White’s teachings and writings directly influenced George McCready Price, who popularized this form of creationism, also in reaction to less rigid models current in the American Church. But for Price and his audiences, we would probably would never have had the Scopes Trial and Intelligent Design would not have been developed to stand in for the previous century’s increasingly discredited creationist doctrines.

Seventh-day Adventism still officially hangs its hat on a short timeline creation. As such, thorough science education in its universities, including discussion about evolution and evidence for it, is a sore point for some members in this century. It will be interesting to see how Adventism and the American Church at large resolves this over the next few decades. With the Millenials tending to believe as they do, I don’t believe this or complexity awareness is something that any of the churches can dodge and still survive. Hopefully they’ll handle the interim debates with more grace than Adventism has in the past.