Having grown up as a child of the sixties and seventies, I can confirm that is true. It is interesting how YEism has taken over as a default position for fundamentalist leaning churches, and how that is fairly recent phenomenon .
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Likewise as a child of the fifties and sixties who was raised on the Scofield Bible I never heard of the YEC position. I am going to have to put on my memory cap to see if I can figure out the first time I did hear about it.
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The link between Old Earth and evolution as an opposition to Genesis is as old as evolutionary theory itself. When I was at college in the 70s you didn’t mention either at the Christian Union meetings or admit to it being more than an academic study.
I will admit that the term YEC seems to be more recent, perhaps just as a label.
Richard
It seems to me that the demand that the scriptures be viewed as infallible and essentially written by God is actually a low view of scripture. It implies that the scriptures can be counted on to speak for themselves and that they need our doctrinal claims to support them.
I found this interesting, especially the section on Bart Ehrman.
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When my sister-in-law wanted to go see the full-size model of the ark in Tennessee, I was surprised to see dinosaurs in cages on the ark.
The PCA statement on creation is rather conspicuously a committee compromise between those who investigated the various possibilities and those who uncritically collected young earth arguments.
A truly high view of Scripture is to see it as authotitative and therefore to try to understand it on its own terms as best as we can, correcting our understanding as needed. Forcing a particular view on the text is having a high view of one’s own authority. Of course, dismissing Scripture is also a low view of it.
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I’m going to push back on this, Timothy, as you are making a significant claim and accusation. What kind of evidence do you have, and how widespread is the issue within the PCUSA?
The evidence that I have is largely either anecdotal from clergy in the PCUSA writing or speaking online about other clergy at general assembly or my hearing about general problems in the denomination (I would have to go searching for specific examples). It is not a rampant problem in the sense that a large proportion of individual pastors are openly heretical, but I get a strong impression from people affiliated or formerly affiliated with the PCUSA of widespread lack of enforcement of doctrinal standards, with a few of the most egregious instances being openly heretical pastors.
I assume that in all large churches, there are deviating minority views. The crucial point is how the church/majority react to these deviating opinions.
I do not know the situation in PCUSA but more generally, the declining membership numbers and the strong impact of the surrounding society on the large churches that want to represent a significant part of the population have affected the attitudes and reactions towards the deviating opinions.
The attitudes are more tolerant towards the views that align with the majority views in the surrounding society and there appears to be a stronger fear of divisions within the church if the church reacts strongly to an opinion that may become more popular. In liberal societies, that leads to being tolerant towards the liberal ideologies. In conservative societies, the opposite may happen.
It also matters whether the deviating (‘heretical’) view is about a central or less influential issues.
During the last decades here, there have been individual Lutheran pastors who have been telling that all people will be saved and even that there is no God(!). Those cases have been dealt with a friendly but firm pastoral discussion with the bishop. At the same time, those who have been baptized with the believer’s baptism have been kicked out from the Lutheran church. If an individual pastor doubts the existence of God or eternal punishment, that does not threaten the church but deviating opinions about the baptism hits the heart of the church and is an existential threat.