Is It Time for “a New Creation Story”?

Lately, the target of many people who hold to an old earth and evolutionary ideas has been homeschooling families. There is recent article by Christianity Today titled “A New Creation Story: Why do more homeschoolers want evolution in their textbooks?” It details how some homeschooling families want to see more evolutionary ideas in their curricula. From my experience speaking at homeschool conventions and meeting with many of its leaders, I highly suspect this is a very small minority within the homeschool movement, but the media have made a big deal of this. And that’s often the way it happens—the minority tends to get the headlines!

Now, Christian parents should be concerned about whether their children are learning to critically evaluate the claims of millions of years and evolution. But they should also be aware of attempts by compromised Christian textbook publishers to indoctrinate their children into evolutionary thinking. The secular world is out to capture the hearts and minds of our children—and they’ll attempt this even through Christian publications!

The biblical creation movement calls God’s people back to the authority of God’s Word beginning in Genesis, and it’s interesting to note that as this effort has grown, we’ve seen an increasing number of groups (like the highly compromised BioLogos) set up to oppose this movement. Now we are seeing academics who are trying to infiltrate the homeschool movement with compromise teaching, which will undermine the authority of the Word of God and lead children away from the truth of the Bible and the gospel.

What’s the best way to handle this situation? Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell (AiG–U.S.) has written an in-depth feedback article on this recent movement within homeschooling to include more evolutionary thinking in curricula and less evaluation based on biblical principles. Her article is the lead article on our website today, titled “Should Homeschoolers Let Children Decide on Evolution?” Below are the introductory paragraphs:

How should Christian homeschooling parents approach topics like biological evolution, big bang cosmology, and the age of the earth? Christianity Today’s recent article “A New Creation Story: Why do more homeschoolers want evolution in their textbooks?”¹ suggests that science materials that present “all viewpoints” about origins are becoming more popular.

Do modern homeschooling parents need to adopt “a new creation story” to ensure their children’s success? Do twenty-first-century children need to be taught to accept evolution to succeed academically? Will teaching them to accept evolution hurt their relationship with God? Or would accepting evolution, as some suggest, somehow make them better Christians by merging old ideas with new? Or to express the fear of many parents, “If I don’t teach them to accept evolution, will they grow up stupid and fail in life?”

We don’t need a “new creation story” because we have the true creation account (God’s historical record) in God’s Word. I urge you to read Dr. Mitchell’s full article so that you’ll be informed and equipped to respond to this issue within homeschooling.

Last Opportunity to Enter Photo Contest

This is the last week to enter The Lie photo contest. (See the description below.) Weekly winners receive two DVDs and two tickets to the Creation Museum. The grand-prize winner will get a free all-family, one-year pass to the Creation Museum, two nights at a nearby hotel, and over a dozen free DVDs and books—a $500 value!

Our last weekly winner will be announced this upcoming Wednesday, May 15. The grand-prize winner will be selected on Wednesday, May 22. Visit http://goo.gl/uCPTh for more information, including contest details.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken