William Bell Riley

==Evolution==
In 1923 Riley set up the Anti-Evolution League of Minnesota, which blossomed the following year into the [[Anti-Evolution League of America]] (later run by [[T. T. Martin]]). While the anti-evolution crusade is often thought of as a Southern phenomenon, two of its foremost leaders, Riley and [[John Roach Straton]], were from [[Minneapolis]] and [[New York City]] respectively. In the early 1920s Riley promoted a vigorous anti-evolutionary campaign in the Northwest and it was Riley's [[World Christian Fundamentals Association]] that wired [[William Jennings Bryan]] urging him to act as counsel for the association in the [[Scopes Trial]].<ref name=Numbers>[http://www.history.vt.edu/Barrow/Hist3706/readings/numbers.html ''Creationism in 20th-Century America''], Ronald L. Numbers, Science 218 (5 November 1982): 538-544</ref>

Riley and Bryan tried to remove all teaching of evolution from public schools. One of the creationists in their movement, T. T. Martin claimed that German soldiers who killed Belgian and French children by giving them poisoned candy were angels compared to those who spread evolution ideas in schools.<ref>
T. T. Martin, Hell and the High School (Western Baptist Publishing Co., Kansas City, Mo. 1923), pp. 164-165</ref> Riley also claimed that "an international [[Jewish Bolshevism|Jewish-Bolshevik-Darwinist]] conspiracy to promote evolutionism in the classroom"<ref>{{cite book |title=Whistling Past Dixie |last=Schaller |first=Thomas |authorlink=Thomas Schaller |year=2008 |origyear=2006 |publisher=Simon & Schuster Paperbacks |isbn=978-0-7432-9016-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/whistlingpastdix00scha/page/97 97] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/whistlingpastdix00scha/page/97 }}</ref> was behind the changes in curriculum occurring in the 1920s. Riley advocated a form of "[[Day-Age Creationism]]".<ref name=Numbers/>

The main objection that Riley had to evolution was:

{{blockquote|The first and most important reason for its elimination is in the unquestioned fact that evolution is not a science; it is a hypothesis only, a speculation<ref>W. B. Riley, ''Christian Fundamentals in School and Church'' 4, 5 (April–June 1922)</ref>}}
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