Publisher's Synopsis
Decrying an intellectual world gone evolution-mad,” the old Princetonians nevertheless welcomed evolution properly limited and explained.” Rejecting historicism and Darwinism, they affirmed developmentalism and certain non-Darwinian evolutionary theories, finding process over time through the agency of second causes God's providential rule in the world -- both enlightening and polemically useful. They also took care to identify the pernicious causes and effects of antisupernatural evolutionisms. By the 1920s their nuanced distinctions, together with their advocacy of both biblical inerrancy and modern science, were overwhelmed by the brewing fundamentalist controversy.
From the first American review of the pre-DarwinianVestiges of the Natural History of Creationto the Scopes Trial and the forced reorganization of Princeton Seminary in 1929,Process and Providencereliably portrays the preeminent conservative Protestants in America as they defined, contested, and answered -- precisely and incisively -- the many facets of the evolution question.