a global flood that drowned everyone else in the wicked world.

“That’s what we wanted to do through many of the exhibits, to show the feasibility of the ark,” says Ham, the organizer behind the Ark Encounter theme park and related attractions.

And with that, he furthers his goal to assert that the entire Book of Genesis should be interpreted as written — that humans were created by God’s fiat on the sixth day of creation on an Earth that is only 6,000 years old.

All this defies the overwhelming consensus of modern scientists — that the Earth developed over billions of years in “deep time” and that humans and other living things evolved over millions of years from earlier species.

But Ham wants to succeed where he believes William Jennings Bryan failed.

Bryan — a populist secretary of State, congressman, three-time presidential hopeful and fundamentalist champion — helped the prosecution in the famous Scopes monkey trial, which took place 100 years ago this July in Dayton, Tenn.

Bryan’s side won in court — gaining the conviction of public schoolteacher John Scopes for violating state law against teaching human evolution. But Bryan was widely seen as suffering a humiliating defeat in public opinion, with his sputtering attempts to explain the Bible’s fanciful miracles and enigmas.

‘The history in the Bible is true’

For Ham, Bryan’s problem was not that he defended the Bible. It’s that he didn’t defend it well enough, interpreting parts of it metaphorically rather than literally.

“It showed people around the world that Christians don’t really believe the Bible — they can’t answer questions to defend the Christian faith,” Ham says.

“We want you to know that we’ve got answers,” Ham adds, speaking in the accent of his native Australia.

Ham is founder and chief executive of Answers in Genesis, which opened the Ark Encounter in 2016. The Christian theme park includes a zoo, zip lines and other attractions surrounding the ark.

Nearly a decade earlier, Answers in Genesis opened a Creation Museum in nearby Petersburg, Ky., where exhibits similarly try to make the case for a literal interpretation of the biblical creation narrative. Visitors are greeted with a diorama depicting children and dinosaurs interacting peacefully in the Garden of Eden.

The group also produces books, podcasts, videos and homeschooling curricula.

“The main message of both attractions is basically this: The history in the Bible is true,” Ham says. “That’s why the message of the Gospel based on that history is true.”

A commonly held belief

If Ham is the most prominent torchbearer for creationism today, he’s hardly alone.

Polls generally show that somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 Americans hold beliefs consistent with young-Earth creationism, depending on how the question is asked. A 2024 Gallup poll found that 37% of U.S. adults agreed that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

That percentage is down a little, but not dramatically, from its mid-40s level between the 1980s and 2012. Rates are higher among religious and politically conservative respondents.

“Scopes lost, but the public sense was that the fundamentalists lost” and were dwindling away, says William Vance Trollinger Jr., a professor of history and religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

But the reach of Answers in Genesis demonstrates that “a significant subset of Americans hold to young-Earth creationism,” says Trollinger, co-author with his wife, English professor Susan Trollinger, of the 2016 book “Righting America at the Creation Museum.”

Leading science organizations say it’s crucial to teach evolution and old-Earth geology. Evolution is “one of the most securely established of scientific facts,” says the National Academy of Sciences. The Geological Society of America states: “Evolution and the directly related concept of deep time are essential parts of science curricula.”

The issue has been repeatedly legislated and litigated since the Scopes trial. Tennessee repealed its anti-evolution law in 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that a similar Arkansas law was an unconstitutional promotion of religion, and in 1987 it overturned a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught alongside evolution. A federal court in 2005 similarly forbade a Pennsylvania school district to present “intelligent design,” a different approach to creationism that argues life is too complex to have evolved by chance.

Bill Nye, the alarmed guy

Some lawmakers have recently revived the issue. The North Dakota Legislature this year debated a bill that would have allowed public school teaching on intelligent design. A new West Virginia law vaguely allows teachers to answer student questions about “scientific theories of how the universe and/or life came to exist.”

