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Fundamentalism and Folk Science between the Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Extract

Reports of the demise of the “warfare” school of writing the history of religion and science may yet be premature, but it seems safe to say that it has had a near-death experience. Much recent historiography has underscored the shallowness, futility, and wrongheadedness of treating controversies involving religion and science simply as skirmishes in an ongoing, inevitable conflict between contradictory ways of viewing the world. We have been urged, as historians, to probe beneath the surface of apparent conflicts in search of the underlying reasons why people with different beliefs have come to disagree so deeply about matters involving science and to accept the realities of an historically complex situation. After showing the inadequacy of the warfare thesis, David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers note sadly that “we will never find a satisfactory alternative of equal simplicity.” John Hedley Brooke, the author of a recent comprehensive study, concludes that “Serious scholarship in the history of science has revealed so extraordinarily rich and complex a relationship between science and religion in the past that general theses are difficult to sustain. The real lesson turns out to be the complexity.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1995

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References

Notes

1 A shorter version of this essay was presented at the January 1994 annual meeting of the American Society of Church History. I have benefited greatly from Roger Schultz, “All Things Made New: The Evolving Fundamentalism of Harry Rimmer, 1890-1952” (Ph.D. diss., University of Arkansas, 1989), the only scholarly biography of Rimmer. In addition, Schultz helped me obtain rare recordings of Rimmer's voice and made several helpful comments on this essay. Others have also helped, especially those who have written me with memories of Harry Rimmer: Gilbert Dunkin, Walt Hearn, Cecil Hughes, Bob Palmer, the late Bernard Ramm, and Enno Wolthuis. Much of my research on Samuel Schmucker and the debate itself was completed during 1991-1992 while I was in Philadelphia as a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of the writing was done while I was on sabbatical leave from Messiah College in fall 1993. I have lifted some conclusions from comments I prepared in 1987 for a panel on creationism that presented its work to scholars from the History of Science Society and the American Anthropological Association. In revising this essay, I have been aided by the comments of Sharon Kingsland and Ronald Numbers.

2. Though conflict metaphors and assumptions are no longer operative for many historians and social scientists, they remain common among journalists, much of the American public, and more than a few academics. Within the community of natural scientists, for example, warfare language is still routine. Whether this is owing to historical naiveté, biographical circumstances, or deliberate ideological choice varies with the individual scientist.

3. See especially Moore, James R., The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which contains an extended essay on the damage done to historiography by the use of military metaphors. An early challenge was raised by Russell, Colin A., “Some Approaches to the History of Science,” in The “Conflict Thesis” and Cosmology, ed. Russell, Colin A. (Milton Keynes: The Open University Press, 1974), 550.Google Scholar For a recent funeral Service, see Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L., “Beyond War and Peace: A Reappraisal of the Encounter between Christianity and Science,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 39, no. 3 (September 1987): 140-49Google Scholar, a revised version of an article that appeared originally in Church History 55, no. 3 (September 1986): 338-54; and the introduction to their edited collection, God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 1-18.

4. Lindberg and Numbers, “Beyond War and Peace,” 148.

5. Brooke, John Hedley, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 5.Google Scholar

6. Shipley, Maynard, The War on Modern Science: A Short History of the Fundamentalist Attacks on Evolution and Modernism (New York: Knopf, 1927).Google Scholar

7. For an excellent treatment of both scientific creationism and naturalistic evolutionism as examples of folk science, see Van Till, Howard J., Young, Davis A., and Menninga, Clarence, Science Held Hostage: What's Wrong with Creation Science and Evolutionism (DownersGrove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 3943, 141-53, and 169-78Google Scholar; and Van Till, Howard J. and others, Portraits of Creation: Biblical and Scientific Perspectives on the World's Formation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 147- 51 and 186-202.Google Scholar

