Resource list for non-YEC material?

Education Forum
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Is there a resource list of material that does not promote YEC? If not, can we start one here? I seem to remember coming across a list of Christian authors and scholars who are not YEC, not sure if it was here or somewhere else.

I’m thinking specifically things like children’s picture Bibles, devotionals, study guides, etc. for kids and teens.

Also for curriculum. I know for example, that the very popular mainstream high school Biology textbook (Miller Levine) was written by Kenneth Miller who also wrote “Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution.”

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BioLogos does have a few resource pages – probably the educators page would be a good place to start.

I think a lot of the time, when I find children’s/youth materials that specifically promote a YEC point of view, they tend to come from specific authors and publishers. For example, the company Master Books (under New Leaf Publishing Group) publishes a lot of AIG and other YEC materials. But my experience may not be typical.

But I think it’s a great idea to have a place to post materials we’ve found helpful, especially ones that specifically deal with Genesis, science, theology aimed at children/teens, etc.

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There is this list: K-12 Educators Resource Center - BioLogos

But if people want to add other suggestions, all the better.

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Thank you that’s great. I will check out those resources and add any additional things I’ve found below. I have a few really good books I’ve found that others might find helpful.

It’s just so frustrating to have to weed out the YEC stuff… yesterday I was looking through curriculum samples and I was surprised to find that even in the Bookshark secular curriculum created by Sonlight, they managed to sneak in YEC propaganda in the teachers guide!

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Some resources I’ve found so far:

“The Bible Story Handbook: A Resource for Teaching 175 Stories from the Bible” by John Walton

DK Illustrated Children’s Bible - this one does have the creation story in days just like in a regular Bible, but DK is a mainstream publisher and this version has a lot of added cultural context in sidebars including maps, diagrams, and extra sections that you rarely find in a children’s Bible.

Usborne Lion Storyteller Bible by Bob Hartman (this one specifically avoids any mention of actual days in the creation story of Genesis! So far that’s the only one I’ve found that does that. It also comes with the audiobook version on discs included, the narrator is awesome and great for the car)

Usborne Lion Storyteller Easter Book by Bob Hartman

…

What’s in the Bible? DVD series by Phil Vischer.

There is a homeschool curriculum that uses the above resource written by Dana Cooley called “Bible Road Trip”. She is conservative YEC (and Calvinist I think), but apparently the curriculum stays pretty neutral and focused on scripture. I have only tried a bit of it so I can’t say for sure, but someone else on this forum had recommended this also.

………

Tom Wright’s “For Everyone” devotional series would be great for high schoolers, and some middle schoolers.

“New Testament for Everyone” by Tom Wright

The Old Testament for Everyone by John Goldingay. The Genesis book leaves room for evolution to be true, and includes some interesting thoughts on Adam and Eve and what the implications would be if they weren’t historical people. Easy enough to read for high schoolers and probably most middle schoolers.
………

Timothy Keller accepts evolution, these could be good devotionals for middle school or high school:

“God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life: A Year of Devotions in the Book of Proverbs”

“The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms”

I haven’t read much of his stuff yet, but his books seem quite approachable and easy to understand.

………

“Basic Theology”
and
“Basic Theology Readings”
by Alister McGrath - he has written some excellent books on science and faith as well. He believes evolution is true. This Theology book is simple enough that it could be used with middle schoolers. He is one of the most approachable authors on the topic, in my opinion. He has both an advanced science degree and theology degrees (Anglican perspective)
………

Little Blessings series by Kathleen Bostrom and Elena Kucharik for very young children. Not specifically avoiding YEC, but very gentle and good for young children who have anxiety. All the books we have focus on God’s love and kindness. Topical books cover things like “What is God like?”, “Is God always with me?”, also some books cover heaven and the cross and other subjects that might be harder to discuss with very young children, in a gentle and kind way. The book “Who Made the World?” Does take a YEC perspective but avoids mention of actual 24 hour days.

……

“How to Study Your Bible for Kids” by Kay Arthur (She is YEC, but there is nothing about YEC in this specific book from what I’ve read so far. I haven’t read it cover to cover, just samples of chapters.)

There are other books in the series on specific books of the Bible. There are ones on James, Proverbs, etc. The one on creation has a strong YEC bent
…….

The blog “eclectic-homeschool . Com” , the writer is a proponent of old earth Creation and has many good resources listed. She was actually instrumental in me looking into the truth of evolution in the first place.

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For high school students I would also consider all the books by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. Not specifically devotional, though all of them have some degree of devotional elements in them. All are written from both a scriptural and scientific standpoint and many of them are chock full of scripture. I don’t know where the authors themselves stand on creation, but there is nothing in them that would imply YEC. I would consider their books essential reading for high schoolers preparing for “real life” as a Christian.

Some of the best ones, would be Dr. Cloud’s book on Integrity, Dr. Townsends book “How to be a Best Friend Forever”, and Dr. Cloud’s book “Never Go Back”, and the classic “Boundaries”.

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Boundaries in Dating is a great alternative to the typical homeschool pick of I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

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For Bible story books, we’ve used “The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes,” which was around when I was a kid too. It’s geared toward older preschoolers, so there’s a fair amount of summary, and the Genesis portion doesn’t even mention time periods.

