Echoing the view of his Harvard colleague Stephen Jay Gould that creationism should be seen as merely a bizarre North American creation, Richard Lewontin once judged the phenomenon to be so localized as to be troublesome only in southern and south-western states. For several years, Ronald Numbers has been issuing a warning, reiterated in his excellent foreword to Creationism in Europe, that if there was intended reassurance in these remarks, they reflected a misplaced optimism. For in the last twenty-five years, creationism, even in its most bizarre ‘young Earth’ guise, has become increasingly globalized, with Darwin demonized as the source of all evil. Sometimes an import from North America, sometimes the indigenous product of changing national political and religious currents, creationism has been on the increase in most European countries. By 2007 the perceived threat was sufficiently severe for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to pass a resolution advising member states not only to defend and promote scientific knowledge, but also to ‘firmly oppose the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline on an equal footing with the theory of evolution’. As Peter Kjærgaard explains in a politically sensitive concluding chapter, creationist attacks on science have been widely seen in Europe as more than that – as a threat to successful democracies from varieties of right-wing activism.

As a well-edited compendium of essays in which each chapter explores the history of organized creationism (and opposition to it) in a specific country or region, Creationism in Europe is both authoritative and comprehensive. Falling within its purview are France, Spain and Portugal, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium, Scandinavia, Germany, Poland, Greece, Russia (with Belarus and Ukraine), and, with sound historical justification, Turkey, the inclusion of which allows greater insight into creationism within Islam. Additional chapters, more thematic in character, examine the relatively resistance of Catholic religious cultures (as in Belgium) and the impact of the ‘intelligent-design’ movement, which has provided shelter for anti-evolutionists disenchanted with typical creationist rhetoric. Although the editors adopt an inclusive meaning for ‘creationism’, using the term to refer to any religious belief system that opposes established evolutionary science, they recognize that finer distinctions are required if justice is to be done to contrasting socio-religious contexts. In the chapter on Turkey, for example, it is noted that when Muslims adopt a creationist stance their position is more likely to be that of the ‘old Earth’ rather than ‘young Earth’ variety – this because of the absence of any reference in the Qur'an to a time frame for creation. In Muslim communities across Europe creationism is becoming increasingly conspicuous, catalysed from Turkey, where Adnan Oktar (alias Harun Yahya) notoriously sought to infiltrate schools and colleges worldwide with his glossy Atlas of Creation (2006). In a campaign revived by the Internet, Oktar manages to make Darwin responsible for 9/11.

This is a book full of insights and instructive contrasts. Each contributor provides welcome historical background on the distinctive religious and political landscape of the particular nation or region under discussion. This proves indispensable, for example, in seeking to understand why the Russian populace became so receptive to an invasion of creationist ideas following the collapse of the overtly atheistic Soviet regime; or why France, with its entrenched secularism and centralized educational system, readily discouraged attempts to introduce the teaching of ‘scientific creationism’ or ‘intelligent design’ in its schools; or why, with the death of Franco in 1975, the consequent reinstatement of evolutionary thought in Spain, in alliance with materialism and atheism, provided a new target for an ultra-creationism supported by Spanish translations of American texts.

Throughout the book it is the political dimensions of the creationist–evolutionist dialectic that are most impressively explored, resulting, as in the chapter on Greece by Efthymios Nicolaidis, in detailed and penetrating narratives. We learn that between 1967 and 1974, when the colonels were in power in Greece, creationist principles were taught in schools, where the mandatory course on religion was almost a catechism of the Orthodox Church. The susceptibilities to modern creationist rhetoric in the various established or mainstream churches are carefully investigated and helpful contrasts drawn both between Russian and Greek manifestations of Orthodoxy, and with the evangelical Protestantism of the West. Where the attempt is made to explain the appeal of creationism, sociological considerations are brought into play by several contributors, reflecting the conclusion of recent scholarship in the sociology of religion that membership of closely knit creationist communities sharing a common belief can reinforce self-identity in ways that make renunciation of that belief extremely difficult. In their introduction, the editors likewise observe that creationism has become a ‘highly flexible repository for legitimating religious group identity’ (p. 5). It is, then, not surprising that Muslims, Hindus and Jews have adopted the strategies of Christian creationists.

Several contributors also draw attention to the appeal of creationist principles that purport to be a bulwark against perceived forms of moral disorder. It has been widely recognized that creationist rhetoric in North America has been less a protest against science as such than against controversial social practices and trends, such as abortion and gay marriage. An important consequence of the sociological perspectives has been the uncomfortable realization that adducing arguments from the best science in the hope of converting creationists to more tolerant attitudes towards evolution is, in most cases, a forlorn strategy – as many scientists in the public eye now appreciate. It therefore becomes impossible to read a book of this quality and scope without reflecting on a question that troubles those who write on the relations between science and secularization. Does the spread of ultra-conservative forms of religious belief, even in societies renowned for their scientific and technological sophistication, constitute a refutation of the old secularization thesis that religion everywhere would eventually be expelled by science, or does it rather provide support in that modern creationism can be construed as a reaction against precisely that progressive and successful expansion of secular policies and values? Not one of the least merits of Creationism in Europe is that its demonstration of diversity across different national contexts challenges any over-generalized answer to that question.