Children who attend Sunday school in at least a few evangelical Christian churches in Lawrence receive a firm grounding in how the world -- and, presumably, humans -- came to be.
The instruction is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
"What it says in the book of Genesis is very clean cut. Genesis 1:1 says, 'God created the heavens and the earth.' That's the very first thing you read when you open the Bible," said Caley Vaughan, a student ministry intern at Heartland Community Church, 619 Vt.
Vaughan teaches Sunday school to children in fourth through sixth grades and works with youths in junior high and high school.
Because it's accepted as a basic premise that a spiritual consciousness created the universe, Sunday school teachers -- and their students -- don't spend much time debating the origins of life.
"Their questions aren't, 'Did God really create everything?' They seem to take that at face value. They accept that God created the world; they want to know what that means for them," said Vaughan, 24.
It's much the same during Sunday children's church and other youth activities at Lawrence Christian Center, 416 Lincoln St.
"We teach them the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, the creation, the flood," said the Rev. Dan Nicholson, pastor.
"I believe and I teach that the biblical account of creation is literally true. We have to take the whole Bible that way; you can't just pick it apart. If it's God's word, it's all God's word."
The seven-day creation of the world by God, as depicted in scripture, is also the Sunday school teaching at Christ Community Church, 1100 Kasold Drive.
"We believe in a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis; we don't bend on that at all. That's a foundational truth," said the Rev. Bill Hurlbutt, senior pastor.
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