Creationism: Recent Trend

What is creationism?
cre·a·tion·ism [kree áysh'n ìzzəm](noun) belief that God created universe: the belief that God created the universe

Flood geology gained wider acceptance after the publication of The Genesis Flood (1961), jointly authored by conservative biblical scholar John C. Whitcomb, Jr., and hydraulic engineer Henry M. Morris. This immensely influential book promoted Price's views as fundamentalist orthodoxy, and prompted the formation in 1963 of the Creation Research Society. The society is dedicated to the promotion of what has come to be known as young-earth creationism (by contrast with the old-earth creationism associated with the Day-Age and Gap theories). The most distinctive feature of young-earth creationism is its reliance on catastrophism, the doctrine that large-scale changes in the earth's crust are to be explained by violent, unrepeatable geologic events, such as the biblical flood.

About 1970 the adherents of flood geology, hoping to gain a forum in the public schools, stripped their theory of its biblical references and called it scientific creationism or creation science. Instead of trying to outlaw the teaching of evolution, as creationists had done in the 1920s, the creation scientists sought equal time in school curricula for their views. In the early 1980s, two states, Arkansas and Louisiana, passed laws mandating the teaching of creation science whenever evolutionary theory was taught in public schools. In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court declared such laws to be unconstitutional intrusions of religion in the public schools. Despite this setback, creationists have not abandoned their efforts to persuade local school boards to permit the teaching of creationism in U.S. public schools.