Creationism - National Center for Science Education

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