Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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James Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, is fast becoming<br />
one of the most effective creationist proselytizers.<br />
The Re<strong>for</strong>med churches originated in Switzerland during the Re<strong>for</strong>mation as<br />
Protestants who, as followers of Calvin, distinguished themselves from the Lutherans.<br />
Churches in Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Germany retained the name “Re<strong>for</strong>med”;<br />
re<strong>for</strong>med churches in England and Scotland became Presbyterian; in France they were<br />
called Huguenot. The Re<strong>for</strong>med churches in the U.S. are mostly Dutch in origin, and are<br />
strongly Calvinist and conservative. The largest branch is the Re<strong>for</strong>med Church in<br />
America. W.R. Gordon delivered an impassioned attack on evolution (1878) at the<br />
Theological Seminary of New Brunswick in New Jersey, which was established as a<br />
Re<strong>for</strong>med Church school. (The Seminary was the first in the U.S.; the College was later<br />
renamed Rutgers.)<br />
Almost as large, the Christian Re<strong>for</strong>med Church, another Dutch Re<strong>for</strong>med<br />
branch, has produced creationists of varying types. Calvin College in Grand Rapids,<br />
Michigan, is a Christian Re<strong>for</strong>med school; Enno Wolthuis was a faculty member who<br />
emphasized creationism (1963). More recently, old-earth creationist Davis Young has<br />
attacked Henry Morris’s Flood Geology (1977, 1982); in 1987 he and Howard Van Till,<br />
who advocates what he calls the “creationomic” view (1986) were investigated by the<br />
Christian Re<strong>for</strong>med Church <strong>for</strong> collaborating on a new book, <strong>Science</strong> Held Hostage,<br />
which criticizes both naturalistic evolutionists and young-earth creationists (they were<br />
fully acquitted; see Fezer 1988a). George Marsden, whose masterful and critical analysis<br />
of fundamentalist (1980) has become a required starting point <strong>for</strong> any serious study of the<br />
movement, was also on the Calvin College faculty (currently he is at Duke University).<br />
Dordt College in Iowa, another Christian Re<strong>for</strong>med school, is the center of the<br />
“Cosmonomic” movement inspired by Dooyeweerd; Dordt College professor Russell<br />
Maatman (1970) is a spokesman <strong>for</strong> this type of creationism.<br />
Another, smaller Dutch Re<strong>for</strong>med branch is the Protestant Re<strong>for</strong>med Churches in<br />
America, to which Homer Hoeksema (1966) belonged.<br />
Herman Dooyeweerd was a strongly Calvinist Dutch philosopher whose massive<br />
1957 treatise outlining his “Cosmonomic” philosophy called <strong>for</strong> the total re<strong>for</strong>mation of<br />
science (and all other disciplines) along strictly fundamentalist Christian lines.<br />
Dooyeweerd’s followers include J.J. Duyvene De Wit, a Dutch South African zoologist<br />
who reconstructed biology according to Christian (creationist) principles (1963), and<br />
Hebden Taylor, whose Evolution and the Re<strong>for</strong>mation of Biology (1967) calls <strong>for</strong> a<br />
creationist Re<strong>for</strong>med approach to biology.<br />
Earlier Calvinist anti-evolutionists include Valentine Hepp, who in his 1930<br />
Calvinism and the Philosophy of Nature (1930) “called <strong>for</strong> a total rethinking of geology<br />
in terms of recent creation and a global flood” (D. Young 1982:64). More recently,<br />
philosopher Gordon Clark has asserted that science must be made subservient to<br />
Christian revelation, which demands strict creationism (1964, 1984). John W. Robbins’<br />
Trinity Foundation in Maryland champions Clark’s teachings.<br />
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), a large, conservative<br />
denomination, includes many creationists, but, as Duane Jeffery has pointed out (1973),<br />
the position of the Mormon Church regarding evolution has not been made explicit. A<br />
literal reading of the creation account in the Book of Mormon seems to preclude<br />
evolution, however, and most Mormons assume that their church teaches anti-