8. For informative accounts of both men as apologists for fundamentalist science, see Numbers, Ronald L., The Creationists (New York: Knopf, 1992), 60101.Google Scholar Although Numbers has told us far more than anyone else about antievolutionism between 1925 and 1960, his efforts are not entirely unprecedented. Important observations are found elsewhere, especially in Ramm, Bernard L., The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954)Google Scholar, a thoroughly researched work that is both a primary and a secondary source for this essay. See also Cole, Stewart G., The History of Fundamentalism (New York: R. R. Smith, 1931), 259-80Google Scholar; Furniss, Norman F., The Fundamentalist Controversy, 1918-1931 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; and Gatewood, Willard B. Jr., “From Scopes to Creation Science: The Decline and Revival of the Evolution Controversy,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 83, no. 4 (Autumn 1984): 363-83.Google Scholar On Rimmer as a folk scientist, see Davis, Edward B., “A Whale of a Tale: Fundamentalist Fish Stories,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 43, no. 4 (December 1991): 224-37.Google Scholar

9. Ravetz, Jerome R., Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 386, 386-87.Google Scholar

10. For a penetrating critique of the religious aspects of naturalistic evolutionism, see Livingstone, David N., “Evolution as Myth and Metaphor,” Christian Scholar's Review 12, no. 2 (1983): 111-25.Google Scholar

11. Ravetz, , Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems, 388-90.Google Scholar

12. Till, Van, Portraits of Creation, 188.Google Scholar

13. Schultz's dissertation (note 1) remains the best general source of information on Rimmer. My own short biography serves as the introduction (ix-xxviii) to The Antievolution Pamphlets of Harry Rimmer (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), volume six in a ten-volume set on Creationism in Twentieth-Century America, under the general editorship of Ronald L. Numbers. An indispensable primary source is Fire Inside: The Harry Rimmer Story (Berne, Ind.: Publishers Printing House, 1968), by Rimmer's widow, Mignon Brandon Rimmer, based on his thousands of letters home, which she subsequently destroyed. A biographical novel by his son Rimmer, Charles Brandon, In the Fullness of Time (Berne, Ind.: The Berne Witness Company, 1948)Google Scholar, reprinted as Harry (Carol Stream, Ill.: Creation House, 1973), Stresses his troubled youth and is useful for background information. Kathryn Rimmer Braswell's obituary of her father, “Harry Rimmer—Defender of the Faith,” The Sunday School Times 95 (March 28, 1953): 263-64, is confused about chronology but otherwise helpful. Brief outlines of his career were published in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 41, 21-22; and Who Was Who in America, 1951-1960 (Chicago: Marquis, 1960), 728-29.

14. As with many events in Rimmer's early years, the date of his conversion is uncertain.

15. I do not wish to push the comparison with Liddell too far. His athletic accomplishments speak for themselves, and his own version of muscular Christianity was much tempered by a genuine humility. Langdon Gilkey, who was imprisoned with Liddell in China, once told me that Liddell was “the only saint I ever knew.”

16. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 133.Google Scholar

17. Numbers, , The Creationists, 60.Google Scholar

18. Furniss, , The Fundamentalist Controversy, 68 Google Scholar; Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, November 8, 1930, 14; Philadelphia Inquirer, November 8, 1930, 13; “Kansan Wins in Debate on Theory of Evolution,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 23, 1930, part 2, 2.

19. See Numbers, The Creationists, 63.

20. Moore, James R., “Interpreting the New Creationism,” Michigan Quarterly Review 22, no. 3 (Summer 1983): 321-34, quoting 330.Google Scholar

21. Rimmer, Harry, Lot's Wife and the Science of Physics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1947), n.p.Google Scholar

