After the Monkey Trial

The twentieth-century evangelical engagement with science was dominated by the fundamentalist crusade against evolution. Convinced that biblical faith demanded a common-sense reading of the Book of Genesis, that theology rested upon the special creation of humanity in a sinless world, and that the best science corroborated these beliefs, evangelicals across America and beyond brought about a anti evolutionary movement that permeated the churches during the final third of the century. Liberal Christians may have been able to make peace with evolution, but for those who took the Bible at its word, many thought, such accommodation was unthinkable. By the 1970s, a small army of popular figures set out to simultaneously undermine evolutionary science and protect the faith of Christian youth against its anti-biblical claims. But going unnoticed amongst all of this activity were the efforts of another group of evangelical scientists, orthodox believers who attempted to stem the creationist tide by demonstrating the complementary relationship between biblical faith and mainstream science. After the Monkey Trial takes a transatlantic view of evangelical scientists in Britain and America during the middle decades of the twentieth century who, unlike their fundamentalist cousins, supported mainstream scientific conclusions of the world and resisted the anti-science impulses of the era. It focuses on the efforts of two organizations, the American Scientific Affiliation and the Research Scientists' Christian Fellowship (today Christians in Science) who united many of the most accomplished orthodox Christian scientists of the era. For more than six decades these organization worked to reshape the evangelical engagement with science and redefine what it means to be a creationist. At a time when social and political events have highlighted the continuing antagonism between conservatism and science, this book shows that the contentious claims of a few polarizing figures need not define the issues.