The Scopes trial set a template for today’s culture-war battles, with efforts to expand vouchers for attendees of private schools, including Christian ones teaching creationism; and to introduce Bible-infused lessons and Ten Commandments displays in public schools.

Such efforts alarm science educators such as Bill Nye, the television “Science Guy,” whose 2014 debate with Ham was billed as “Scopes II” and has generated millions of video views online.

“What you get out of religion, as I understand it, is this wonderful sense of community,” Nye says. “Community is very much part of the human experience. But the Earth is not 4,000 years old. To teach that idea to children with any backing — be it religious or these remarkable ideas that humans are not related to, for example, chimpanzees or bonobos — is breathtaking. It’s silly. And so we fight this fight.”

Nye notes that the evidence is overwhelming, ranging from fossil layers to the distribution of species. “There are trees older than Mr. Ham thinks the world is,” he adds.

Varying religious views

One weekday in March, visitors milled about the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum, which draw an estimated 1.5 million visits per year (including duplicate visits).

“We are church-going, Bible-believing Christians,” says Louise van Niekerk of Ontario, Canada, who traveled with her family to the Creation Museum. She’s concerned that her four children are faced with a public school curriculum permeated with evolution.

The Creation Museum, Van Niekerk says, “is encouraging a robust alternate worldview from what they’re being taught.”

Many religious groups accommodate evolution, though.

Gallup’s survey found that among Americans who believe in evolution, more say it happened with God’s guidance (34%) than without it (24%). In the Roman Catholic Church, popes have shown openness to evolution while insisting that the human soul is a divine creation. Many liberal Protestants and even some evangelicals have accepted at least parts of evolutionary theory.

But among many evangelicals, creationist belief is strong.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest evangelical body, has promoted creationist beliefs in its publications. The Assemblies of God asserts that Adam and Eve were historical people. Some evangelical schools, such as Bryan’s namesake college in Tennessee, affirm creationist beliefs in their doctrinal statements.

A wider debate

Just as Ham says the creation story is important to defend a larger truth about the Christian Gospel, critics say more is at stake than just the human origin story.

The Trollingers wrote that the Answers in Genesis enterprise is an “arsenal in the culture war.” They say it aligns with Christian nationalism, promoting conservative views in theology, family and gender roles, and casting doubt on other areas of scientific consensus, such as human-made climate change.

Nye, too, says the message fits into a more general and ominous anti-science movement. “Nobody is talking about climate change right now,” he laments.

Exhibits promote a “vengeful and violent” God, says Susan Trollinger, noting the cross on the ark’s large door, which analogizes that just as the wicked perished in the flood, those without Christ face eternal hellfire.

And there are more parallels to 1925.

Bryan had declaimed, “How can teachers tell students that they came from monkeys and not expect them to act like monkeys?” The Creation Museum, which depicts violence, drugs and other social ills as resulting from belief in evolution, is “Bryan’s social message on steroids,” wrote Edward Larson in a 2020 afterword to “Summer for the Gods,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Scopes trial.

More attractions planned

The protests that initially greeted the museum and ark projects, from secularist groups who considered them embarrassments to Kentucky, have ebbed.

When the state initially denied a tourism tax rebate for the Ark Encounter because of its religious nature, a federal court overturned that ruling. Representing Ham’s group was a Louisiana lawyer named Mike Johnson — now speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

And Ham’s massive ministry charges forward. Expansion is next, with Answers in Genesis attractions planned for Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and Branson, Mo. — tourist hubs offering more opportunities to promote creationism to the masses.

Todd Bigelow, visiting the Ark Encounter from Mesa, Ariz., says he believes that the exhibit vividly evoked the safety that Noah and his family must have felt. It helped him appreciate “the opportunities God gives us to live the life we have, and hopefully make good choices and repent when we need to,” he says.

“I think,” Bigelow adds, “God and science can go hand in hand.”

Smith writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Dylan Lovan contributed to this report.