Students bridge science, faith at Christian colleges
BOURBONNAIS, Ill. -- As the battle over the teaching of biological evolution buffets public high schools, a more delicate challenge faces many of the nation's Christian colleges and universities: helping students bridge the growing gap between modern science and fundamentalist faith.
With the increase in evangelical Christians and the rise in home schooling for religious reasons, Christian schools of all types find that many of their students come from a creationist tradition. "Young Earth" creationists take the Bible's Genesis account of creation literally while "old Earth" adherents believe the planet is older than 10,000 years. Both consider Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and particularly its assertion of the common ancestry of all life and the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection to be evil, faith-threatening concepts.