Juliet Bailey-Penrod

Oakwood University Professor Juliet Bailey-Penrod sees no conflict between conducting her research into cell biology and beginning with an assumption of a literal creation. 'We all have our biases,' she says, explaining how one can be a serious scientist and also a creationist. Oakwood University is a Seventh-day Adventist institution, part of the worldwide organization headed by President Ted Wilson who last week told SDA science professors at a gathering that believing in evolution was incompatible with being an Adventist. (Kay Campbell/KCampbell/AL.com)

Seventh-day Adventist Church's world president, Dr. Ted Wilson, told a gathering of SDA science teachers that believing in evolution is incompatible with being an Adventist. (The Huntsville Times file/Robin Conn)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Any science teacher who teaches evolution without couching it in a literal seven-day creation as described in the Bible doesn't belong in a Seventh-day Adventist school, the president of the 17.9 million-member worldwide denomination told a gathering of science teachers on Friday, Aug. 15, 2014.

In fact, President Dr. Ted Wilson told the international invitation-only gathering of about 350 Adventist high school and college science teachers, those teaching science in an Adventist school who do not believe that the Bible's account of complete creation around 6,000 years ago by God of the Earth in a literal 24/7 earthly week should not even call themselves "Adventist."

"As educators, teachers, scientists, theologians, department directors, editors, administrators, pastors and members, we all share a common belief in God's authoritative voice as the Creator," Wilson told the 350 or so participants at the opening of the 10-day conference in Nevada, which was to include field trips to fossil sites in the deserts of Utah and Nevada. "We believe that the Biblical creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 was a literal event that took place in six literal, consecutive days recently as opposed to deep time. It was accomplished by God's authoritative voice and happened when He spoke the world into existence."

In the beginning-God

For Oakwood University biology Professor Juliet Bailey-Penrod, Wilson's statement merely reiterates what she herself believes and teaches in her classes at the Seventh-day Adventist university in Huntsville, Ala.

"If you believe in evolution, then the first premise of Christianity goes out the door – that God created perfect human beings, who fell, and who were in need of salvation through Jesus," Bailey-Penrod said Tuesday. She went on to refer to the basis for the Adventist observance of Saturday-Sabbath, a day when most Adventists attend church, do not work, and spend time with family or in nature. "Belief in creation is central to Seventh-day Adventist beliefs because we believe there was a literal six-day creation, and then God rested on the seventh day as an example to us – therefore, we should rest."

The texts used by Oakwood do include evolutionary theories and findings that assume an evolutionary premise. Church scholars do not write those texts, Bailey-Penrod said; the texts are those used at any other American university. The difference is that her students will learn those theories alongside her presentations of evidence that Adventists scientists have collected that shows alternative interpretations of those findings that fit with a young-earth, Bible-based creationist model.

Is examining the natural world from the viewpoint of upholding creationism a bias that goes against the classic model of scientists as unbiased, objective gatherers of raw data?

"In reality -- creationist or evolutionist -- we all bring our biases," Bailey-Penrod said. "At the end of the day, we are looking at the same data. But as a Seventh-day Adventist, I begin the process by believing that the Bible is God's authentic word. Therefore, everything should be interpreted in light of that authoritative word. All science has its foundation in God. It is not possible to separate it."

That viewpoint has cost her credibility points at scientific conferences, she said, where she's watched other professors from secular universities rearrange their faces to attempt to hide their disdain when they see she is from a Christian university. They treat her like she is not a serious scientist, she said -- instead of recognizing that she just owns up to her biases at first, rather than pretending to be unbiased.

Bailey-Penrod can see why President Wilson would call for the resignation from Adventist schools of any science teacher who doesn't start with the same view of a literal creation as described in the Bible.

"Parents choose to send their kids here so they can learn within a religious context, a safe context," Bailey-Penrod said. "We prepare our students to go anywhere – and they do, so of course we teach them the prevailing theories of evolution. But to be a proponent, to be pushing this thing? That's totally contrary to the organization. And it doesn't interrupt my academic freedom – when I agree to work in an Adventist institution, I agree to certain confines."

"If you can't believe the Bible about our very beginnings, how can you believe it about anything else?" Bailey-Penrod said.

Creation-evolution discussion --