In the Beginning

In the 1920s, a sociology textbook landed Baylor University in the entire Baptist General Convention of Texas’ spotlight. In the 2000s, a small research center called the University’s academic freedom into question again. A century after its first evolution controversy, the nation’s largest Baptist university is still wrestling with the same question: What does a Christian owe to science?

Since the beginning, modern science and religion have been pitted at odds with each other. Of course, there’s the Genesis account of creation which, depending on who you ask, may be literal (as in the Earth really was created in six days some 6,000 years ago) or allegorical. 

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution — the accepted tenet explaining how humans rose into existence from an early shared ancestor — garnered significant religious backlash for contradicting Genesis and for implying humans weren’t special creations. 

Then there’s geoscience — how old is the Earth anyways? — and anthropology — what were early humans like? One could argue that Baylor, a Christian, R1 research institution, is poised at the perfect juncture to dissect the issue of the ascent of man from all angles. Others would say there are some doctrines you just don’t mess with. 

“Geoscience probably is a bigger issue than biology,” said Dr. Joe Yelderman, the outgoing chair of the geosciences department referencing the department’s FAQs’ assertion that the Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. “But because evolution is a biological process, the biology departments of the world get the brunt of the action.” 

The biology department’s website hosts its own Statement of Evolution as well, reading in part, “Evolution is a foundational principle of science and the cornerstone of modern biology that is supported by extensive research evidence. The Department of Biology at Baylor University teaches evolution throughout our curriculum, as it has done for many decades. Concerns about integration of science and faith are not new issues in society or at Baylor University.”

The statement is accompanied by several supplementary readings and this quote from former University President Dr. Samuel Palmer Brooks in the 1923 Baylor Bulletin, “Concerning Evolution in Baylor University”: 

“The Bible and science are not out of harmony with each other. … When the heart is responsive to God, the mind is usually without prejudice to investigate all facts in search of the truth.”

There’s a lot of context packed into that one little statement. 

By 1920, Darwinian evolution was widely taught in public universities , while religious institutions still toed the line between fundamentalism and modernism. Post-World War I apathy toward secularism had blossomed into a nationwide anti-evolutionist attitude among Baptists, and the issue had seeped all the way down to Texas’ premier Baptist institution. 

John Davies’ article “Science and the Sacred: The Evolution Controversy at Baylor, 1920-1929” captures the chronicle in great detail. Sociology professor Grove S. Dow published his textbook, Introduction to the Principles of Sociology, in 1920, in it stating primitive man was “about halfway between the anthropoid ape and modern man,” and that scientists were uncertain about the origin of man. 

The entry quickly picked up steam among the Baptist community. Despite Dow’s swift repentance — including revisions to the textbook’s objectionable parts and a creedal statement published in the Baptist Standard — and an outpouring of support from the student body, Baylor’s teachings and commitment to Christian faith were brought to trial. 

J. Frank Norris, a Baylor graduate and pastor of the rapidly growing First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, was a powerful fundamentalist Baptist leader known for his flair, literalist interpretation of the Bible, and sensationalism. Having made waves during a short stint as editor of the Baptist Standard, Norris wielded his own newspapers, the Searchlight and Fundamentalist, to attack his alma mater. 

Norris’ Searchlight perpetuated fear within its circulation of some 150,000 readers, accusing Dow of teaching “rank Darwinism” and accusing the University of committing heresy by teaching unsound doctrines. And it worked: hundreds of letters from concerned Baptist leaders, parents, and friends of the University inundated President Brooks’ inbox with clippings from Norris’ papers and lectures, asking if Baylor was losing touch with its Baptist roots.  

Images courtesy of The Predicament of Evolution via Internet Archive

Baylor’s evolution controversy inevitably found its way to the 1921 annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Brooks, looking to assuage the convention’s fears, called for an investigation into his own university. 

The investigating committee cleared Baylor in 1922, finding “no instances of a teacher who believed in Darwinian evolution as a fact or taught it as such.” Science professors Drs. Lula Pace and Ora Bradbury were found to accept some evolutionary thought, believing the first three chapters of Genesis to be illustrative or allegorical. 

“It is a well-known fact that the general system of education is permeated with the teachings of evolution in some form or other,” the committee wrote in its report. “If our denominational institutions are to maintain the proper standards of education, in their relations with the whole world of education, science must be taught. To decree the death of scientific teachings in our own schools is in effect to bring our entire educational system into absolute ruin.” 

