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The August 12 decision of the Kansas Board of Education to exclude the word macroevolution from its recommended science curriculum initially led to a flurry of articles, editorials, and press releases examining the state of the "Evolution Wars." In the four months since the Kansas decision, the media continue to examine the battle. Interestingly, most media accounts these days still focus on Kansas, though similar measures have been taken in New Mexico, Kentucky, Illinois, and Oklahoma.

When the Kansas story broke in the papers, references to the 1925 Scopes trial were a dime a dozen. "Tennessee won in court, saw the decision reversed on appeal, and has since had to live with the historical black eye of being the state that arrested a science teacher for teching science," wrote a Miami Herald columnist. "You'd think the lesson would have thus been learned, but evidently they don't teach history so well in Kansas, either." But, as the Associated Press pointed out in a September 19 story, the Scopes trial has been radically misremembered. In an attempt to rectify the situation and to put Scopes, Kansas, and points in between in context, Books & Culture (a Christianity Today sister publication) puts "Darwin Comes to America," by Eastern Nazarene College professors Karl W. Giberson and Donald A. Yerxa, on its November/December cover. The article briefly retells the story of the Trial of the Century, encouraging readers to read Edward Larson's Summer for the Gods for more detail, and looks at why scientists and the media are so quick to label every clash over evolution as a Scopes reenactment. Most interesting, however, is its examination of the phrase "Evolution Wars."

Virtually everyone working in the history of science ... consider[s] a warfare metaphor 'neither useful nor tenable in describing the relationship between science and religion. Their point is well taken give the highly polemical nature of much of the writing in this area. ... [But] while we agree ... that the warfare metaphor is a dangerous, distorting, and overly simplistic way to describe the complex range of religious and scientific interactions, we believe a cultural warfare model does make at least some sense when applied to twentieth-century America. ... But it would be a mistake to identify the antagonists in this war as 'science' and 'religion.'

Using "science" and "religion" as synonyms for "evolutionary" and "antievolutionary" in the debate is to commit horrible caricature, they say.

The Chronicle of Higher Education apparently disagrees with the two Eastern Nazarene professors. In "An Article of Faith: Science and Religion Don't Mix," appearing on the back cover of the November 26 issue, Lawrence Krauss laments the miscegenation of scientists and their religious counterparts—which he sees as a plot financed by multimillionaire John Templeton to give credence to religion. "There is a war going on for the hearts and minds of the U.S. public," write Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek, "and science—the driving force behind the technology that makes the modern world possible—is losing because scientists are often too timid to attack nonsense whenever and wherever it appears." Krauss believes that to save the world from these religious fundamentalists, "scientists must become evangelists," every bit as vigorous in defending their beliefs as Billy Graham is in defending his. And, in the meantime, academic interest into scientists' and theologians' common search for truth should be met with skepticism, not praise: "Although there is nothing wrong with paying some scholarly attention to whatever marginal common ground science and religion may share, overemphasizing their commonality is dangerous—especially when the driving force behind the effort is not the strength of ideas, but one man's money, compounded by the misplaced enthusiasm of some religious zealots." (The Chronicle of Higher Education allows only print subscribers to read its articles online, but you can see the Nov. 26 table of contents here.)

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December 6 1999, Vol. 43, No. 14