American Religious People Now Evenly Split Between Young-Earth Creation and God-Guided Evolution

A new Gallup poll shows that the 4/5ths of Americans who are religious are now evenly split - 38% to 38% - over whether God created the universe pretty much the way it is within the last 10,000 years, or whether God created the universe a long time ago and has guided evolution since then.

For decades, most religious Americans took the "young earth" creationist position.  That support has dropped in the last few years.  The contrasting "theistic evolution" position has risen somewhat.

At the same time, the belief in a wholly secular evolution has doubled to nearly a fifth of all Americans.

Theistic evolution has been the majority opinion among the most educated religious people for decades.  Most college-educated religious Americans accept that there is no conflict between creation and evolution.  It may be that what we are seeing reflects the fact that more religious people are getting a college education.

This is also good news for all centrists, who lament the polarization of much of our culture by false dichotomies.  May we all be more willing to consider the middle position.