The findings hardly quieted Norris, and thus emerged a pattern: Norris would hear of what he deemed as heretical evolutionary teachings among Baylor’s faculty, he’d use his papers to attack the University and gain followers, and Brooks would do his best to keep up. At many points Brooks’ correspondents — as detailed in hundreds of letters housed in The Texas Collection — believed the controversy was truly over. These reassuring messages were only followed up with more damning information spewing from the fundamentalist crowd. 

Professors resigned, much to Brooks’ chagrin. Brooks at one point broke an 11-month silence on the matter, resulting in the expulsion of a Baylor student embroiled in the controversy. Potential evolution bans in state schools appeared twice in the Texas Legislature, dying both times in the Senate. The General Convention repeatedly adopted resolutions opposing evolution and reaffirming the fundamentals of the Baptist faith. 

Fundamentalists questioned teachings they considered incompatible with the Bible, offended that Baylor professors would compare human beings to beasts and submit to a progressive agenda. Brooks demonstrated a great deal of patience and consistency in his position, weighing academic relevance against the University’s Christian identity. 

Finally, in 1927, Brooks accepted one of Norris’ several invitations to speak on his radio show. Joined by Frank S. Groner on Norris’ own broadcast, the pair accused Norris of lies, slander, and misrepresenting Brooks and Baylor in a heated address. The embarrassing radio episode dampened any of Norris’ later attempts to revive the issue. 

For several years Baylor enjoyed very little conversation around evolution. In the ‘60s and ‘70s creation science caught on as a scientific alternative to evolution, a precursor to the intelligent design boom of the ‘90s. 

Intelligent design — a movement “advocating that certain features of the universe and living beings are best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than an undirected process such as natural selection,” according to EBSCO — became creationism’s non-religious alternative to evolution. At Baylor, the “intelligent cause” would, of course, be God.

The Michael Polanyi Center for Complexity, Information, and Design was born in late-1999. The center, headed by intelligent design key theorist Dr. William Dembski, was founded primarily through the emphasis of University President Dr. Robert Sloan with the purpose of integrating science, philosophy, and religion. It sought “the pursuit of scientific research freed from programmatic external philosophical constraints, particularly associated with a materialist or naturalist agenda.” 

For some faculty members, the University’s inaugural Nature of Nature conference in April 2000 — lined with a star-studded cast from both sides of the intelligent design debate — was the first they’d heard of the Polanyi Center. Attached to Dembski and by association chalked up to an intelligent design think tank, within six months of its creation, the center had sparked rage within Baylor’s own faculty.

At the root of the outrage was a lack of faculty involvement in the creation of the center, the principal reason the Faculty Senate cited in its call to dissolve the center. Despite the interdisciplinary nature of the center’s studies, the administration greenlit its creation without consulting with faculty. 

Some opponents of the center feared creationist undertones, believing the pursuit of intelligent design would be looked down upon as pseudoscience and jeopardize the validity of a Baylor degree. The Discovery Institute and similar think tanks quickly became affiliated with the University as Dembski claimed the study of intelligent design at an accredited university a victory, and professors were worried of becoming guilty by association. 

For others, it was simply a matter of pseudoscience. Yelderman, who was an outspoken opponent in The Lariat’s coverage, noted intelligent design’s point of inquiry begins with an answer that cannot be incorrect. 

“The sciences are rightfully disturbed because the very basis of modern science involves verification,” said Dr. Jay Losey, chair-elect of the Faculty Senate in April 2000. “There can be no verification of results in the intelligent design approach. If you dismiss or belittle evolution as a process, then you call into question the whole endeavor of modern science.” 

Proponents of the Polanyi Center argued Baylor, a Christian university on the cutting edge of scientific research, was the appropriate and obvious place for the study of intelligent design. 

“We see science and religion as complementary ways of looking at the earth because they have mutual relevance to each other,” associate director Dr. Bruce Gordon told The Lariat in April 2000. “I think they contribute to a more completely adequate understanding of the world and in order for us to derive to that state, we must take into account the relationship of science and religion and find harmony in between.” 