22. Numbers, The Creationists, 64.

23. Braswell, “Harry Rimmer—Defender of the Faith,” 264.

24. See Kalthoff, Mark A., “The Harmonious Dissonance of Evangelical Scientists: Rhetoric and Reality in the Early Decades of the American Scientific Affiliation,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 43, no. 4 (December 1991): 263.Google Scholar Bechters, Paul M. official history, Wheaton College: A Heritage Remembered, 1860-1984 (Wheaton, Ill.: H. Shaw, 1984)Google Scholar, states erroneously that the trustees did not accept this gift; see 129. Michael Hamilton informs me that the executive committee of the board of trustees, meeting on March 5, 1936, accepted $25,000 from Howard Frost (a trustee of Rimmer's Research Science Bureau), and, just a few months later, Wheaton gave Rimmer an honorary doctorate. The endowment was to be super- vised by the president of Wheaton, the president of Moody Bible Institute, and Rimmer. This committee was to certify annually that Wheaton remained true to its doctrinal Statement, or else the endowment would revert to Moody Bible Institute. At the time, this was a Standard practice at Wheaton: the pledge form contained a Space for donors to indicate who would receive their money if Wheaton departed from fundamentalist doctrines. No specific issues (such as evolution) were spelled out in this promise to remain faithful, but Rimmer was (surely) expected to monitor teaching about science. Letter from Michael S. Hamilton to Edward B. Davis, January 24, 1994, cited with permission.

25. Kalthoff, “Harmonious Dissonance,” 263. On Mixter's influence, see Chappell, Dorothy F., “Christian, Teacher, Scientist, Mentor: Dr. Russell L. Mixter,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 44, no. 1 (March 1992): 1016.Google Scholar

26. Rimmer, Harry, “Combating Evolution on the Pacific Coast,” The King's Business 14, no. 11 (November 1923): 109.Google Scholar

27. According to a card file in the Biola University archives, Rimmer taught “Science & Bible” in 1932-1933. If so, this was probably during intersession, or else a series of lectures given over a short period of time, since he was on the road often and not likely to have been in Los Angeles for an entire Semester.

28. Letter from Bernard Ramm to Edward B. Davis, January 20, 1992. Ramm told me that he started teaching at BIOLA in 1944, but he did not sign the Workers' Register there, which all full-time teachers were required to do, until September 1945. Whether he misremembered this or taught part-time in 1944, I am unable to say For information on Ramm's life and his most famous book, see Numbers, , The Creationists, 184-87Google Scholar; and Hearn, Walter, “An Interview with Bernard Ramm and Alta Ramm,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 31, no. 4 (December 1979): 178-86Google Scholar, part of a Festschrift for Ramm that itself serves to document the influence of his book.

29. On Winrod, see Cole, , History of Fundamentalism, 267-70Google Scholar; and Furniss, , The Fundamentalist Controversy, 6668.Google Scholar

30. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 6869 and 108-11Google Scholar, quoting 109. On Brandenburg, see Who Was Who in America, 1897-1942 (Chicago: Marquis, 1942), 131.

31. Morris, Henry M., A History of Modern Creationism (San Diego: Master Book Publications, 1984), 8892, quoting 91.Google Scholar

32. Hearn told me, in a telephone conversation in 1991, of hearing Rimmer. For information on Hearn, including his relationship with Morris, see Numbers, , The Creationists, 178-82.Google Scholar

33. Carthage College is now located in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

34. The best biographical sources for Schmucker are contained in a file of obituaries and other notices from local newspapers available at the Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pennsylvania. I also consulted obituaries in the Philadelphia Inquirer, December 28, 1943, 12; and in the New York Times, December 28, 1943, 17. His file in The University of Pennsylvania Archives includes brief clippings and reviews, many from alumni magazines and catalogs, as well as personal information provided by Schmucker in his own hand. No other institutions I contacted have any of his papers, if any survive. There are brief biographies in Who Was Who, vol. 5, 641; and American Men of Science, 7th edition (1944), 1563, the last edition in which he appears; his first entry is in the 2d edition (1910), on 413. No scholarly literature on Schmucker exists.

35. A brief history of the Wagner Institute is contained in “The Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia: Annual Announcement of Lecture Courses for Session of 1991-92, One Hundred and Thirty-Sixth Year,” available from the Wagner Free Institute. For Leidy, see the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, s.v. “Leidy, Joseph.”

36. Ladies' Home Journal, October 1901, 31; November 1901, 32; January 1902, 26; March 1902, 19; April 1902, 19; June 1902, 18; and September 1902, 25.

