Creationism is the belief that the universe, including the earth and all its life-forms, was created by God. The biblical account of origins, in Genesis 1 and 2, was almost universally accepted in the Western world until the nineteenth century. Charles Darwin challenged this account beginning with his Origin of Species (1859), which argued that species evolved over long periods of time through the mechanism of natural selection. But creationist controversy is not just a conflict between origins accounts; more broadly, it has become a conflict between theistic and nontheistic cosmologies.

One should not identify creationism with conservatism or Christianity in general. While doubts regarding the Darwinian account of evolution abound on the Right, and span the gamut from scientific “intelligent design” theories to fundamentalist Protestant biblical literalism, the view that God created heaven, earth, and man in seven literal days does not dominate. For example, in 1950 the Catholic Church made clear its position that there is no necessary contradiction between the idea that God used evolution to create the first man and the Catholic faith, provided it is recognized that the spiritual soul is created by God, rather than the human mind being a mere epiphenomenon of matter. Evolution, on this view, is a theory, or rather set of theories, subject to proper scientific analysis.

Creationists in the late nineteenth century were primarily concerned with the philosophical naturalism and materialism Darwinism encouraged. Though reluctant to accept the Bible’s scientific material literally, they did stress the divine agency of creation. These early creationists, such as Louis Agassiz and Charles Hodge, mainly critiqued atheistic or naturalistic evolution.

The creationist controversy became more intense, defined, and political in the 1920s. Fundamentalists had stressed a literal interpretation of the Bible, including the Genesis account of human origins. Many had ethical concerns, claiming that Germany suffered moral degeneration prior to World War I because of the teaching of natural selection. Progressives, who were committed to purifying society and protecting children, likewise feared the impact of evolutionary teaching. (Progressive veteran William Jennings Bryan once described his career as patrolling with a double-barreled shotgun: one barrel for an elephant raiding the Treasury, another for a monkey raiding the schoolhouse.) Another progressive reform, compulsory education, dramatically increased enrollment in government high schools and heightened concerns about their curricula.

The creationist controversy erupted at the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. Dayton’s high school football coach and substitute biology teacher, John Scopes, with encouragement from the ACLU and a local group of business boosters, decided to challenge a Tennessee statute that made it unlawful to deny “the story of Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach that mankind descended from a lower order of animals.” His defense attorney was Clarence Darrow, the famous American trial lawyer and agnostic. Siding with Tennessee was Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate, progressive reformer, and Christian crusader. Scopes was found guilty of breaking the law, but his $100 fine was later overturned on a technicality. When Bryan died a few days after the trial, creationists lost their most famous advocate and seemingly lost the battle.

The creationist crusade, however, continued. Creationist legislative initiatives were rewarded, in 1928, in a spectacularly successful Arkansas referendum measure. Gaining popularity as creationist spokesmen and authors were Harry Rimmer, an itinerant Presbyterian evangelist and self-styled “research scientist,” and George M. Price, a Seventh Day Adventist geology professor. By the 1930s, the issue was dormant, as creationists and evolutionists had reached a tacit understanding. Textbooks dropped or muted references to evolution and Darwinism, while states declined to enforce existing creationist laws.

Creationism experienced a revival in the 1960s and 1970s. The most significant figure was Henry Morris, a college professor with a Ph.D. in hydraulic engineering. His The Genesis Flood (1961), coauthored with theologian John Whitcomb, sounded authoritative, made “flood geology” popular in Christian circles, and paved the way for “scientific creationism.” Morris helped found the Creation Research Society, an organization that required members to hold graduate degrees in the sciences. Later he established the Institute for Creation Research, a San Diego–based research and educational institution whose members have an aggressive program of publication and debate.

Legal battles over creationism were renewed in the early 1980s. Balanced Treatment Acts were passed in Louisiana and Arkansas (and introduced in nineteen other states) that required that scientific creationism be taught in schools where evolution was taught. Rather than forbidding evolutionary teaching, as in the legislation of the 1920s, the measures required equal time for an alternative perspective. In 1987, in Edwards v. Aguillard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the acts unconstitutional, contending that they violated the First Amendment by requiring the teaching of religious doctrine. Sharp dissenting opinions on the Louisiana court and the Supreme Court, however, reflect the divided opinion of Americans on creationism.

Creationists have also appealed to the philosophy of science, particularly to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). There can be, they argue, two interpretive models to explain scientific phenomena. Though evolution is the established paradigm, other hypotheses may be equally valid and cannot be discounted.

Essentially, though, creationists are driven by religious concerns. First, they wish to defend the authority and accuracy of the Genesis account. Second, naturalistic evolution, when consistently applied, challenges cardinal Christian doctrines about sin and salvation. Third, and perhaps most importantly, they believe that evolution is a dehumanizing doctrine, which in eroding the belief that man is made in the image of God threatens the underpinnings of society.

Creationists have never been in complete agreement about what the Bible teaches, and, over the years, three distinct and competing schools of thought have emerged. Day-age theorists argue that the “days” of Genesis 1 actually refer to long eras or epochs of time. This theory has attracted some ardent fundamentalists, such as William Bell Riley. Others squeeze a great deal of evolutionary science into these indeterminate days of Genesis and are labeled “theistic evolutionists” or “progressive creationists.” But all such theorists hold that God guided the process.

Gap theorists argue that there was a gap between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2 that could accommodate a large span of time and would explain phenomena such as dinosaurs and cavemen. The fossil record pertains to God’s original creation, while Gen 1:2 tells the story of God’s re-creation. This system allows great harmonization with science, while still allowing for a literal interpretation of the Bible. The gap theory, outlined in Scofield’s biblical reference notes, became an article of faith for most fundamentalists and dispensationalists.

Young-earth theorists interpret the Bible most literally and represent the strictest school of creationism. Following Morris, they argue for a young earth (about six thousand years old), and claim that radical and catastrophic geological changes occurred because of the Noahic flood.

Further Reading

Wendell Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited

Raymond Eve and Francis Harrold, The Creationist Movement in Modern America

Willard Gatewood, The Controversy of the Twenties: Fundamentalism, Modernism, and Evolution

Philip E. Johnson and Denis O. Lemoureux, Darwinism Defeated?

Edward Larson, Trial and Error: The American Controversy Over Creation and Evolution

Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism

This entry was originally published in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, p. 201.