Kent Hovind resurfaces

Kent Hovind
Kent Hovind in 2015. Escambia County Sheriff's Office, public domain.

Kent Hovind has surfaced again, near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, according to an article, Controversial figure to lead seminar at Petal church, by Beth Bunch, in the Hub City Spokes (Petal is a city near Hattiesburg). Mr. Hovind, whom we profiled here in 2004, was convicted of tax evasion and other crimes in 2006 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, plus 3 years probation, according to the Wikipedia article. He was released in 2015 and charged with mail fraud, conspiracy, and contempt; though convicted of contempt charges by a jury, he was ultimately acquitted by the judge.

Mr. Hovind is scheduled to lead seminars next weekend. You may read about his crackpot “theories” in some detail in Ms. Bunch’s article. Besides being a creationist, which, yes, I consider a crackpot theory, Mr. Hovind believes in various conspiracy theories such as the conceit that

creationism is not taught in public schools due to a New World Order conspiracy, established by Satan and involving Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, the British Royal Family, the State of Israel, the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. government officials, business leaders, and social activists[;]

the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks; and the government is conspiring to withhold the long-discredited drug laetrile. It is impressive that Ms. Bunch and her paper ran a real news article detailing Mr. Hovind’s frankly lunatic opinions, rather than just credulously gave free publicity to a local church.

Acknowledgement. Thanks once again to the indefatigable Dan Phelps for providing the link.