Wonderful words of life: divergence from evangelical orthodoxy in C. S. Lewis's views on the Bible

The assertion that even in the 21 century a considerable percentage of North American evangelicals believe in a literal interpretation of bible is certainly not hard to illustrate. Controversy erupted in the news this week (December 2010) over the construction of a new theme park in Kentucky featuring a life-sized Noah’s Ark attraction that will be built to the exact measurements stated in the Old Testament scriptures. The park is being built by the same evangelical ministry that is already operating the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which is dedicated to debunking the theory of evolution through the demonstration of biblically compatible theories, such as man’s co-existence with the dinosaurs. The 1.2 million visitors who passed through the museum’s gates in its first three years of operation testify to the popularity of creationism in the U. S. (“They paved Kentucky” 1). Indeed, according to a 2008 Gallup poll, 44% of Americans agreed with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so” (“Evolution, Creation” 1). The same poll reported support for theistic evolution at 36% of the population, with naturalistic evolution trailing far behind at 14%. Over one hundred years after Darwin presented his paradigm-shifting theory in The Origin of Species, nearly 1 in 2 Americans reject what has become the foundation of modern biology. Anchoring this sort of statistical result is American evangelicalism, with its deep commitment to a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. The 1974 Lausanne Covenant affirms “the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error” (Baker 438). Similarly, at a conference of over twohundred evangelical leaders in Chicago in 1978, including influential scholars like J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and R. C. Sproul, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was agreed upon as a defense against perceived incursions of liberal views of scripture. The statement, in Article 12, agrees with the Lausanne Covenant that scripture in its entirety is inerrant, but goes much further, making it clear that where science and scripture disagree, scripture is always right. Again, from Article 12: