History
The ASA was formed in 1941 by Christian scientists, who were concerned about the quality of Christian evangelism on the subject of religion and science. It was the idea of Irwin A. Moon, who talked Moody Bible Institute president William H. Houghton into inviting a number of scientists of known orthodox Christian views to Chicago to discuss its formation. Those who attended were F. Alton Everest, Peter W. Stoner, Russell D. Sturgis, John P. VanHaitsma, and Irving A. Cowperthwaite, and the ASA was formed from this meeting.
Everest, a conservative Baptist electrical engineer at Oregon State College in Corvallis was its president for its first decade. Under his leadership the ASA grew from 5 to 220 members. By 1961 its membership had grown to 860.
During the 1940s and 1950s, it served as the main evangelical forum for discussing the merits and drawbacks of evolution, and for evaluating the works of prominent creationists such as George McCready Price and Harry Rimmer. The influence of an inner circle affiliated with Wheaton College led it to reject strict creationism in favor of first progressive creationism and then theistic evolution, encouraging acceptance of evolution among evangelicals. This group was led by Russell L. Mixter (later JASA editor from 1965 to 1968), J Frank Cassel, and in the words of Ronald L. Numbers "did for biology what Kulp was doing for Geology". (Also see the section on coverage of evolution in the ASA's journal, below.)
Read more about this topic: American Scientific Affiliation
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“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)