Creationism - National Center for Science Education

California Public Schools (Segraves and Sumrall, undated). They decided to focus on
evolution, reasoning that it was irreligious and hence fostered atheism, and thus illegally
and unconstitutionally violated the rights of Christian schoolchildren. Sumrall contacted
her old teacher, Lammerts, who was then planning the Creation Research Society, for
scientific advice with which to counter evolution.
After seeing Lang’s Bible-Science Newsletter, Sumrall and Segraves were active
in the founding of the Bible-Science Association; they also founded the Southern
California BSA branch and organized creation science seminars. In 1963 they also
appeared before the California State Board of Education to pursue their demands that
Christian children not be indoctrinated with evolution in public schools. Rather than
insisting that evolution be excluded (the 1968 Supreme Court Epperson decision was to
finally end all such legislation), they urged that evolution be labeled a theory rather than a
fact, which the Board agreed to, and then for inclusion of creationism in the science
textbooks, which they did not.
By 1969, with the addition of several members appointed by Governor Reagan,
the Board was considerably more conservative. The State Superintendent of Public
Instruction, Max Rafferty, actively encouraged fundamentalist and creationist demands,
and had been in contact with Sumrall and Segraves since 1963. In 1969 Rafferty wrote,
in the California Dept. of Education booklet Guidelines for Moral Instruction in
California Schools:
The teaching of evolution as a part of the religion of Humanism...is yet another area of concern... If the
origins of man were taught from the point of view of both evolutionists and creationists, the purpose of
education would be satisfied. By concentrating on only one theory and ignoring others, it is tantamount to
indoctrination in one special religious viewpoint. [Quoted in J.A. Moore 1974:177]
Meanwhile, the State Advisory Committee on Science Education, which included
distinguished scientists such as Jacob Bronowski, issued a very different set of
guidelines, the Science Framework for California Public Schools. Many Board of
Education members objected to these curriculum guidelines—in particular to two
paragraphs about evolution. Board members who objected included two Mormons (one
was Rafferty’s personal physician), one Seventh-day Adventist, the president of
Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary, and a Baptist. Thomas Harvard, Rafferty’s
Mormon physician, and John Ford, the Adventist, got the Board to hold a public hearing.
The creationists wanted to scrap the entire Science Framework as hopelessly evolutionist.
However, at the hearing, Vernon Grose, a consulting aerospace engineer, Pentecostalist,
ASA member and creationist, presented the creationist lobbyists with a written statement,
which could be inserted into the Framework, calling for inclusion of creationism when
evolution is taught. This surprise recommendation was adopted, and the Framework,
with Grose’s two added paragraphs, passed unanimously. The scientists who wrote the
Framework were horrified, and publicly repudiated the changes. The Board allowed
them only to insert a disclaimer into the Framework.
Textbook publishers seemed more than willing to present creationism alongside
evolution in order to conform to the new California guidelines. According to J.A. Moore
(1974:181), Junji Kumamoto, a UC Riverside chemist and the only professional scientist
on the curriculum commission during these years, struggled single-handedly to keep
creationism out of textbooks. In 1972, prior to final textbook adoptions, a public hearing