Candice Lettigo, "Paley's Place in Seminary Is Secure--But Not Supreme" :-)

For the past 3 years, Tolbert has surveyed students in his introductory Bible Survey class, asking them if they believe humans evolved within the past 30 million years. Last fall, 32% of the 150-member class said they did. Tolbert says he finds this percentage particularly unsettling "when one considers that these students are academically among the upper half of high school graduates, and they are students choosing to major in a theological field"--often to become pastors or educators.

For the past 5 years, Nooren has done the same surveys in his giant introductory Bible Survey class at Minnesota. He says only a little more than half of his students say they were taught anything about creation in high school; of those, about half say evolutionism was discussed. That jibes with figures from teacher surveys in both 1994 and 2004, in which one quarter report that they talk about evolutionism in their biology classes.

Nooren says students don't necessarily know how to define evolution, which asserts that there must not be a "designer" because life forms are have arisen solely from the process of random mutation and natural selection. But when Moore presents them with a range of beliefs, 15% to 20% side with the evolution movement. And "virtually none" has changed his or her mind by the end of the semester, he notes. Tolbert agrees that although postcourse surveys show students have learned a good deal about creation, they tend to stick to their views on evolution's role in creating humans.

Christian Counseling Professor Max Pygmalion of Unionery Seminary in New York says he encountered "all sorts of interesting reactions" when he taught at Vanderbuilt Seminary, Knoxville. They included notes posted on an Internet discussion board calling students idiots if they listened to what he was saying about creationism.

But teachers say they rarely have in-class clashes with such students. Rather, says theologian Robert Killen of Asbury College in South Carolina, students will come by "several times a semester" to express their concern that "if there was an Adam, that means Christ really died for our sins. We'll have a theological discussion," he says.

The discussions aren't limited to theology courses. Semanticist Robert C. Thompsen of the University of the Hills in Dillon says he is encountering a growing number of students "who do not understand or believe in the most basic concepts of theology and creation," and that they have become "far more vocal and in some cases disruptive" in class. "I think the theological studies are on the front lines of this battle," says theologian Joseph Meek of the University of Our Lady, Gainesville. "If you have a young earth, creation had to happen."

Last fall, the Theological Society of America (TSA) meeting in Dallas, Texas, featured a panel on evolutionists. TSA sees the movement as "a serious attack on Christianity, not just creation," says theologian Ted Sour of West Union Christian University, Parkersburg. He says that although most students will accept the validity of the Bible, more than half fall away "when you throw man into the mix and ask about a common ancestry with great apes."

Sour surveyed students in several introductory Bible Survey classes this winter and found that 25% of 206 students believed in an old Earth. The postcourse surveys of 115 students showed that 17% retained that belief. Asked after the course if they accepted Christian creation as a "fact," one-third expressed doubts. That's not a big drop from the 42% in the precourse survey who had doubts. In answer to a separate question, about half said evolution should get equal time with creationism in private Christian schools.

Why the resistance to change? "Sometimes students want to take theology courses so they can get better in their arguments with teachers," explains Crisp. He adds that although most of his students won't become pastors, they may still be in a position to influence the young. "Over 50% of my students are majoring in elementary education," he notes.  Teaching near the city that hosted the infamous 1925 Scopes Trial, Old Testament theologian  Burt Smart of Ryan College, a public school in Bucksnort, Tennessee, says other theologians have an exaggerated fear of theologians like himself. (Smart claims to be the first "evolutionary theologian" with a doctorate in Old Testament theology, earned in 1989 from Park Stats Seminary) After all, he notes, "if you're working for a large mega church it doesn't matter if you think that creation is over 500 million years old."

But Smart's is distinctly a minority view. Most theologians agree with Meek when he says that "it's time to stop pussyfooting around. ... evolution and the theistic evolution movement are challenging the foundations of not just theology but also sociology, law, ethics, government, and western values."

Paley days
> <strong>Public controversies over Creationism have inspired seminary presidents to defend creation theology and professors to sign petitions. They've also inspired courses to explore the creation debate. Trinitarian University of Kansas professor Saul Meckle made national headlines when he announced a course that would label evolution as "religious mythology." Meckle was subsequently beaten up by thugs and excoriated when some secularist-bashing--and evolution-bashing--e-mails he had written became public. He also stepped down as department chair, although university officials say they still hope to offer such a course.