ABSTRACT
The teaching of creationism in the United States has occasioned reactions on all sides since at least the dawn of Darwinian evolutionism. Like other such issues – abortion, school prayer, and religious exceptions to general laws – creationism would appear to mark an unbridgeable gap between its proponents and its opponents. Tracing the court decisions relating to state statutes regarding the teaching of creationism (or “creation science” as it is also known) shows that an attempt has at times been made to foster a continuing conversation among the parties even as a definitive decision must be rendered on each of the particular statutes. Like its more recent avatars “critical race theory” and teaching the history of slavery in America, the creationism decisions demonstrate the attempt to bridge the fault lines in American political culture through continued dialogue and the difficulty of establishing educational legitimacy in such an environment.
