Eve, Raymond A., and Francis B. Harrold. The Creationist Movement in Modern America. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990.
Raymond Eve and Francis Harrold’s book, The Creationist Movement in Modern America, is a social history of the American creationist movement. The authors examined the movement by looking at the people who encompassed creationism, the movement’s strategies, theories of social movements, and the actions of creationists social organizations. The authors defined creationism as a movement “aimed at opposing the scientific theory of evolution” (Eve and Harrold, xi). The book is organized into four sections: the history of the creationism movement, the membership of the creationist movement and their views, the politics and actions of the creationist movement, and predictions about the future of the creationist movement. The authors operated under the idea that their readers view creationists as backwards, ignorant, redneck people. Eve and Harrold argued that creationists are actually more common and more intelligent than one might suspect.
Entitled “Creationism, Evolution, and Social Movements,” chapter one gave a general overview of creationism. There are five sections within this chapter. The first section, “A Spectrum of Views on Origins,” described five different points under the umbrella of evolution: “the origin of the universe, the age of the universe and of the earth, the origin of life, biological evolution, and human origins” (Eve and Harrold, 3). The authors claimed that belief about the origin of the universe is actually a spectrum; one side is creation and the other evolution. What people thought regarding these five key issues determined where they are on the spectrum. The next two sections of chapter one, “How Many Creationists Are There?” and “What Creationists Are Not” detailed the strength of the creationist movement as well as common trends among creationists. The final two sections, “The Creationist Movement and the Countermovement,” and “Some Implications of the Debate,” discussed the rise of an evolutionist movement to oppose the creationist movement and the impact this dichotomy had on American science classrooms.
Chapter two, “The Evolution of Creationism,” gave a brief history of the creationist movement. After the introduction, the authors began this chapter with a section called “Science and Religion before Darwin,” which claimed that “the relation between religion and science in the American academic world was largely harmonious” (Eve and Harrold, 13). The next section, “A Scientific and Academic Revolution,” discussed the rise of Darwinism. In this section, the authors stated that although some groups rose up in protest against evolution, most Americans were not bothered by the new theory. The authors head into the 20th century in the next section, “The Antievolution Movement of the 1920s.” Here they looked at the rise of attacks against evolution and claimed that this flare of antievolution sentiment ended in a truce between the two sides. The final section, “The End of the Truce,” went over the rise of another leg of the creationism-evolution battle in the 1960’s. The authors claimed that these spats from the 60’s led to the creationism debate of the 80’s.
In chapter three, “Creationists and Creationism Today,” the authors expanded upon the general overview they gave of creationists in chapter one. The first section, “How Many Creationists Are There?,” looked at the number of American creationists, but also analyzed them based on education level. The authors pulled samples from three states: Texas, California, and Connecticut. Creationists are then examined by their demographics in the next sections, “Who Are Creationists?” The authors considered the political and denominational allegiances of creationists, as well as their gender, income, and race. The average creationist is stated to be a white, conservative, Protestant woman, but the authors conceded that creationists as a whole were an incredibly varied group. The next section, “Varieties of Modern Creationism” dealt with the origin spectrum discussed in chapter one. The authors examined different types of creationism, including young earth, old earth, poetic theory, and literary theory. Rejectionism and Scientific Creationism are analyzed in the next section, “How Creationists Deal with Science.” These two views also played into the origin spectrum of belief.
Chapter four, “How Creationists View the World,” built nicely off of the end of chapter three. In this chapter, the authors introduced two concepts that become recurring themes throughout the rest of the book: cultural fundamentalism and cultural modernism. Instead of referring specifically to different religious sects or conservatives and liberals, the authors grouped people together mainly by referring to them as fundamentals or modernists. This dichotomy is defined and explained in the first section, “Cultural Fundamentalism versus Cultural Modernism.” The next section is devoted to “Secular Humanism.” The authors stated that fundamentalists view the opposing modernists as “secular humanists” and defined exactly what this term meant in this section. Chapter four ended with a section entitled “Creationist Epistemology and Science.” The authors analyzed the foundation of creationist views, as well as the difference between mainstream and creationist science.
Chapter five is called “How Creationists Attack Evolution.” The authors really began to dig into their use of social theory in this chapter. Entitled “Ideology and Its Presentation in a Social Movement,” the first section of this chapter examined different criteria that movement ideologies must meet in order to be successful. The second section, “The Creationist Case: What is Wrong with the Theory of Evolution,” examined the exact evolutionary details that creationists do not agree with, as well as why they do not agree with them. This section also looked at specific arguments creationists use to attempt to disprove evolution, such as questioning decay rates of radioactive isotopes and accenting the “Missing Link.” The authors spent a great deal of pages refuting work done by creationists in this section. After criticizing creationist writings and research, the authors ended this chapter with a section named “Reasons for the Effectiveness of the Creationist Attack.” The argument in this chapter is that creationists succeeded because their intended audience was not the scientific community, it is the American public. This was significant because “perhaps most crucial to the success of creationist attacks on evolution is the low level of knowledge and understanding of science among Americans” (Eve and Harrold, 90).