President Sloan pointed to free inquiry: “It is important for us, at a university, to be able to ask questions about the relationship between science and religion,” he told The Lariat. “That is what being an established university is all about, having the freedom to ask these questions.”  

Sloan would go on to say in a 2011 interview with WORLD magazine there wasn’t a good objection. 

“Critics said, ‘You’re going to embarrass us professionally, everyone knows evolution is true, and who are these people but a bunch of seven-day creationists?’” he said. “The list went on. People threw up a thousand different issues. It is a shame that in academic life, which is supposed to be marked by open-ended inquiry, people — both left and right — are often dogmatic. Evolution was a dogma for some, almost like a religious faith that wouldn’t be questioned.” 

For Yelderman, nearly 20 years later, the issue rings as a matter of faith.

“I think intelligent design is the wrong approach in general in the sense that you’re trying to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what you believe as faith,” Yelderman said. “So if you prove it, you don’t need faith anymore. I think that we have to understand that the Bible and God have given us the chance to have faith and make that decision and if you can prove it, it’s not something you have to have faith in.”

That spring the Faculty Senate and Sloan administration would reach a compromise and employ an external peer review committee, consisting of eight academic scholars led by philosophy professor Dr. William F. Cooper, to investigate the legitimacy and validity of the center’s research. 

Months later the committee affirmed the center’s credibility, stating it should continue to pursue intelligent design theory, but drop reference to Michael Polanyi. Additionally, an advisory committee of Baylor faculty members would be created to assist the center’s studies, and the center would find a new home within the Institute of Faith and Learning. 

Shortly after the committee’s report Dembski was removed from his post as director and took a short-lived position as an associate research professor — and subsequently left without ever teaching a class. The center and its research were dissolved in 2003.

That wouldn’t be the last Baylor would hear of the evolution controversy, intelligent design, or even of William Dembski. For several years after he left the University, Dembski claimed the controversy an issue of academic suppression. Despite the fallout, he returned to Baylor in 2006 to study under Dr. Robert Marks, distinguished professor of computer and electrical engineering (he was removed again during a separate intelligent design scandal in 2007).  

A professor’s tenure denial in 2006 sparked conversation of his connection to the Discovery Institute. The crew of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed descended upon the campus in 2008 with the goal to expose the lack of academic freedom when debating intelligent design. Dembski gave a lecture at Baylor that year. And the world kept turning. 

Today, most universities — especially all major state flagships and top-tier research institutions — fully accept evolution as fact and teach as if it were never a question. Some universities still promote an official statement of evolution proclaiming such. Even the University of Oklahoma, a public, non-religious institution, released its faculty-approved statement in 2006 in response to weak K-12 science standards in the state and legislative attempts to challenge evolutionary teaching. 

There are still outliers. Liberty University operates a Center for Creation Studies and teaches evolution as a contested theory, opting for a parallel teaching strategy. Bob Jones University takes a doctrinal approach, rejecting evolution and teaching young-earth creationism outright. Pensacola Christian College treats the Genesis account as literal, stating in its articles of faith, “We reject the man-made theory of evolution occurring over millions of years and believe that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old.”  

Baylor’s Statement of Evolution is more integrative, allowing that science and religion do not have to be at odds with each other while accepting evolution as “a foundational principle of science and the cornerstone of modern biology.” 

“In my personal testimony, I see God’s creation everywhere I go, and creation and God are two different things,” Yelderman said. “I don’t understand or expect to understand it all. I have my faith, but it doesn’t affect my science, and my science doesn’t necessarily affect my faith. Although, I will say most of the time, the things I learn scientifically actually strengthen my faith rather than question it.” 

Still, some students come to Baylor and find what they’re learning at the University contradicts what they’ve been taught growing up. Yelderman has seen it firsthand — on one occasion he remembers two students refusing to indulge on a field trip to Dinosaur Valley State Park for fear that even seeing the ancient dinosaur tracks may be heretical. 

Professors are the bridge builders, Yelderman said. 

“Usually we share our own personal stories depending on who is talking about that,” he said. “Even though we have a statement on our webpage, everyone differs a little bit. And I think it’s comforting for some students that might be struggling with this because they grew up with a different understanding or interpretation that they can talk to their professor about what they think about, what they believe. And what’s really important is that there’s enough of a relationship between the faculty member and the student that the student doesn’t feel there’s a risk in having that conversation.”