By Jill Hoffman
The clash over evolution and creationism in schools isn’t new to me—or to Bristol, Virginia. Jill Hoffman’s 2005 report on Larry Booher’s creationist textbook captures a local flare-up in a national firestorm. I’ve tracked this fight for years, from my broader analysis in Evolution Debate in Schools to specific takes on Booher’s case in Creationism Teacher Is Told to Stop and An Evolving Controversy. My view? If the Left can push woke nonsense in classrooms, Christians deserve a shot with their Bible—but science should stay above the fray. Hoffman’s piece, reposted here, shows how messy it gets when faith and facts collide.
A school official recently ordered a biology teacher to stop using a controversial homemade textbook.
ABINGDON — The title alone, Creation Battles Evolution, should’ve set off alarms. Yet for over 15 years, Larry Booher handed out this 500-page text—denying evolution and asserting God created the universe—to students at John S. Battle High School in Washington County. School officials claim they were clueless about it.
Last month, a freelance writer from Charlottesville tipped off Superintendent Alan Lee, having snagged a copy from a former student. Lee swiftly told Booher to ditch the book and scheduled a professional development day on church-state separation for all county staff. He’s now pushing principals to grill every teacher on “what they teach and how they teach it,” aiming to root out anyone crossing the line.
This flare-up mirrors a national resurgence of the evolution debate. In October 2005, Dover, Pennsylvania’s school board mandated ninth-graders learn “intelligent design”—a slick rebrand of creationism—igniting headlines. That May, Kansas held hearings to rethink evolution in schools. Washington County’s no stranger to this either; over 30 years, locals have pushed creationist texts and banned novels, once drawing national spotlight.
Booher, 48, taught Biology 2, an elective for juniors and seniors not bound by Virginia’s Standards of Learning. He skipped standard textbooks, relying on outside research. His book—self-funded, compiled in binders—offered chapters like “In the Beginning” and “Evidence for a Young Earth,” mostly cribbed from other sources. Optional reading, he said, though extra credit lured takers. “Here’s the evidence,” he told students. “Decide for yourselves.” Now he regrets it: “I can’t turn my classroom into Sunday school.”
A Bristol, Tennessee native, Booher graduated from King College, a Presbyterian school, and has taught at Battle High for 25 years. The lobby sign there reads “In God We Trust.” He loves science and kids, he says, but clams up on his faith: “Not appropriate to discuss.” Lee, superintendent for six years, calls Booher “one of the finest science teachers I’ve seen,” often lingering in his classes—yet never spotted the book. “Didn’t know it existed,” he insists.
School Board Chair Elizabeth Lowe, 11 years in, heard “not a word” about it until now. At the first meeting post-revelation, it didn’t even come up. Booher shrugs: “I didn’t hide it. If they knew, fine; if not, I didn’t push it.” He thought optional materials dodged legal issues. “I don’t teach like a preacher,” he says. “I present both sides scientifically.”
Some knew. John Graves, ex-PTA president and conservative churchgoer, saw his son bring it home years back. He disagreed—“many sources are discredited”—but stayed quiet, wanting his kid exposed to varied views. Elizabeth Fairbanks, co-president of the county Education Association, learned of it in August while co-teaching with Booher but won’t say more. Lee figures much of the community would back the book, but legality trumps sentiment: “Personal religious beliefs don’t belong in class.”
The U.S. Supreme Court agrees. In 1968’s Epperson v. Arkansas, it struck down a law banning evolution teaching as a First Amendment violation—governments must stay religion-neutral. In 1986, Louisiana’s “Creationism Act” fell for discrediting evolution to push faith. Virginia’s SOLs mandate evolution and “scientifically validated theories,” says Julie Grimes of the state DOE, who declined further comment.
Outsiders weigh in. Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education says Booher’s students are “short-changed”—scientists don’t debate evolution’s fact. David DeWitt of Liberty University’s Creation Studies counters: “Evolution’s an atheistic belief system.” Tracy Leonard, a 2005 Battle grad headed to Virginia Tech, liked Booher’s Christian slant—“most teachers push evolution”—but sees why it stopped: “Too many different backgrounds; it could discriminate.”
From The Roanoke Times, here’s a taste of Creation Battles Evolution:
“There is no real scientific evidence that a so-called ‘big bang’ ever occurred.”
“Skeletons of modern man occasionally have been discovered in rock dated by evolutionists as lower Tertiary, much older than man’s supposed ape-like ancestors.”
“Evolution is, in reality, an unreasonable and unfounded hypothesis riddled with countless scientific fallacies. Biblical creationism, on the other hand, does correlate with the known facts of science... The widespread influence of evolution is largely responsible for our moral decline of recent years... Herein lies the awesome danger of this Satanic delusion...”
“I believe there were personal religious beliefs expressed, and I don’t think that’s appropriate for a classroom,” said Superintendent Alan Lee.
© 2005 The Roanoke Times, June 9, 2005
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me draft and refine this repost. The final edits and perspective are my own. Originally by Jill Hoffman.
