Creationism in the USA:

It seems that the [Evangelical, Protestant] Christian Church has been a major catalyst in the scientific illiteracy of the American public, and yet there is no reason for it to have played that role. Throughout the 1800s the theologians that modern evangelicals esteem displayed considerable interest in staying informed of the developments in geology and biology that were pushing back the estimated age of the earth and clarifying the origins of the natural world[…]

There is widespread consensus even among conservative theologians and evangelical scientists that young Earth creationism is false and that natural science informs sound belief rather than destroys it, and yet lay Christians are taught a creation myth as if it were literal history, and are taught to distrust science altogether. The result is an American Church that is scientifically illiterate — unable and unwilling to consider scientific data in the formulation of public policy — and taught a strawman as if it were foundational doctrine. This is unexcusable, with serious consequences both for the American Church and for the nation as a whole.