After the Monkey Trial

Evangelical Scientists and a New Creationism

Christopher M. Rios

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780823256679
• eBook ISBN: 9780823256709
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

In the well-known Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, famously portrayed in the film and play Inherit the Wind, William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist fervor clashed with defense attorney Clarence Darrow's aggressive agnosticism, illustrating what current scholars call the conflict thesis. It appeared, regardless of the actual legal question of the trial, that Christianity and science were at war with each other. Decades later, a new generation of evangelical scientists struggled to restore peace. After the Monkey Trial is the compelling history of those evangelical scientists in Britain and America who, unlike their fundamentalist cousins, supported mainstream scientific conclusions of the world and resisted the anti-science impulses of the era. This book focuses on two organizations, the American Scientific Affiliation and the Research Scientists' Christian
Fellowship (today Christians in Science), who for more than six decades have worked to reshape the evangelical engagement with science and redefine what it means to be a creationist.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Ebb and Flow: Evangelicals and Evolution, 1860s to 1940s
• 2. A Society for the Correlation of Science and the Bible: The American Scientific Affiliation, 1940s to 1965
• 3. Unexpected Resistance: The Research Scientists’ Christian Fellowship, 1940s to 1965
• 4. An Increasingly Powerful Movement: Modern Creationism to the 1980s
• 5. Against the Tide: The American Scientific Affiliation, 1965 to 1985
• 6. A New Apologetic: The Research Scientists’ Christian Fellowship, 1965 to 1985
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index