37. See Burnham, John C., How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 159ff.Google Scholar For the popularization of science in the early twentieth Century, see LaFollette, Marcel C., Making Science Our Own: Public Images of Science, 1910-1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).Google Scholar

38. Schmucker, Samuel Christian, “Some Great American Scientists, II. John James Audubon,” The Chautauquan 48 (October 1907): 239-48.Google Scholar The first article in the series, on Asa Gray by Charles Reid Barnes, is in the September issue.

39. S. C. Schmucker, assisted by Nussbaum, Louis, Columbia Elementary Geography (Philadelphia: Hinds, Noble and Eldredge, 1909).Google Scholar It is no accident that Schmucker was drawn to geography: it reflects his commitment to a strong naturalism. According to Cornell, Sarah S., the author of Cornell's Physical Geography (New York: Appleton, 1870)Google Scholar, this discipline “covers the entire field of nature” and shows “how nature accounted for the entire world.” Quoted in Burnham, , How Superstition Won, 158.Google Scholar

40. Schmucker, Samuel Christian, The Study of Nature (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1908).Google Scholar

41. Quoted in Burnham, , How Superstition Won, 157.Google Scholar Schmucker stated his views on nature-study most clearly in “Science and Nature-Study,” Nature Study Review 14, no. 2 (February 1918): 48-52. For a history of the nature-study movement, see Tyree G. Minton, “The Nature-Study Movement and Its Role in the Development of Environmental Education” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1980).

42. Schmucker, Samuel Christian, Under the Open Sky (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1910).Google Scholar

43. Bailey quoted in Burnham, , How Superstition Won, 182 Google Scholar; Schmucker, , Study of Nature, 41, 44, 308.Google Scholar

44. Schmucker, , Study of Nature, 40, 41-44.Google Scholar

45. For a history of the Institute, see Kenneth N. Beck, “The American Institute of Sacred Literature: A Historical Analysis of an Adult Education Institution” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1968). The other pamphlets were “How Science Helps our Faith” (1922) by Shailer Mathews, dean of the school from 1908-1933; “Evolution and the Bible” (1922) by Princeton biologist Edwin G. Conklin, who had taught at the University of Pennsylvania while Schmucker studied there; “A Scientist Confesses his Faith” (1923) by Nobel Laureate Robert A. Millikan, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology; “Creative Co-ordination” (1928) by Columbia physicist Michael Pupin; “Religion's Debt to Science” (1929) by Baptist clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick of New York City; “The Heavens are Telling” (1924) by Yerkes Observatory astronomer Edwin B. Frost; and “The Religion of a Geologist” (1931) by Kirtley F. Mather. Circulation numbers for the series can be inferred from Information provided in Beck, “American Institute of Sacred Literature,” 202.

46. Samuel Christian Schmucker, “Through Science to God. The Hum- ming Bird's Story, An Evolutionary Interpretation,” Popular Religion Leaflets, “Science and Religion” Series (Chicago: The American Institute of Sacred Literature, 1926), 20-22.

47. Consider this Statement from Schmucker, Samuel Christian, Maris Life on Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 289 Google Scholar: “My faith was stayed by a godly and learned father, humble in science, when my own first difficulties with the story of evolution began to trouble my faith. His teachings were, I believe, God's lamp to my feet and light to my path.”

48. Schmucker, Samuel Christian, The Meaning of Evolution (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 190-91.Google Scholar

49. Burnham, , How Superstition Won, 2129, 163-69Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Charles E., “Science and American Social Thought,” in Science and Society in the United States, ed. Van Tassel, David D. and Hall, Michael G. (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1966), 150 Google Scholar; Schmucker, , Man's Life on Earth, 281 and 285-86.Google Scholar

50. C. Samuel Campbell, a skeptic who attended one of Rimmer's May messages, told about it in “Rev. Harry Rimmer—God's Scientist,” The Debunker and the American Parade 14, no. 6 (May 1931): 36-40. A collection was taken for the Research Science Bureau, and Rimmer was invited to return to Philadelphia. Rimmer “assured them that he could make no promises as his return would depend on 'whether it was God's will or not,’ ” prompting Campbell to say, “I feel perfectly safe in predicting his speedy return. Once Rimmer has seen those collection plates piled with crumpled dollar notes it will undoubtedly become ‘God's will’” (37).

