Creationism

The bible has a major place in the life of any Christian.
The teachings and authority of the church, has always had main status for Catholics, and naturalreligion -approaching God through reason and argument- has long had an honored place for both Catholics and Protestants.
It was not until the Protestant Reformationthat the Bible started to take on its unique central position, as the great Reformers (Specially Luther and Calvin) stressed the need to go by scripture alone and notby the overly rich traditions of the Catholic Church.
For Luther, justification by faith was the keystone of his theology. Calvin likewise spoke of theneed for God to accommodate His writings to the untutored public (Specially the ancient jews) and hence of the dangers of taking the Bible too literally in anuncritical sense.
In America Literalism took hold, and especially after the Civil War, it took root in the Evangelical sects (especially Baptists) It became part of thedefining culture of the south, having a much a role in opposing ideas and influences of the leaders and policy makers of the North as anything rooted in deeplythought-through Theology.
Creationism started to grow Dramatically in the early part of the twentieth century.
The battle between evolutionists and Fundamentalistscame to a head in the mid 1920s in Dayton Tennessee, when a young teacher named John Thomas Scopes was prosecuted for Teaching evolution in class, in defiance of astate law prohibiting such teaching.
The “Scopes Monkey Trial” caught the attention of the world. In the end Scopes was found guilty and fined with 100 $ .