More conservative Christians had misgivings. But nearly all agreed that the Earth is millions of years old, and there was no organised opposition to the teaching of evolution. Now, a century later, the US is the world's leading scientific nation. Nearly a third believe creationism should be taught in science lessons. Most teachers avoid trouble by not teaching evolution.
Opinions are varied.
Douglas Futuyma, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, blames anti-intellectualism in a frontier nation that viewed intellectuals as an elite opposing the spirit of populism. Brent Dalrymple, a geophysicist at the University of Oregon, Corvallis, says creationism offers people in a mobile, insecure society reassurance of their own special status. However it started, creationism is now being encouraged by right-wing political groups, which are exploiting people's misgivings about science to boost their membership and pursue wider goals. And in the US, it is on the rise. The history of creationism in the US is intimately tied up with the country's social and political development, says historian Ronald Numbers of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.