51. I have pieced together Rimmer's itinerary from advertisements in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin for November 8, 1930, 14 and November 15, 1930, 14; and in the Philadelphia Inquirer for November 8, 1930, 13. Just four years before, in September 1926, McCormick had received publicity for his outspoken Opposition to the possibility of Sunday baseball in Philadelphia. See Lucas, John A., “The Unholy Experiment—Professional Baseball's Struggle against Pennsylvania Sunday Blue Laws, 1926-1934,” Pennsylvania History 38, no. 2 (April 1971): 163-75.Google Scholar

52. This sermon was printed first as a pamphlet in 1927, under the auspices of Rimmer's Research Science Bureau. It was reprinted at least twice: first in Winona Echoes: Notable Addresses Delivered at the Fortieth Annual Bible Conference (Winona Lake, Ind.: Winona Lake Institutions, August 1934), 198-212; and again in Rimmer, Harry, The Harmony of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1936), 263-96.Google Scholar I quote from 294 in the latter. For the full story of this story, see Newman, Robert C., “The Longest Day,” United Evangelical, August 23, 1974, 811 Google Scholar; and McIver, Tom, “Ancient Tales and Space-Age Myths of Creationist Evangelism,” The Skeptical Inquirer 10 (Spring 1986): 258-76.Google Scholar

53. Quoting Rimmer's own account in Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 155.Google Scholar An Englishman, Morgan made a name for himself in a large London church before coming to the United States to teach at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, where Rimmer had once been a Student and where he still had several important friends.

54. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 153, 154.Google Scholar For information on Clark, see Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, vol. 17, 64.

55. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 9192.Google Scholar

56. See Schmucker, Man's Life on Earth, preface.

57. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 9293.Google Scholar Rimmer did not say which books he examined, though some good guesses can be made. As indicated below, one of them must have been Heredity and Parenthood, and another was almost certainly The Meaning of Evolution.

58. According to the weather report in the Philadelphia Inquirer the next morning (Sunday, November 23, 1930, 2), it was 58 degrees at 8:00 p.m. on the evening of the debate.

59. See “Opera in Philadelphia,” in Jackson, Joseph, Encyclopedia of Philadelphia (Harrisburg, Pa.: The National Historical Association, 1933), 4:949-50.Google Scholar The building still Stands, though it badly needs repair. Until recently it was used by an African-American church for Sunday Services. Real estate advertisements claim that it holds 5, 000 people. Rimmer put its capacity at 3, 300.

60. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 9293.Google Scholar

61. There are two newspaper accounts of the debate: “Kansan Wins in Debate on Theory of Evolution,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 23, 1930, part 2, 2; and “See Divine Will Behind All of Life,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, November 24, 1930, 16. The “Kansan” was Rimmer, who advertised his supposed connection with a museum at the College in Pittsburg.

62. “Kansan Wins in Debate on Theory of Evolution.”

63. Schmucker, Samuel Christian, Heredity and Parenthood (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 41 Google Scholar; cf. 233-48.

64. College paper quoted in Numbers, The Creationists, 70. Numbers’ comment immediately precedes the quotation from the College paper.

