Falwell's 'Creation' Sermon Rekindles A Controversy

Television evangelist Jerry Falwell urged students at his Liberty Baptist College to demand their teachers believe in the biblical version of creation rather than the theory of evolution which days earlier the school had promised to teach to its biology education majors.

A tape of Falwell's remarks, in a sermon he made 17 months ago, was recently furnished by the Virginia Education Department to members of the State Board of Education. The board is scheduled to decide next month whether to extend certification of the biology education program at Falwell's fundamentalist Christian college in Lynchburg.

The tape has rekindled a two-year-old controversy over the granting of state approval for the courses, an action that allows Liberty Baptist graduates of the program to be certified automatically to teach science in the public schools of the Virginia, 24 other states and the District of Columbia.

The Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is fighting renewed certification, contending that Liberty Baptist, despite its promises to state officials, strongly advocates creationism in its classrooms.

Virginia ACLU director Chan Kendrick said last week he was not convinced the school has stopped teaching the Biblical version of creation to its biology education students. "I'm convinced otherwise," Kendrick said.

In the Dec. 12, 1982, sermon at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Falwell declared that while some science professors believe God created the world, ". . .they believe He did it with a little unicell, a little singular cell one day."

They believe, Falwell continued, that God "put the cell out there in the ooze and it began to move around and develop and one day it was swimming and one day it was crawling and one day it was up in a tree and one day it dropped off the limb and broke his tail off and began teaching in a university."

Falwell went on to exhort his students to "demand, not ask, demand" that "every man, every woman, whoever stands on a podium over there at Liberty Baptist believes the inspiration of scripture, including the Genesis account of creation. Just as it is written."

In a telephone interview last week, Falwell defended his comments on grounds of religious freedom and said there is "no connection" between the college and his sermons as pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg.

"I think the board of education has finally concluded that as a pastor, I'll be preaching my convictions on creationism until the end of time," said Falwell, whose daughter is a biology major at Liberty Baptist.

Falwell, who founded Liberty Baptist in 1971, said he holds the position of college chancellor, which he described as "mostly honorary," and said he votes as only one of about 20 members of the school's board of directors on policy matters.

The state Board of Education voted 7 to 2 on Dec. 10, 1982, to grant provisional certification to the program. That vote was delayed several months after Falwell, in an earlier sermon, said that Liberty Baptist graduates should teach evolution in order to show "why it's foolish."