Entitled “The Genesis of Creationism: Psychological and Sociological Perspectives,” chapter six contained nine sections that all revolve around the idea of explaining creationism. The first two sections focused on a case study where creationists in Kanawha County, West Virginia, led a campaign to ban 175 books that had been chosen for a language arts program. After this success, the group moved on to oppose evolution in biology textbooks. The authors used this story as a case study to understand how creationists oppose evolution. The third section compared creationists to the New Christian Right (NCR). After this, in a section called “Explaining Creationism: Pathology versus Rationality,” the authors looked at certain personality factors that attract people to creationism. Here, Eve and Harrold got a little extreme. They claimed that people who had an “authoritarian personality” were attracted to creationism. Some aspects included in an “authoritarian personality” included “prejudice, ethnocentrism, excessive concern with conventional middle-class morality, an obsession with dominance and submission in all relationships, repressed hostility and aggression toward anyone different from themselves” (Eve and Harrold, 101). This list went on to include nine more traits, each more concerning than the last. There are three more sections entitled “Explaining Creationism” in this chapter: “Status Politics,” “Worldviews in Conflict,” and “Beyond the Dichotomy.” The chapter ended with a section called “Cultural Modernists and the Anticreationist Movement,” where the authors compared the makeup of the anticreationist movement to cultural modernists.
Chapter seven, “Creationist Organizations in the Struggle against Evolution” looked at how different creationist social movement organizations (SMOs) embodied the points and strategies discussed in earlier chapters. The authors ranked each SMO based on popularity and effectiveness. This chapter had only two sections and was relatively straightforward. The first section, “The Spectrum of Creationist SMOs,” has four subsections: “The Center,” “The Right Wing,” “The Left Wing,” and “Creationism as a Sideline.” The first three subsections referred to where certain creationist SMOs fall on the political spectrum. The last subsection, “Creationism as a Sideline,” looked at SMOs who do not focus on creationism but still supported and aided the creationist movement. The second section, “SMOs in the Countermovement,” discussed anticreationist SMOs. This section was not as long or as comprehensive as the first, and contained only two subsections. The first subsection, “The NCSE,” looked at the activity of the National Center for Science Education. The second subsection, “Other Organizations,” looked at other anticreationist SMOs.
In Chapter Eight, “Mobilizing the Movement: The Politics of Equal Time,” Eve and Harrold looked at how the creationist movement used politics to further their goals. The authors claimed that there are four main political avenues that creationists take: the courts, legislation, state educational bodies, and the grassroots level. Each section contained a few examples, but the authors gave a considerable amount of pages to a bill called Act 590, which argued that creationist science was not religious and should be given equal time with evolution in biology classrooms. This law failed in both states it was attempted in, first in Arkansas and then in Louisiana. The trial gained significant public attention in Arkansas, and was given the nickname “Scopes II.” Eve and Harrold ended this chapter by analyzing the countermovement’s response to creationists’ politicking. In this section, the authors argued that while creationists fail often at the state and national levels, they succeed frequently at local, grassroots levels.
Chapter nine is called “Looking Backward and Forward: Some Conclusions and Predictions.” This final chapter interpreted creationist social movements under Neil Smelser’s “six ‘determinants’ of collective behavior: (1) structural conduciveness, (2) structural strain, (3) a precipitating event, (4) the growth and spread of generalized beliefs, (5) the mobilization of participants for action, and (6) the operation on the movement of social control.” (Eve and Harrold, 172). Each of these six determinants was given a section and the creationism movement was evaluated and analyzed under each determinant. Eve and Harrold then summarized the other chapters of the book, and concluded that the creationism/evolution debate is far from over. They anticipated a continued rise of debate about the origin of the universe.
Overall, Eve and Harrold were very clear about their thesis and goals for the book and did an efficient job of proving their thesis and executing their goals. Despite the age of the book, the authors offered analysis that is still valuable today. While the arguments are strong, Eve and Harrold failed to keep bias out of their writing. Writing for an academic audience, the authors assumed that their readers would share the same preconceived notions of the ignorance of creationists that they held. The book also could have been organized a bit more efficiently. Notwithstanding the demerits, The Creationist Movement in Modern America was fairly well-written and deserves credit for efficiently and methodically presenting its thesis and proving its point.