65. On the slow acceptance of neo-Darwinism, see Bowler, Peter J., The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).Google Scholar On the Situation of botany at the turn of the Century, when Schmucker was educated, see Overfield, Richard A., Science with Practice: Charles E. Bessey and the Maturing of American Botany (Arnes: Iowa State University Press, 1993), 179-85.Google Scholar

66. Schmucker, , The Meaning of Evolution, 239-40.Google Scholar

67. On Rimmer's rhetorical use of specific facts to confute scholarly theories, see Davis, “A Whale of a Tale,” 235.

68. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 93.Google Scholar

69. Ibid.

70. Ramm recalled only the surname, nor do others who mention this debate give his full name. Matthews (1870-1952) was pastor of the Kansas City First Church of the Nazarene from 1914-1917, prior to his brief involvement in a controversy about denominational organization. Some time after that he moved to southern California. He was the author of The Love of God (Kansas City: John Matthews, 1922), The Last Eight Days of the Life of Jesus Christ (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1924), Speaking in Tongues (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1925), a home Bible study course in twenty volumes, and at least sixty other booklets. Hints of his British Israelism are found in a pamphlet, “Will the ‘Times of the Gentiles’ End in 1934-35?” probably printed about 1930. Matthews' program on KNX (Hollywood) was called “First Radio Church of the World.” Matthews is mentioned briefly in Smith, Timothy L., Called Unto Holiness: The Story of the Nazarenes: The Formative Years (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962), 278, 284, 290-91.Google Scholar I am grateful to Charles Edwin Jones for a helpful conversation.

71. Bernard Ramm, letters to the author, January 20 and 31, 1992, quoted with permission; Cecil Hughes, letter to the author, December 8, 1992, quoted with permission. This debate is also mentioned by Braswell, “Harry Rimmer—Defender of the Faith,” 263.

72. Interview with Ronald L. Numbers, May 15, 1984, as quoted in Numbers, The Creationists, 66.

73. There are no recordings of Rimmer's voice in library archives. I obtained copies of those mentioned here from Roger Schultz, who obtained them from Emmitt Cleveland, a retired minister from Nashville, Tennessee. They must have been made between 1947 and 1952, since Rimmer mentions his book, Lot's Wife and the Science of Physics (1947). Several other recordings of Rimmer's voice from the same period are owned by John C. Whitcomb, Jr., a leading contemporary creationist. My description of Rimmer's vocal style is based on the comments of my col- league, James Cramer.

74. Rimmer, Mignon, Fire Inside, 95.Google Scholar

75. From a sermon on Noah's Ark, recorded between 1947 and 1952; see note 73.

76. Morris, A History of Modern Creationism, 92 n.; Gish as quoted in Numbers, The Creationists, 286-87.

77. Cecil Hughes, letter to the author, December 8, 1992, quoted with permission; Bob Palmer, letter to the author, October 19, 1989, quoted with permission; Rimmer, , The Harmony of Science and Scripture, 14.Google Scholar

78. Campbell, “Rev. Harry Rimmer—God's Scientist,” 36-37, 38, 40.

79. “H.E.W,” “Samuel Schmucker And His Searching Essays in Biology,” review of Heredity and Parenthood, by Samuel Christian Schmucker, Philadelphia Public Ledger, ca. February 1930, from a clipping at the Chester County Historical Society.

80. Schmucker, Samuel Christian, “The Philosophy Underlying Nature Education,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting—National Education Association of the United States 70 (1932): 469-70.Google Scholar

81. Francis Harvey Green, letter to the editor, West Chester Daily Local News, January 17, 1944; J. Carroll Hayes's tribute to Schmucker in West Chester Daily Local News, December 29, 1943. Green taught English at West Chester.

82. Gould, Stephen Jay, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” in Science and Creationism, ed. Montagu, Ashley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 124-25.Google Scholar Gould gives some basic moral and educational reasons why creationists object to evolution in “William Jennings Bryan's Last Campaign,” Natural History 96, no. 11 (November 1987): 16-26.

83. Our present way of handling creationism, and a wide variety of other religious issues in public education, is to let the courts sort it out. But the nature of our legal System is to choose one of only two alternatives, leaving many people out in the cold and promoting a sense of polarization on the part of the citizenry.

84. I like to call this the “Dragnet” view of science: “just the facts, ma'am,” as Joe Friday used to say on that popular television program.

85. Schmucker, , The Meaning of Evolution, 280.Google Scholar