American Creationism, Creation Science, and Intelligent Design in the Evangelical Market by Benjamin L. Huskinson

Abstract

Reviewed by: American Creationism, Creation Science, and Intelligent Design in the Evangelical Market by Benjamin L. Huskinson Caroline Matas Benjamin L. Huskinson, American Creationism, Creation Science, and Intelligent Design in the Evangelical Market (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) Benjamin L. Huskinson’s American Creationism, Creation Science, and Intelligent Design in the Evangelical Market is a book that challenges dominant narratives about American creationism and the American evangelicals who have popularized it. Part historical corrective, part contemporary analysis, the book argues that “American creationism” is actually a wide tent encompassing four distinct historical “waves,” plenty of internal contestation, and a vast array of aims and methods. Huskinson focuses on the latter two waves, from the 1960s to the present, tracking the consolidation of American creationism toward a few powerhouse organizations like the creation science group Answers in Genesis and the intelligent design-focused Discovery Institute. This ironic example of survival of the fittest, Huskinson contends, is best understood through the lens of evangelicalism not as a homogenous subculture but rather as a market demographic for whose market shares the differing strains of American creationist organizations compete. Huskinson explores what the current “winners” of a decades-long battle over creationist orthodoxy (and the authority to define that orthodoxy) can tell us about the social and political functions anti-evolution beliefs play in the United States. The contemporary dominance of Answers in Genesis-style fundamentalist [End Page 141] creationism serves a powerful oppositional social function, Huskinson writes, as the group identifies humans as the unique pinnacle of God’s creation and characterizes all who oppose this belief as hostile to God and Christians alike. One of Huskinson’s chief contributions in this book is the case he makes for the diversity of theologies, aims, and tactics among various types of “anti-evolutionists.” While young earth, day-age, gap theory, and intelligent design creationists certainly share some overlapping traits—namely their approach to scientific inquiry with an a priori assumption of God’s involvement in creation— Huskinson sees creation science and intelligent design organizations performing different roles in American public life. Creation science groups, based in a fundamentalist reading of Genesis and invested in “proving” the historicity of biblical events like Noah’s flood, have tended toward more populist, accessible, and entertainment-oriented content with the aim of not just “opposing evolution, but…policing community boundaries within accepted theological parameters” (154). Meanwhile, intelligent design organizations, Huskinson claims, have largely served a political function of opposing the primacy of evolutionary theory in the US education system on behalf of creationists and non-creationists alike. The benefit of separating out these strands of anti-evolutionist sentiment is not just greater accuracy in describing the landscape of American evangelicalism, but also identifying the different niches they fill in the evangelical marketplace of ideas. While Huskinson might occasionally overstate the differences between and within these groups—for example, distinguishing between “theological creationists” and “creation science proponents” strikes me as an exercise in futility— he reminds scholars of American religion to take great care in identifying the divergent theological and epistemological underpinnings that motivate seemingly similar groups. The model of American evangelicalism as a marketplace of ideas, while not distinctive to Huskinson, serves as a useful approach to making sense of the “products” various creationist groups offer consumers as they compete for dwindling market shares. Huskinson theorizes that an upward trend in donations to Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute over the past few decades represents not a widening consumer base but a consolidation toward fewer and larger creationist organizations—a consolidation Huskinson attributes to these groups’ savvy marketing and fundraising efforts. In something of a reversal of the Scopes trial, the creationist groups that have survived and thrived in the twenty-first century have been those fighting their battles in the court of public opinion rather than the American judiciary. For all their differences, these three organizations are alike in their use of “oppositional frameworks” that mobilize donors around a shared sense of grievance against the “Goliath” of evolutionary theory and its attendant social ills (189–190). Answers [End Page 142] in Genesis—by far the highest-earning creationist organization in the...