For school-age kids, we’ve used “The Egermeier Bible Story Book,” which I also liked – it’s fairly straightforward with less summary than the preschool version. (I imagine most Bible storybooks stick to the general narrative without pushing one perspective, but I could be wrong).

I have heard good things about “The Jesus Storybook Bible” by Sally Lloyd-Jones, but haven’t read it yet. But we do have “Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing,” by her, so we’ll probably start reading through that soon.

We’re starting “Telling God’s Story” for Bible curriculum this year (first grade), so I’ll have to report back on how that goes – the teacher’s manual looks really good.

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Hi Simone. I usually use Sonlight for my history and science curriculum but changed to Bookshark this year. I changed for a few different reasons but one of the main reasons was that I didn’t want to buy the YEC extras that Sonlight added to their science. In looking at my IG, I haven’t come across any religious references or inferences to YEC. I’m really curious as what you found in your IG as Bookshark is promoted as being religious neutral.

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It was in whichever year uses Joy Hakim’s History of US. Basically the author of the IG was saying not to take Hakim seriously when she is writing about prehistory of the America’s. Regarding how long ago certain events happened, “Take it was a large dash of salt”. I know what they’re implying, and I was surprised to see that in what is supposed to be a secular curriculum.

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Great suggestion! Going to add that to my list. I started reading those books after I was already married so I didn’t realize there was a dating one.

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We have all those children’s Bibles too. I’ve accumulated so many looking for the good ones! lol. I like these. Kenneth Taylor wrote “The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes”. Even though he is YEC, I also like his book “Everything a child should know about God.” also geared towards the very young. It’s the very first book we used when starting to discuss issues of theology.

We have “Telling God’s Story”. It’s pretty good. I haven’t gone through it with my kids though, I can see it appealing to a wide age range. The subsequent volumes are actually authored by other people I think? I think there were supposed to be several volumes but it seems they stopped at three.

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I thought it was supposed to be 12 to go through an entire school career – and not introduce much of the Old Testament until year 4. But yeah, I only see 3. I hope that doesn’t mean it’s fizzling out.

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Last year, I contacted WTM about when volume 4 was coming out and they told me September this year. That’s a year behind what they had originally scheduled, but it was in the works at least.

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Thanks for the example Simone. Honestly, I probably would not have caught that. I, personally, would still recommend Bookshark and Sonlight because I appreciate the “leave it up to the parent” approach the writers take on the age of the earth and evolution issue. It’s never been an issue working around the few places it has been addressed. I just chose not to teach the three resources (that I can think of) in the last six years that I have been using Sonlight that clearly promoted YEC. High school is a different matter however, as Sonlight uses Apologia for science and Bookshark only goes to Level 8. I chose Bookshark this year simply for the fact that it was less expensive and didn’t include the resources I wouldn’t have taught my kids, primarily because of their YEC bent.

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Speaking of Sonlight, I don’t pay as much attention to the upper grades, but it looks like Core J (grades 8-10) is now “History of Science.” (The catalog says “NEW!” so I assume this is a recent change.) Which sounds fascinating, but they do include several YEC resources in the book list. They also include a three-volume series by Joy Hakim called “The Story of Science” which looks really interesting. I’m not sure I want to wait 7 years for my son to get to that age before I read it!

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The Story of Science is not exactly light reading. We incorporated it into Core G and H and read the series over two years. (The three volumes have a combined total of 1209 pages. You know the Sonlight motto; If you aren’t hoarse from reading aloud by the end of the day, you aren’t doing Sonlight!)

I’m going to do the Sonlight History of science core J with my two youngest next year. (Or maybe Bookshark. I get a missionary discount on Sonlight, so it’s always a tossup whether I want to weed out the YEC stuff or pay more. ) I’ll keep everyone posted on how it goes.

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“The Story of Science” by Hakim was very interesting. I read the entire series a few years ago when I didn’t know much about the topic. It was written in a very engaging style. I know there is no such thing as an unbiased history book, but there are a few elements of Hakim’s works that are troubling. You can google it but here is one link from the textbook league, where a historian goes through it point by point (in regards to the US History series).

In the “Story of Science” she gets a few key facts wrong too. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure it was something about blaming Christians for something that never actually happened.

In both her series she is pro-Islam where it is not necessitated, tweaking history to be politically correct. I think it’s subtle enough that most people probably wouldn’t necessarily notice it (see the link I mentioned above for some specific examples). There has been a lot of talk about it on the Well Trained Mind forum years ago though…

I keep coming back to Sonlight and Bookshark over and over again but so far I have not made the plunge. There is just too much I would substitute to make it worth it for us. So we just choose a few of the books here and there for free reading.

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Build your library level 8 also has a “History of Science” year using the same series from Hakim. I really like a lot of the extra resources she includes. My son loved the book “Itch : The Element Hunter”. I read it also and it reads like a thriller.

She does include “The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness” however, which I haven’t read but in reviews a lot of people have said it includes misinformation about science and historical facts.

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Has anyone read this kids’ devotional by Louie Giglio? It looks really good… especially since it involves God and science!

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